Is your child gifted?   Do you wonder if they're gifted but aren't quite sure?   Do you want to know how to support your gifted child's learning in a way that doesn't pressure them or make them resist working with you?   If so, this episode will help.   I have to say, I wasn't sure where this one was going to end up.  I was really uneasy about the concept of giftedness from the outset, perhaps because the way I had previously come into contact with it was through https://www.yourparentingmojo.com/schoolprivilege (our conversation with Dr. Allison Roda), from whom we learned how some parents manipulate the Gifted & Talented program in New York City to perpetuate segregated education.   But even so, I tried to go into the research with an open mind.  What if it's just the G&T programs as they're set up in New York City that are the problem, not the entire concept of giftedness itself?   The good news is that there's a good deal of evidence on what kinds of programs benefit gifted children.  And in this episode I end up arguing that we shouldn't just put gifted children in them, but that all children would benefit from learning using these methods.     You Are Your Child's Best Teacher I also wanted to remind you that the You Are Your Child's Best Teacher workshop starts this coming Monday September 13!   If you're the parent of a child who's old enough to ask questions through the end of elementary school and you want to: Support their intrinsic love of learning and confidence as a learner... WITHOUT doing worksheets or curriculum, (unless your child enjoys doing them!)... WITHOUT just spending your time on reading and math, but instead... Using your child's interests as a jumping off point to deep, intrinsically motivated learning... Then you BELONG in the You Are Your Child's Best Teacher workshop!   In just five days you'll see how they really can learn all the traditional school subjects through their own interests, and gain the confidence you need to know you're giving them the best possible start, whether you're: Homeschooling Public or private-schooling Not working or are working full-time outside the home We'd love to see you in the workshop - and it's totally free!   Just click the picture below to learn more and sign up.   https://yourparentingmojo.com/bestteacher/ ()

We don?t just think with our brains. What?! How can that possibly be true? I struggled to understand it 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 why research has shown that processing traumatic memories through journaling about them is more useful just thinking about them - the act of writing about them changes our interpretation of them in a way that just thinking about them doesn?t. The challenge with school-based learning, of course, is that it?s primarily concerned with the brain.  Our task is to remember facts and ideas so we can recount them when asked about them at a later time.  Children who fidget are told to sit still, when the research that Annie Murphy Paul cites in her new book The Extended Mind indicates that this instruction is entirely misplaced - fidgeting can be a way of managing excess energy, and movement can actually help us to remember things more effectively than we otherwise would. In this episode we learn many of the different ways that we our brains interact with the outside world to learn in ways that we might never have considered up to now. I think of this kind of learning as Full-Bodied Learning, and long before I?d read Annie?s book I had actually developed an entire module of content for the Supporting Your Child?s Learning membership on exactly this topic.  In the module we extend the ideas in today?s episode to support our children in using their full bodies to learn both in school and outside of school as well. You do have to be a member to access that specific content, but you can get a taste for similar kinds of tools that you can use with your child in the free You Are Your Child?s Best Teacher workshop which starts on Monday September 13.  In the workshop you?ll:   Learn how to use your child?s interests as a jumping off point for deep, self-driven learning Show (to yourself and others!) that your child is engaged in complex, multi-faceted learning Reimagine what learning looks like (it can be exciting and fun, and not something you have to bribe your child to do!) Understand your values about learning so you can do activities that are aligned with those values Feel confident that you can effectively support your child?s intrinsic love of learning - whether or not your child is in school.   So whether you?re homeschooling or not; whether you work outside the home or not, YOU really are the person who can best support your child?s learning - mostly because you know them better than anyone else so you can help them much more effectively once you gain the skills to do that. The workshop consists of one short email each day for five days, access to a supportive community of parents who are on the same learning journey as you, and a wrap-up masterclass at the end to bring it all together where we can chat live about your questions. If you want to raise a child who has an intrinsic, life-long love of learning, I do hope you?ll join me in the workshop - it?s completely FREE! Just click the image below to sign up.     https://yourparentingmojo.com/bestteacher/ ()       Jump to highlights: (01:00) Looking at the idea that our mind isn't actually only located inside of our brains (01:46) An open invitation to join the free You Are Your Child?s Best Teacher Workshop (05:30) Learning does not just happen within the brain, but with things and people that are outside of it (06:44) The metaphor of how our brains are like magpies nest: we draw raw material available to us as resources for our thinking process...

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 https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/how-to-feed/the-division-of-responsibility-in-feeding/ (Division of Responsibility), which means that the parent is responsible for the what, when, and where of eating, and the child is responsible for whether and how much. It all sounds pretty simple, but when you're actually navigating eating with your child it can seem a whole lot more complicated: Should we worry about our child's eating in the long term if they won't eat vegetables now? Should we restrict access to children's food? What should we do about picky eating? Ms. Satter helps us to understand her ideas on these important questions and much more. In the conversation we discussed some questions that you can answer to identify whether you are what Ms. Satter defines as Eating Competent: Do you agree or disagree with these statements? I enjoy food and I am comfortable with my enjoyment of food and I take an interest in unfamiliar food. I eat as much as I am hungry for. I plan for feeding myself. Agreeing with these statements indicates you are likely Eating Competent. Disagreeing means you are missing out on eating as one of life?s great pleasures and putting up with a lot of unnecessary misery. Do you have to be miserable to eat well and be healthy? Not at all. People who are https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/satter-eating-competence-model/ (Eating Competent) eat better and are healthier: they weigh less, have better medical tests, and function better, emotionally and socially.

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 Niebauer a while ago that our overactive left brains tend to make up stories about our experiences to integrate these experiences into the narratives we tell about ourselves.   If we?re ?the kind of person who triumphs through adversity,? a setback will be taken in stride.  If we?re ?the kind of person who has been hurt,? each new individual hurt makes much more of a mark.  The new experiences have to be made to fit with the framework that?s already in place.   Especially when you?re learning a skill related to difficult experiences you?ve had, your left brain wants to keep itself safe.  It might tell you: ?I don?t need to do this.  Things aren?t that bad.  I?ll just wait until later / tomorrow / next week.?   And when that happens, you need support.  That support can be from a great friend, although sometimes you don?t want even your closest friends to know that you shout at or smack your child.   Therapy can be really helpful - but it?s also really expensive.   Sometimes the thing that?s most helpful is someone who?s learning the tools alongside you (so they aren?t trying to look back and remember what it was like to be in your situation; theirs is different, but they are struggling too?) who isn?t a regular presence in your life.   There?s no danger you?re going to run into them at the supermarket, or a kid?s birthday party.   You can actually be really honest with them and know it won?t come and bite you in the butt.   That?s what today?s guests, Marci and Elizabeth, discovered when they started working together.  Separated by cultural differences, fourteen(!) time zones, and very different lives, they found common ground in their struggles and have developed a deep and lasting friendship.   If you?d like to work on taming your triggered feelings - and get help from your own Accountabuddy in the process - the Taming Your Triggers workshop is for you.  Click the image below to learn more.          

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 be papered over.  Your body will still hold the evidence in tension, headaches, irritability (of minds and bowels), insomnia...and all of this may come out when your child does something you wish they wouldn?t.   Perhaps it?s something your parent always used to resent doing, and made it super clear to you every time they did it for you.   Perhaps it was something you did as a child and were punished for doing (maybe you were even hit for it...your body is literally remembering this trauma when your child reproduces the behavior).   Lack of manners, talking back, making a mess, not doing as you were told, being silly...even if logically you now know that these are relatively small things, when your child does them it brings back your body?s memories of what happened to you.   Dr. van der Kolk helps us to understand more about how this shows up for us.  Sometimes understanding can be really helpful.  But sometimes you also need new tools, and support as you learn them, and accountability.   If you?re struggling with your reactions to your child?s difficult behavior - whether you?re going into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode, the Taming Your Triggers workshop can help.  Registration is open starting Saturday July 31 through midnight Pacific on Wednesday August 11.  I?d really love to work with you!     https://yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers/ () Dr. van der Kolk will host a four-week program for experts and those who treat people who have experienced trauma in October and November 2021 where he synthesizes history, neurology, and trauma research to deepen our understanding of trauma and trauma treatment.  https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/international-programs/english-community (Click here for more information.)   Jump to highlights: (01:00) Introducing Dr. van der Kolk (01:58) Invitation to the Taming Your Triggers Workshop (02:56) A note on some technical difficulties we had while recording this episode (03:14) People often want easy answers: Talking about why we feel like we need pills and alcohol to deal with trauma and not make use of other methods which seem more beneficial (08:16) "We become who we are based on the experiences we had and these early experiences really set your expectations" (11:53) Dr. van der Kolk?s ongoing research on touch and trauma that looks into the virtually unstudied field of touch (14:42) To effectively deal with trauma, people need to discover who they are and find the words for their internal experiences (16:10) On mindfulness and yoga: the physical focus on movement in yoga may open up some space for mindfulness (20:45) Rolfing : opening up the body so that it is released from the configuration it adopted to deal with trauma (23:07) The importance of words and finding somebody who can helps you to find words as cautiously as they can, without inflicting too much of their own value system on you (25:31) Dr. van der Kolk?s current agenda for kids to be taught to have a language for their internal experience (28:27) Two of the most important scientifically proven predictors of adult function (31:26) Dr. van der Kolk talks about Developmental Trauma Disorder (38:31) The power of peer and community support in healing trauma (41:32) Wrapping up   Links:...

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 husband.  In fact, when she went to couple's therapy with her husband it was with a sense of relief: "Finally, I'm going to find out what's wrong with him, because there's nothing wrong with me!"   She always figured: "If that person didn't act like that then I wouldn't need to react the way I'm reacting...and I legitimately thought that everyone else was responsible for my behavior."   Then she realized that her husband wasn't responsible for how she was feeling...she was.   Now she was ready to make the same leap related to her relationship with her spirited children, but needed new tools.  They would melt down over every tiny issue (not enough honey on the oatmeal!  Now not enough cream!  I don't WANT to get dressed!), and Chrystal found herself constantly scrambling to placate them.   Join us for a conversation about the new ideas she's learned, and how her children now don't cooperate blindly because she's forcing them, but express their agency while finding ways to collaborate that also meet their needs.  They have real agency in her family (they know she'll hear them and respect their ideas) and because of this, the little issues that used to provoke regular meltdowns are easily solved.  And Chrystal is learning how to set boundaries so she doesn't get walked all over - by her children, or by other members of her family.   Want to make a similar shift in your own interactions with your children?  My Taming Your Triggers workshop will help - doors open July 31, and sliding scale pricing is available!  Click the picture below to learn more and join the wait list...   https://yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers/ ()     Jump to highlights: (01:00) Inviting listeners to join the Taming Your Triggers workshop (04:43) A little bit about Chrystal (11:06) Chrystal?s journey as a parent (13:58) How Chrystal found it difficult to build lasting relationships with parents who were raising their children the same way they were raised and how she found her people in the Taming Your Triggers community. (16:32) The fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses and how Chrystal resonated to the fawn response. (18:22) The first time Chrystal was able to connect what she?s feeling in her body with her belief systems (20:36) As the eldest of eight children, Chrystal felt that it was her responsibility to make sure everyone is happy when her mother couldn?t cope due to severe postnatal depression, and this has continued on with her character now that they?ve grown up (24:51)  When Chrystal decided to set boundaries and have it respected, she found out that her family?s issues can resolve themselves without her getting involved (28:14) The profound shift with for Chrystal in terms of what changed in her family after going through the Taming Your Triggers workshop is that she is now able to see situations as more than a win-lose situation (32:20) With two strong-willed daughters and a son who is also energetic, breakfast has been a challenge in Chrystal?s home. She?s learned to apply problem solving to find solutions, but the biggest revelation for her has been that it is okay for her children to have these big feelings (38:15) Chrystal explores the question, ?Why should our children listen to us?? as she discovers extrinsic and intrinsic motivation (38:55) A beautiful moment when Chrystal was...

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 because then your risk of getting these diseases and dying early will be reduced.   But what if this wasn't true?   What if this messaging had been established by people who own companies that manufacture weight loss products who sit on panels that advise international governmental entities like the World Health Organization?   What if body fat was actually protective for your health?   We dig into all these questions and more in this provocative interview.   We'll continue this series with episodes looking specifically at sugar, as well as supporting parents who have or continue to struggle with disordered eating, and how to support children in developing eating habits that will serve them for a lifetime, not just get the vegetables into them today.   Jump to highlights: (01:00) Introducing Dr. Lindo Bacon and starting our series of episodes on the intersection of parenting and food (02:22) Stripping the word ?fat? of it?s pejorative meaning and reclaiming the term while acknowledging that it may be jarring for some people (03:09) Kicking off the conversation with how we measure health using BMI and how it might not be accurate (05:03) The resistance to Katherine Flegal?s seminal research in weight and longevity (05:49) The development of the Body Mass Index was with scientific bias to fit the bell curve (07:30) Higher body weight does not necessarily mean a person has greater risk of poor health (10:59) We actually know that the research is highly exaggerated in terms on the role that it plays on health (13:16) Dr. Bacon?s turning point: When they found out that BMI recommendations were created by an organization funded by pharmaceutical companies who produce weight loss drugs and products (17:35) Taking the issue one step further with the American Medical Association?s recommendation whether to categorize obesity as a disease or not (19:19) The Obesity Paradox is an observation in the research that people who are obese who get the same diseases as those with ?normal? weight are living longer (21:15) The concept of dieting just doesn?t work according to the data (30:33) A story of Dr. Bacon?s and their father?s knee problems (34:40) Individual factors only accounts to 25% to somebody?s total health outcomes and social determinants account to about 60% (42:05) It is cool right now to be your authentic self but not everyone can so easily be their authentic self when their authentic selves are not valued by society at large (45:48) Improving the health of individuals is more communal than individual   Resource Links: https://www.amazon.com/Health-At-Every-Size-Surprising/dp/1935618253/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Health+at+Every+Size+by+lindo+bacon&qid=1625316371&sr=8-1 (Health at Every Size), by Lindo Bacon https://www.amazon.com/Body-Respect-Conventional-Health-Understand/dp/1940363195/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Body+Respect+by+lindo+bacon&qid=1625316563&sr=8-1 (Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight), by Lindo Bacon and Lucy Aphramor https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Belonging-Survive-Thrive-Transforming-ebook/dp/B084HK4BT5/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Radical+Belonging&qid=1625316690&sr=8-1 (Radical Belonging: How to Survive and Thrive in an

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 violence against children.  She co-founded the Gun Safety Committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics in New York State, and is leading the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force for the American Medical Women?s Association.   Another issue is the gun violence that is primarily faced by children of color, which turns out to affect a far greater number of children.   And how is this all linked to the Peloton recall?  You'll have to listen in to find out...   Jump to highlights here: (01:00) Indoor playdates are ramping up...will your child be safe? (02:29) Introducing Dr. Nina Agrawal, pediatrician and co-founder of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Gun Safety Committee in New York State (02:58) Understanding how big is the scope of gun violence against children (06:15) The Dickey Amendment: Explaining the massive lack of data and research on gun violence and safety (11:24) The ways that gun violence affects children that we might not expect (12:32) ?I get woken up at night to the sound of gunshots.? (17:09) The racial disparity in how children are affected by gun violence (20:46) More people purchased guns in 2020, and there are more first-time owners too (23:39) The statistical likelihood of children coming to harm if they live with a firearm in their household (27:00) Just telling kids not to touch guns doesn't work (even if you think of your child as one who is 'sensible,' and you've talked with them about gun safety) (30:45) The Asking Saves Kids Campaign helps to keep kids safer (33:06) The surprising link between children involved in gun violence and the Peloton treadmill recall (36:07) In American culture, banning all guns can't be the answer (40:52) Effective Child Access Laws (41:45) How to create safer environments for children through building communities [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast.   Jen Lumanlan  00:06 We all want her children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research on principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a free guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't Listen To You & What To Do About Each One, just head over to YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen Lumanlan  01:00 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. And today we're going to discuss a topic that I think is about to come into parents' consciousness in a way that it really hasn't as much over the last year. And for some of us, that's a result of our privilege. And I was reflecting that as vaccinations for children become more available, we're probably going to start moving towards indoor play dates without parents being around because when my daughter went into when we...

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 often forgotten that attachment theory was developed in the period after World War II, when policymakers were trying to get women out of the jobs they had held during the war, and back into their 'natural' place in the home. In one of his earliest papers Dr. John Bowlby - the so-called Father of Attachment Theory - described 44 children who had been referred to his clinic for stealing, and compared these with children who had not stolen anything. He reported that the thieves had been separated from their parents during childhood, which led them to have a low sense of self-worth and capacity for empathy. He went on to say that ?to deprive a small child of his mother?s companionship is as bad as depriving him of vitamins.? But much later in his life, Bowlby revealed that he had conflated a whole lot of kinds of separation into that one category ? everything between sleeping in a different room to being abandoned in an orphanage. And in addition to being separated, many of the thieves had also experienced physical or sexual abuse. The fear that spending time apart from your baby will damage them in some way is just not supported by the evidence. What other common beliefs do we hold about attachment relationships that aren't supported by evidence? Well, quite a lot, as it turns out! Listen in for more.     Jump to highlights: (03:30) Download the free Right From The Start Roadmap (06:11) Dr. John Bowlby, who is known as the founder of attachment theory (06:40) A brief overview of attachment theory (08:06) What is attachment theory (09:44) A closer look at the word attachment (12:55) Five aspects out of Freud's psychoanalytic theory (14:32) 44 Juvenile Thieves - One of the major ideas about separation from parents (17:50) What is the word monotrophy (18:49) The four dimensions that distinguish African-American views of motherhood from American views by Dr. Patricia Hill Collins (20:49) Aka Pygmy tribe in Africa (21:37) What is PIC or Parental Investment in the child Questionnaire by Dr. Robert Bradley (24:19) The Strange Situation Procedure developed by Dr. Mary Ainsworth (30:30) White middle class mothers in Baltimore stand for what attachment should look like in families of all types around the world (33:36) Two main cross cultural studies (40:13) The cognitive thinking component of the attachment relationship (47:29) What is Outcomes (01:01:25) Summary   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan 00:03 Hi, I?m Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research on principles of respectful parenting. If you?d like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won?t listen To You and What To Do About Each One, just head on over to your YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you?ll join us.   Jen Lumanlan 00:55 Hello, and welcome to the your parenting Mojo...

"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 with your values. Let's break that down a bit: Being fully in touch with the present moment: We spend a good chunk of our lives not fully present. And there are times when it makes sense - we don't necessarily need to be fully present for every moment of a long drive. As long as we're present enough to drive safely, we don't need to observe the exact quality of red in the tail light of the driver in front of you. But when we spend most of our lives zoned out on our phones, or rushing from one activity to the next (probably partly so we don't have to sit down and just be), we aren't truly present. Better alignment with your values: We all have values, although perhaps some of us haven't fully articulated them. We might value raising an independent child, but then step in every time they struggle. We might value emotional closeness but struggle to actually do it because our parents didn't model it for us. When we articulate our values, we define what we're working toward. Based on the situation, either continuing or changing your behavior: One of my favorite parts of ACT is the Choice Point: the point at which something doesn't feel right to you. At this point you get to decide: Am I going to keep doing the same thing I've always done? Or am I going to do something that brings me into better alignment with my values?   Want to know more? Dr. Diana Hill, co-author with Dr. Debbie Sorensen, joins me on this episode to discuss their new book https://amzn.to/3v5H3iR (ACT Daily Journal: Get Unstuck and Live Fully with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) (this is an affiliate link, so I will earn a small commission through your purchase which does not affect the price you pay). The book walks readers through a series of exercises to help them become more psychologically flexible, through the practice of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). The concepts in ACT are ones that I've found to be enormously useful both personally and in working with clients, so I'm excited to tell you about them here!     Jump to highlights: (01: 26) What is ACT or acceptance and Commitment Therapy (02:07) What is this thing psychological flexibility? (03:48) What are the components of psychological flexibility? (08:07) Cognitive diffusion (11:38) The idea that we could believe that our thoughts are not true is mind boggling to a lot of people (16:36) Values and parenting in particular is such a good one to discuss (18:20) Values are something that are deep within you, that you can pull upon, when you've got nothing left (19:10:) The idea of the choice point (23:36) Perspective taking is probably one of the most important skills we can do for ourselves (27:01) How do we live out committed action (33:55) Our children are naturally beginner's mind (35:18:) One of the things that actually sets humans apart from robots, is our ability to think outside the box (39:58) We can start to teach our children, that it's not about the answer. That there's many ways to solve problems (41:51) The IKEA effect (45:33) Another thing that's really important with embodiment is modeling   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan 00:03 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child...

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 it was before?   Because the world we had before wasn't working for a lot of parents. We were constantly rushing our children around from one activity to the next, maybe also trying to balance a career at the same time, attending thirty kids' birthday parties a year and just feeling completely spent, most of the time.   If we don't take the time to think about what we want life to be like when we reopen, chances are it'll look pretty much like it used to. And that can seem safe! It's always safer and easier to go back to what we know, rather than forward to what is unknown and scary.   What would something different even look like?   Maybe we would have fewer friends, whom we know much better.   Maybe we would do fewer activities, and spend a bit more time being, rather than always doing.   Maybe we would actually support families financially instead of having a 'families are the bedrock of our society...but you're on your own to provide for it' approach.   In this Mother's Day Momifesto, I explore all of these issues, and encourage you to think about how YOU want to be in this new world.   And if you need help figuring it out, the Parenting Membership is here to help. Doors are open now through midnight Pacific on Wednesday May 12th. We'll support you through the challenges of today (how to prevent tantrums! raising healthy eaters! navigating screen time!) while keeping an eye on where we want to go. Because you need both.   https://yourparentingmojo.com/parentingmembership/ ()   Jump to highlights: (01:27) The Mother's Day Momifesto (02:04) COVID shutdown (04:28) School reopenings (07:04) 18% of women in the US have taken antidepressants (09:29) We try to control our bodies in a variety of ways (12:27) Success is defined for men (19:38) Women working communities (20:25) Plenty of parents and children's needs are not met by the school system (22:47) Intersectionality - the idea that different parts of our identities intersect (25:10) Public transit systems are geared around men (26:17) Contribution of scientific research on COVID 19- women scientists have published 19% fewer papers as lead author (29:26) Standard Body Mass Index calculations are based on the weight of white people (31:41) Nonviolent Communication (34:06) How we can begin to make a difference (44:55) Learning how to meet our own needs is a great place to start (46:44) Reopening of your Parenting Membership will close on the midnight of May 12     [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan 00:03 Hi, I?m Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research on principles of respectful parenting. If you?d like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won?t listen To You and What To Do About Each One, just head on over to your YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. ou can also continue the conversation...

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 parenting' word cloud?   Exhausted.   What on earth is going on here?   In this episode I explore five important reasons why respectful parenting is so hard - and what to do about each of them.   Jump to highlights: (01:00) Why we find parenting so hard (01:18) Most prominent words before parents discovered respectful parenting (01:58) Five reasons respectful parenting can be hard (03:03) 1st reason: Our needs that our parents just didn?t see despite doing the best they could (05:22) The trauma of unmet needs (06:09) 2nd reason: The long game that is respectful parenting (08:54) Our culture trains us to want results (09:56) 3rd reason: Our values and what we want to do in an ideal world (10:39) Alfie Kohn?s Unconditional Parenting (13:38) Our child's behavior brings up old trauma (14:10) Shifting the way we see our children (15:12) 4th reason: When we see these values that we want to live (16:37) The tendency to engage in negative self-talk (17:58) Self compassion and mindfulness (19:11) The last (and perhaps not the last) reason (24:47) Super short summary information.     [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:03 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research on principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't listen To You and What To Do About Each One, just head on over to your YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. ou can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen 00:53 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. In this episode, I want to talk about something that's been bothering me for a while, which is why we find respectful parenting so hard. And this idea actually came from a poll that Dr. Laura Froyen ran in an online parenting group that we both help to moderate where she asked people to describe how they felt about parenting before and after they discovered respectful parenting. And then she made the responses into a word cloud. The most prominent words in the word cloud from before parents discovered respectful parenting were worried, overwhelmed, resentful, and guilty. And some of the most prominent words in the word cloud from after parents discovered respectful parenting, we're confident, loving, empowered, calm, hopeful and relieved. But the most prominent word was exhausted.   Jen 01:39 And I just thought, "What's UP with that?!", and then "Does it HAVE to be this way?." And that was almost a year ago. And that idea has been percolating in my brain since then. And every once in a while I would jot down ideas about why this was the case. And I'd like to walk through those, and also give us some ideas for how to move forward. Because I think there are five reasons respectful parenting can be hard, but I don't believe it has to be hard.  ...

"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 her struggles and the kind of parent she wanted to be.   The stress of parenting an infant brought out a controlling side of her where she attempted to script every aspect of her (and her husband's) interactions with her child, thinking they had already screwed up parenting because he hadn't asked their child's consent before changing her diaper.   Nicole was raised by a single parent who had had a traumatic upbringing, and Nicole grew up sometimes feeling scared by her mother's oversized reactions to normal childhood behavior. She knew she wanted more for her children - but didn't know what to do. Over the last year she's been working on 'reparenting' herself so she doesn't have to parent from a place of fear any more, and can relax into understanding her children's feelings - and her own and her partner's feelings as well.   Want to get a taste of what it's like to work with directly with me? Join the FREE Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop - we start Monday April 26! Sign up below:   https://yourparentingmojo.com/settinglimits/ ()   Jump to highlights: (03:19) Nicole's background (04:36) Nicole's parenting beliefs and values (06:31) Teaching respect by giving respect (08:07) Fear and anxiety of not getting parenting right (09:32) How inter generational trauma show up in your family (11:37) The unexpected reparenting piece (13:35) How talking about death with children led Nicole to my work (15:13) Nicole's experience with the Parenting Membership (18:32) What shifted in Nicole's that made her decide to take the Membership (19:17) Realizing the most unconditional thing you can do for your kids (20:12) Relationships our complex yet we don't think that way when it comes to our relationship with our children (21:08) Nicole's incredible example of how she shows up for her children and handles things differently now compared to before (24:45) Becoming more confident in parenting (26:09) Having the language to talk about our needs (28:39) How Nicole and her husband wants to model conflict to their children (34:44) Wrapping up   Resource links: https://yourparentingmojo.com/settinglimits/ (Setting Loving (& Effective) Limits Workshop) https://yourparentingmojo.com/parentingmembership/ (The Parenting Membership)   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide Called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't Listen To You and What To Do About Each One, just head over to YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen 00:59 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we welcome a special guest Nicole who has been working with me for over a year...

"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 boyfriend, whom I wasn't even sleeping with yet.   Friends: we have to do more than this if we want our children to be able to show up in relationships as fulfilled human beings who understand what pleasure is, how to ask for it, and how to give it.   We need our children to know that sex does not have to equal intercourse, and that there are a whole host of ways to enjoy our (and each other's) bodies without doing this if we don't want to do it (when they're ready for it!).   And we need to help our children understand boundaries so they can protect themselves when they need to - without getting so caught up in the shame that pervades our thinking about sex.  (Since the sex = shame narrative is deeply pervasive in our culture I don't think we can overcome it completely, but we can make a start...).   In this episode we build on https://yourparentingmojo.com/pleasuremechanics/ (our conversation with Charlotte Rose about sex for us parents) to go (far) Beyond Sex Ed with sex educator https://www.nadinethornhill.com/ (Dr. Nadine Thornhill), whose direct, fun, engaging style will help you to see that you, too, can have conversations about sex and pleasure with your own children.  You can find more information on Dr. Thornhill's work on her https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJqQvHjzDtjLEu9IjpUh68Q (YouTube channel) where she addresses topics from what happens if the kid walk in on parents having sex to whether first time sex always hurts, as well as https://www.instagram.com/nadinethornhill/ (on Instagram).   And don't forget that the FREE Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop starts Monday April 26!  Five days > WAY fewer limits than you ever thought possible (without being a dreaded Permissive Parent!) > amazing shift in the level of collaboration and cooperation in your home.  Sign up now!     Jump to highlights: (00:01) Setting Loving and Effective Limits Workshop (02:18) Where we?re at with our mini-series on issues related to sex (03:34) Introducing our guest, Dr. Nadine Thornhill (04:54) The importance of continuing the conversation about sex beyond the basic topics (09:17) Figuring out what kinds of things I need to teach my children and how (12:22) The value of showing our vulnerability to our children (14:45) Talking about the traditional ways we talk about sex and how can we change that narrative (19:03) Having conversations around pleasure of the non-sexual kind (23:27) Modelling intimacy to our children without overdoing it (25:41) Helping our children set boundaries even when we?re having trouble setting boundaries ourselves (31:53) Dr. Thornhill?s son?s case of the ?hangry? and how he came to develop recognizing physical signs before he gets hangry (33:41) Talking about shame associated with the white, Christian view of sex (40:34) Talking about bodies and nudity that doesn?t rely on shame (43:07) Going a little deeper into consent and the Authentic Consent Framework (50:48) The House and the Superintendent Metaphor (53:23) How parents can leave more space and be supportive of the potential suite of options about a child?s sexuality (57:46) Should we wait to teach our children about aspects of sex and sexuality until they ask? (01:02:11) Wrapping up   Guest links: https://www.nadinethornhill.com/...

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 wanted to do it right away, but we came back to it the next afternoon. She thinks that parents often don't understand how their children are feeling and she'd like suggest ways to help your children when they're behaving in a way that may seem 'difficult' to you. Jump to highlights: (01:00) My special guest in her podcasting debut (02:18) What helps to understand your kid's feelings (03:18) Feeling the physical sensations of frustration (03:42) What Carys feels when she get 'that feeling' (04:19) Parents don't really understand that children sometimes want to be alone (06:07) Different kids deal with things in different ways (07:34) Our new method for when we disagree on things (10:37) We have rewards now (11:46) Carys's thoughts on problem solving   Links: https://yourparentingmojo.com/settinglimits/ (Setting Limits Workshop)     [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen [00:00] Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a free guide called 13 reasons why your child isn't listening to you and what to do about each one, just head on over to YourParentingMojo.com/Subscribe.   You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the free Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen [01:00] Hello and welcome to the, Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. I'm Jen. Who are you?   This is Carys in her world podcasting debut. So if you're not watching this on YouTube, you might want to watch it on YouTube cause then you'll get to see both of us. And so we were having a conversation last night about feelings, right? Yeah. And so I, we were having, you were having ice cream and I was doing dishes.   And all of a sudden you started talking about how you feel when you're having a hard time. And daddy said, You should be in a podcast.   Carys [01:37] Actually, I think I said that.   Jen [01:39] Oh, you did? Oh okay, and daddy agreed. And we were going to do it last night, but you had an appointment to talk to auntie Jas, didn't you? You couldn't do both. So here we are today to talk about feelings.   So how old are you?   Carys [01:52] Six and a half.   Jen [01:53] Six and a half. Okay. You're almost six and three quarters. Aren't you?   Carys [01:56] Yeah. I was going to say that but like....   Jen [02:00] Okay. How many loose teeth do you have? Oh, yeah. Got to be on YouTube to get that one. The two front teeth are wobbly and have been wobbly for a while aren't they? So do you remember what we were talking about last night? Why you started telling us about your feelings? I was trying to remember, and I couldn't remember.   Carys [02:18] I think I just remembered that it just helps to understand your kids' feelings when you just look back and see a time when you were feeling like that.   Jen [02:32] Oh, that's...

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 https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/talk-sex-today/ (using anatomically correct names for body parts) and https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/sexualabuse/ (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 https://www.pleasuremechanics.com/speaking-of-sex-podcast/ (Speaking of Sex podcast) by the Pleasure Mechanics, about what and how we adults learned about sex. We talk about the shame that pretty much all of us learned to associate with sex (and how to overcome that), and what we can do to improve the chances of having sex with our partner - even if we're feeling so tired that this currently seems out of the question.   We're setting the stage here to approach sex from a less pressured, more fun perspective - which will help us in an upcoming episode to figure out what we want to discuss with our children about sex, sexuality, and pleasure. Jump to highlights: (01:00) Today's topic and Parenting Membership reopening announcement (02:20) Setting Loving and Effective Limits workshop announcement (03:55) Chris and Charlotte Rose the Pleasure Mechanics (05:16) The primary focus of today's episode (06:09) Sex isn't what it used to be before we became parents (08:39) Responsive desire and spontaneous desire (09:17) Erotic simulation and how there is nothing wrong with your sexual relationship (11:54) Creating a culture of pleasure within your relationship (14:42) Continual consent - it doesn't always need to lead to sex (15:34) Sex is adults at play (17:37) Sex educations centered around abstinence, secrecy, and shame and how we move forward from that (20:39) A parenting opportunity to create a different culture for our children, so that they have to unlearn so much less with regards to sex (22:35) How does shame show up in parents' sexual relationship? (25:21) So much judgment about sexuality and how it gets in the way of our connection with our partner (29:04) A culture of community care to have these conversations (29:49) Initiation and refusal/rejection (34:36) Mindful sex: How to enjoy sex more (39:27) Finding that balance when having the sex conversation with our children (42:23) Giving kids the building blocks so that they can have an experience to healthy sexuality when it is time for them (45:39) Experiencing self massage in a non sexual way (50:16) Body neutrality (51:36) Wrapping up     Here are the resources we discussed on the show:   Pleasure Mechanics Resources Charlotte & Chris' free online course https://pleasuremechanics.teachable.com/p/the-erotic-essentials/?affcode=160539_6-lm4yqi (The Erotic Essentials) http://pleasuremechanics.com/talk (Conversation starters about sex) https://www.pleasuremechanics.com/sexual-desire-spontaneous-vs-responsive/ (Podcast episode on spontaneous vs. responsive desire) https://www.pleasuremechanics.com/better-sex-mindfulness-lori-brotto/ (Podcast episode on mindful sex) (making sex better through focusing on the present) https://www.pleasuremechanics.com/your-body-is-good-enough/ (Podcast episode on body image)     Other Resources https://www.aasect.org/referral-directory (AASECT therapist referral directory) https://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/files/why_humans_have_sex_2007.pdf (Peer-reviewed article on the 237 reasons people have sex) Guy Winch's TED Talk on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2hc2FLOdhI (How to Practice Emotional First Aid), as well as more explicit resources on...

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 https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/implicitbias/ (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 examining, so we can get a better sense for whether implicit bias is really something we should be spending our time thinking about - or if our problems with explicit bias are big enough that we would do better to focus there first. Jump to highlights: (03:38) Is implicit bias baked into our bodies? (06:27) About the Implicit Association Test (IAT) (08:13) Criticism of the IAT and Dr. Banaji?s response (12:48) Blindspot and the inception of the IAT (13:41) We make judgements about individuals based on how they look (14:12) We often say things that aren't true, even if we think we are truthful (16:01) The premise of the IAT and how it works (18:13) Conflicting definition of what implicit bias is (19:40) Meta-analysis of implicit bias (33:16) Implicit bias on the decline in recent years (35:37) The persistent problem with IAT (42:59) From macro-issues to the micro-issues of IAT (53:54) My takeways Resources: http://implicit.harvard.edu (Implicit Association Test) [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want her children to lead fulfilling lives but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of Respectful Parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't Listen To You and What To Do About Each One, just head over to YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen 00:59 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Before we start this week's episode, I wanted to take a minute to thank you for being a part of this parenting journey with me and to share a quick update on where things stand with the podcast after four and a half years now. What is that saying? The days are long and the years are short? It certainly seems to be the case here. And well for some of you listening, this may be the very first episode that you're listening to, there are many others who have been with me for the entire 132 plus episodes that I've created to date. We're close to surpassing a million and a half downloads from all around the world, and my goodness, it's a bit strange to even say those words aloud given that I started the show with basically no idea whether anyone would be interested in listening. And it's such an honor to me when you recommend the show to your friends and to other parents at your daycare or preschool. When you share specific episodes that have helped you to find the answers that work with your family and your online communities. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that developing Your Parenting Mojo, which is now the podcast episodes, blog posts, courses, workshops, membership content is more than a full-time job. I have a very small team that helps me to keep my own sanity and my husband is now involved as well. Maybe one day he'll even listen to as many episodes as some of my most...

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 conversation with Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, former Dean of the Department of Psychology at Harvard University and co-creator of the Implicit Association Test, for an overview of implicit bias and how we can know if we (and our children) have it. This episode will be followed by a second part in this mini-series where we dig deeply into the research, where results are complex and often contradictory. Stay tuned!   Jump to highlights: (01:00) An intro of Dr. Mahzarin Banaji (02:58) What is implicit bias? (07:48) Differentiating bias that you are aware of and bias that you aren?t aware of (08:56) Describing the Implicit Association test (18:11) What the research says about where implicit bias comes from (24:50) Development of group preference from implicit association (32:18) Group bias and what its implications towards individual psychological health (40:44) What can be done to potentially prevent implicit biases from developing? (46:56) Some good progress with society?s bias in general and areas that needs working on   Resources: https://www.amazon.com/Blindspot-Hidden-Biases-Good-People-ebook/dp/B004J4WJUC (Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People)   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast.   Jen 00:06 We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting.   Jen 00:29 If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't Listen To You and What To Do About Each One, just head over to YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE.   Jen 00:42 You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen 01:00 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we're going to look at the topic of implicit bias. Now I've been thinking for a while about running a series of episodes on the connection between our brains and our bodies because I've been learning about that and the wisdom that our bodies can hold and wondering, well how can we learn how to pay more attention to our bodies? And then I started thinking about intuition. And I wondered, well, how can we know if we can trust our intuition? What if our intuition is biased? So I started looking at the concept of implicit bias and it became immediately clear who I should ask to interview Dr. Mahzarin Banaji. Dr. Banaji studies thinking and feeling as they unfold in a social context with a focus on mental systems that operate in implicit or unconscious mode. Since 2002, she has been Richard Clarke Cabot professor of social ethics in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, where she was also the Chair of the Department of Psychology for four years while holding two other concurrent appointments. She has been elected fellow of a whole host of extremely impressive societies and was named William James Fellow for a lifetime of significant

"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 a cure-all for everything from anxiety to depression to addictions.  But is it possible that all this is too good to be true? In this episode, meditation teacher - and former Buddhist nun! - Diana Winston guides us through what we know of the research on meditation that's relevant to parents.  It turns out that the quality of much of this research isn't amazing, but this may not matter to you if you're thinking of starting a meditation practice because the opportunity cost (a few minutes a day) is so low and the potential benefits are so high. We walk through a basic meditation that you can do anywhere, and no - it doesn't involve sitting cross-legged with your thumb and first finger held in a circle and saying 'ommmmmm....'. I was skeptical about meditation too - until I tried it.  Perhaps it might help you as well?     https://yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers/ ()     Jump to highlights: (02:36) Introducing Diana Winston (03:39) Defining Mindfulness (05:25) Distinguishing between mindfulness and meditation (06:26) How can mindfulness benefit me? (08:05) Self-hatred as a Western concept (12:27) The practice of mindfulness rooted in religion and cultural appropriation (13:57) The research on mindfulness (17:27) Why is it so hard to study mindfulness? (19:33) Mindfulness vs science as tools of observation (21:26) The benefits of mindfulness to parents and children (28:04) Improving parent-child relationships through mindfulness (30:27) Working in mindfulness practices in the context of communities (35:52) Practice mindfulness now with this quick walkthrough (42:46) Sit Still and It Will Hurt Eventually   Useful links: https://yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers/ (Taming Your Triggers Workshop)   Books and other resources: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Being-Practices-Uncovering/dp/1683642171 (The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness) https://wakingup.com/ (Waking Up App by Sam Harris) https://www.uclahealth.org/marc/ucla-mindful-app (UCLA Mindful App) https://www.tenpercent.com/ (Ten Percent Happier App) https://www.amazon.com/Wide-Awake-Buddhist-Guide-Teens/dp/0399528970 (Wide Awake: A Buddhist Guide for Teens)   Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2174808219425589 (Your Parenting Mojo Facebook Group)   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't Listen To You and What To Do About Each One, just head over to YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners and the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join

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 our needs disregarded over and over again by the people who were supposed to protect us. These experiences cause us to feel 'triggered' by our children's behavior - because their mess and lack of manners and resistance remind us subconsciously of the ways that we were punished as children for doing very similar things. These feelings don't just show up in our brains, they also have deep connections to our bodies (in spite of the Western idea that the body and brain are essentially separate!). If we don't decide to take a different path and learn new tools to enable us to respond effectively to our child rather than reacting in the heat of the moment, and because our physical experience is so central to how this trauma shows up in our daily lives, we also need to understand and process this trauma through our bodies. If you need help understanding the source of your triggered feelings and learning new ways to navigate them so you can feel triggered less often, my popular and highly effective Taming Your Triggers workshop is open for registration through midnight Pacific on Wednesday August 11, and we get started on Monday August 16. Sliding scale pricing is available, and the community meets on a platform that isn't Facebook! Please reach out to [email protected] if you have questions about the workshop. https://yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers/ ()   Jump to highlights: (01:00) This episode?s rationale (03:12) The two ways trauma shows up in broader family relationships (05:27) The separateness of the brain and the body has a long history in Western culture (06:05) Rene Descartes on the schism of mind and body (07:12) The held belief of the mind as superior to the rest of the body (08:09) The inherent bias of data (09:42) The lies our brain tells us (12:54) The so-called 4 ?truths? of the physical experience of trauma (16:22) When we are not attuned to the signals that our body is giving us (19:01) Difficulty in identifying feelings for people who experienced trauma (22:16) Saying OK when you aren?t really OK (26:19) The difference between reacting and responding (27:10) Using physical experience to bring order to the chaos in our minds (31:15) The first step to creating a safe environment for your child (33:26) The root of our inability to create meaningful relationships (34:18) Equipping ourselves with the tools to regulate our arousal   Other episodes mentioned: https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/self/ (No Self, No Problem) https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/intergenerationaltrauma/ (Intergenerational Trauma) https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/capitolsiege/ (U.S. Capitol) https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/mlk2021/ (MLK Day)   Links: https://yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers (Taming Your Triggers Workshop)   Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2174808219425589 (Your Parenting Mojo Facebook Group)   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our...

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 what else to do: she had learned this over-controlling style from her own parents: watching TV without permission, talking back to her father, and having a boyfriend before college were simply out of the question when she was growing up. In her parents' eyes, they had done all the right things: Iris got good grades, graduated from an elite university, and married another successful Chinese-American. But through interacting with her son, Iris realized that all of these achievements had come at a great cost: a cost that her son was trying to show her through his resistance.  Eventually Iris saw that her son's behavior wasn't the problem; he was simply reacting to her attempts to control him, and that it was her own approach that needed to change. Now Iris is well along her own Untigering path: basing her relationship with her children on finding win-win solutions to problems, being flexible, and respecting each other's boundaries. As I do too, Iris sees this path as a journey toward creating a society where everyone belongs. If you see yourself in Iris' descriptions of her early days as a parent, and especially if you find yourself routinely overreacting to your child's age-appropriate behavior, I invite you to join my Taming Your Triggers workshop, which will help you to understand the true source of your triggered feelings (hint: it isn't your child's behavior!), feel triggered less often, and respond more effectively to your child on the fewer occasions when it does still happen. Click here to learn more about https://www.yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers (Taming Your Triggers)     https://yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers/ ()     Jump to highlights: (01:34) Children?s dilemma between being seen/heard and being accepted (02:50) The trauma we pass on to our children (04:04) How to tame your triggers (04:59) Confidence in parenting that gives parents a sense of calm (06:39) Iris as a Deconstructing Tiger Parent (08:13) ?I thought my responsibility as a parent was to push harder when my child resisted? (09:26) ?I saw in my children a freedom to express their resentment in ways that I was never free to? (11:05) The walls that are created between parent and child because children?s authentic selves are not accepted (11:24) Our parents have their own traumas as well (13:18) The Idea of Untigering (14:19) Permissive parenting (16:06) Viewing children as full human beings (18:43) Adultism and Childism (20:05) Is respect something a child needs to earn from their parents? (21:26) Redefining our ideas for success as parents (27:29) Navigating the needs that drive behavior (31:30) Chinese somatization (33:57) The internalization of injustice and suffering (36:50) Holding space for one another and the greater community (41:19) The cascading effect of changing the way we relate to our children   Books and Resources: https://www.amazon.com/Untigering-Peaceful-Parenting-Deconstructing-Parent-ebook/dp/B08QG3C9F3 (Untigering: Peaceful Parenting for the Deconstructing Tiger Parent) https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748 (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)   Links: https://yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers/ (Taming Your Triggers Workshop)...

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 make an informed decision.   Jump to highlights: (01:00) Malcolm Gladwell's anecdote about the Junior League Medicine Hat Tigers and Vancouver Giants ice hockey teams that initiated the redshirting craze (02:56) Ability grouping is done in early childhood, just like in sports (03:59) Parents holding their children back from kindergarten came to be referred to as redshirting (10:20) How common is redshirting? (11:04) Boys are redshirted at a ratio of 2:1 compared to girls (12:18) The maturationist approach of why to redshirt (13:05) State support and agenda for redshirting (15:10) Teachers tendency to view a maturationist view of development. (17:16) The Maturation Hypothesis (17:36) Parents redshirt their children to give their child an advantage (20:34) Redshirting as a way to give boys age and size advantage and avoid getting bullied (27:28) Making a judgement call into what benefits mean with regards to the body of research on redshirting (29:24) The evidence of whether redshirting is beneficial (35:19) Misdiagnosis of ADHD caused by relative maturity (37:56) A year outside of school reduces the likelihood that children receive timely identifications of learning difficulties (38:35) Students with speech impairments may actually benefit from redshirting (39:22) Redshirted students may have more behavioral problems in high school (46:04) Children from higher socioeconomic status are more likely to perform well in tests in kindergarten (48:19) It?s possible that the way the teacher sees the child is what helps the child because of Labelling Theory (49:46) Opportunity hoarding associated with middle-class, white parents. (52:01) Is kindergarten truly the new first grade? (56:06) Advocating for Developmentally Appropriate Practice or DAP (57:35) Almost everyone agrees that retention has negative impacts on children (58:55) Accumulative Advantage (01:00:07) Malcolm Gladwell?s proposed solution to homogenize and my thoughts on it (01:02:32) Summary (01:04:56) Why I think asking "should I redshirt my child" is the wrong question   Books and Resources: https://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017930 (Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell) https://yourparentingmojo.com/subscribe/ (13 Reasons Why Your Child Won?t Listen to You and What to do About Each One) https://www.amazon.com/School-Can-Wait-Raymond-Moore/dp/0842513140 (School Can Wait, by Raymond S. Moore and Dorothy N. Moore)   Links: https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/schoolprivilege/ (085: White privilege in schools) https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/sports/ (086: Playing to Win: How does playing sports impact children?) https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/schoolsocialization/ (117: Socialization and Pandemic Pods)   Join our the YPM Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2174808219425589 (Your Parenting Mojo Facebook Group)   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and...

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 to keep us in line. And it also doesn't have to happen only on the holiday itself - this work is just as relevant and important the rest of the year. Prefer to watch rather than listen? https://fb.watch/35B03cpt1h/ (Click here to join the free YPM Facebook group and watch the video recording of the episode)

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. https://yourparentingmojo.com/race/ (You can find my resources on the intersection of parenting and race here.) https://yourparentingmojo.com/white-parents-how-to-talk-with-your-preschooler-about-black-lives-matter/ (There's a specific blog post suggesting a script for talking with children about the Black Lives Matter movement (which could be adapted for this situation) here.) https://www.surjbayarea.org/events/category/action-hour-events (Showing Up for Racial Justice's Action Hours are here)

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 book Raising Free People, she writes that: "Respect, the way [Jamaican parents] define it, is non-negotiable, and the spectrum of things a child can do to disrespect an adult, especially a parent, is miles wide and deep. Reverence for adults, not just respect, is expected, normalized, and deeply ingrained. Somebody else's mama could slap you for not showing reverence to any adult.  Physical punishment for the wrong displays of emotion, even silent ones like frowns or subtle ones like deep sighs, were commonplace, expected, celebrated as one of the reasons children "turned out right." Not only did you, as a child, dismiss any attitudes or anything adults might perceive as rudeness, your general countenance should reflect a constant respect - no space at all for showing actual emotion, if that emotion was contrary to what was reverent and pleasant for the adults in your life - again, especially your parents." While we may not have grown up with parents who were as overtly strict as this, chances are our parents and teachers used more subtle ways of keeping us in line with behavior management charts, grades (and praise for grades) and the withdrawal of approval if we were to express 'negative' emotions like frustration or anger. And of course this is linked to learning because compulsory schooling does not allow space for our children to be respected as individuals. There may be dedicated, talented teachers within that system that respect our children and who are doing the very best they can to provide support, but they too are working within a system that does not respect them. So how could we use interest-led learning/self-directed education to support our child's intrinsic love of learning - as well as our relationship with them? This is the central idea that we discuss in this episode. It's a deep, enriching conversation that cuts to the heart of the relationship we want to have with our children, and I hope you enjoy it.   Resources discussed during the conversation: https://www.eclecticlearningnetwork.com/ (Maleka Diggs' Eclectic Learning Network) https://www.rfpunschool.com/p/learningtolisten (Developing a Disruptor's Ear, by Akilah Richards and Maleka Diggs) https://network-3043137.mn.co/ (Toward Radical Social Change (TRUE) community) https://raisingfreepeople.com/ (Akilah's website, Raising Free People) https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1145 (Akilah's book, Raising Free People)

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 in that regard. She is not a perfect parent (and neither am I), but she is now a perfectly good enough parent, and has been able to relax into her relationship with her son because of that.   I hope you enjoy this raw, vulnerable conversation where Anne reflects on the changes she has made in her life over the last year.   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:03 Hi, I?m Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast where I critically examine strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. In this series of episodes called Sharing Your Parenting Mojo, we turn the tables and hear from listeners. What have they learned from the show that?s helped their parenting? Where are they still struggling? And what tools can we find in the research that will help? If you?d like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about, subscribe to the show at YourParentingMojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you?ll join us.   Jen 00:59 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we're going to hear from a special guest Anne, who is a parent whom I work with on a regular basis. She's going to tell us about the anxiety that she used to feel to be the perfect parent to her son, which threatened to overwhelm her and potentially even her marriage. She actually joined my membership a couple of years ago hoping it would teach her how to become the perfect parent. And in some ways, she didn't get what she paid for at all. And another she got so much more.   Jen 01:28 Unfortunately, she didn't learn how to become the perfect parent. Instead, she realized there's no such thing as a perfect parent and that trying to be the perfect parent was tearing her apart. She learns new communication tools which we teach as a way of helping parents to get on the same page about the parenting decisions they're making, But of course, they're applicable to other kinds of conversations as well. So now she's able to talk with her husband in a way that doesn't get his back up, that helps him to understand her needs, and she's able to hear and understand his needs, and they can work together to find solutions to all kinds of problems, not just those related to parenting.   Jen 02:02 She's become deeply involved in anti-racist work, and if you join the membership, you'll actually find her leading our anti-racist group activities. When she's learned how to stand up to family members, when they say something that she finds deeply offensive. She used to just be offended and let it slide and be seething on the inside, but she doesn't do that anymore, and she knows how to decide which of these kinds of issues that families disagree on are okay to let go, and which are worth taking a stand on. And she's become increasingly confident over the last few months to take a stand on those things that she knows are important to her. So, she's learning how to set boundaries with people that she's never felt able to set boundaries with before, which is setting a great example for her son who's watching and learning from her.   Jen 02:45 So, in some...

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 https://amzn.to/36JbJN5 (The Explosive Child) and https://amzn.to/2JCLxuE (Raising Human Beings). I really enjoyed digging into the research for this episode (why do all the papers describing CPS compare its effectiveness to behaviorist-based approaches?) but I ended up really taking one for the team: we didn't have time for all of my questions on the research because I wanted to make sure to address the challenges with problem solving that parents in the free https://www.facebook.com/groups/2174808219425589 (Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group) described when I asked them about this topic. These challenges included: How to problem solve with very young children What to do when the same issue recurs over and over and the solutions we decide on together don't seem to help How to navigate a child not wanting to leave the park when it's time to go How to approach a child who doesn't seem to be able to or refuses to communicate their feelings For more information on Dr. Greene's work, check out his books https://amzn.to/2JCLxuE (Raising Human Beings) and https://amzn.to/36JbJN5 (The Explosive Child.)

In this guest we're joined by life coach and expert on reparenting Xavier Dagba 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 fully understanding why, or what to do about it. We also talk about the limit between boundaries and limits, an important distinction as we interact with our children. If you need more support in setting limits that your child will respect (and using far fewer of them than you might ever have thought possible - while still having your boundaries respected!), I hope you'll join my FREE Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop that runs between December 7-11. When you learn how to set limits that are grounded in your values, you'll hold them with confidence and you'll see MUCH less testing behavior from your child. We'll also introduce tools to help you find ways to engage your child's collaboration so you can really see a shift in the emotional climate of your home. https://yourparentingmojo.com/limits/ (Click here to join the FREE Setting Loving and Effective Limits workshop)   Other resources from this episode: https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748 (The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.) https://www.xavierdagba.com/ (Xavier's website) https://www.instagram.com/xavier.dagba/?hl=en (Follow Xavier on Instagram)   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths That We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about, subscribe to the show at YourParentingMojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen 00:59 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we're going to talk with a guest about a topic that I've been thinking about a lot lately, which is on setting limits and boundaries. We'll talk about the difference between a limit and a boundary. Because this has really profound implications for our parenting. We tend to think of limits as something that brings more control, and we want to have control. So, we want to have those in place so we can feel like we're on top of this parenting thing. But for some reason, we tend to be really sloppy in our boundaries. We have a hard time accepting that we're even worthy of setting boundaries, never mind holding them. So, we're going to talk through this today with my guest, Xavier Dagba who's a life coach who focuses specifically on these kinds of issues.   Jen 01:40 But before we get to that, I wanted to let you know about a free one week Setting Loving and Effective Limits Workshop that I'm running starting on Monday, December 7, I actually normally sell a version of this workshop for five bucks, and you have to work through the content by yourself. But this is a rare opportunity to do it not only for free, but to get my support while you're at it. In the workshop, we're going to come at this topic from a bit of a...

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 episode we interview a luminary in the field of research related to children and screen usage: https://www.mottchildren.org/profile/4195/jenny-stillwaggon-radesky-md (Dr. Jenny Radesky), who is a Developmental Behavioral Pediatrician and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School. Her research interests include the use of mobile technology by parents and young children, and how this relates to child self-regulation and parent-child interaction, and she was the lead author of the https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/138/5/e20162591 (2016 American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement on digital media use in early childhood). We'll learn whether you should be worried about Technoference, and some judgement-free steps you can take to navigate your (or your partner's) screen usage around your child.   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:03 Hi, I?m Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you?d like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths That We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about, subscribe to the show at YourParentingMojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you?ll join us. Jen 01:00 Hello, everyone. Before we get into the topic of today's new episode, I wanted to let you know about my special Black Friday promotion that I have running now through midnight, Pacific time on Friday, November 27th. For this limited time, I'm offering access to my parenting membership for only $25 a month, and to my supporting your child's learning membership for only $35 a month. Now those of you who know me, and the show might be kind of surprised to hear me running a Black Friday promotion. After all, I get complaints about my left-leaning, anti-capitalist stance all the time. And I thought it would be doubly amusing to talk about this before an episode on technoference, which is when technology like our smartphones interferes with our relationships, because I imagine a number of you are planning technology related purchases for the holidays. Jen 01:43 But I decided to do this for two reasons. Firstly, I know these memberships can help you. I've seen so many parents transform their approach to parenting and get confident in supporting their child's love of learning through the memberships. And secondly, we're in a year when people are looking for holiday gifts that just don't involve bringing more stuff into our homes, and that also can't involve going out to museums and other places that may well be closed. And the parenting membership can really help you go from just hanging on to actually thriving in parenting. And the learning membership will help you make the best use of your time that you're already spending with your children to support their intrinsic love of learning. And third, things are completely aligned with

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. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/siblings/ (I discussed some of the reasons behind sibling squabbles a couple of years ago in a conversation with Dr. Susan McHale of Penn State University). In today's episode we build on this knowledge by discussing some super practical tools to help parents foster positive sibling relationships. In this Sharing Your Parenting Mojo episode I talk with Kira Dorrian and Deana Thayer of https://futurefocusedparenting.com/ (Future Focused Parenting), who host the https://futurefocusedparenting.com/about-the-podcast/ (Raising Adults podcast). The parents of seven children between them, including a set of twins and five in a blended family, Kira and Deana know their way around sibling squabbles. We discuss ways to stop being the person who always has to moderate every disagreement and instead equip our children with the skills they need to find solutions to their own problems.

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 of us wish we had been held in that way, and we find ourselves trying to hold space for others in that way without a lot of guidance or support. I kept that article in the back of my mind, and last year I took Heather?s 9-month in-depth course on holding space, and she?s just released a book called The art of holding space: A practice of love, liberation, and leadership. In this episode we discuss what it means to hold space for others as parents, and how to raise our children to be able to hold space for others. https://www.amazon.com/Art-Holding-Space-Liberation-Leadership/dp/1989603475 (The Art of Holding Space: A Practice of Love, Liberation, and Leadership) https://centreforholdingspace.com/ (The Centre for Holding Space Website) [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:03 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths That We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about, subscribe to the show at YourParentingMojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen 00:59 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. 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 the death of her mother and how she and her siblings were able to hold space for her mother, because a palliative care nurse was holding space for them. The article outlines some principles of holding space. And I think it really resonated with a lot of people possibly because so many of us wish that we had been held in the way that in that way. And we find ourselves trying to hold space for others in that way without a lot of guidance and support.   Jen 01:38 And so, I kept that article in the back of my mind. And then last year, I took Heather's nine-month in depth course on holding space. And she's just released a book called The Art of Holding Space: A Practice of Love, Liberation and Leadership that she's here with us to discuss today. Welcome, Heather.   Heather 01:52 Thank you, Jen. It's good to be here.   Jen 01:55 And we should mention we were just chatting beforehand. Heather was mentioning her voice is a little raspy today because she's in the middle of recording the book for the audio edition. So that should hopefully be available very soon. And I also just want to mention before we get started that we may mentioned today, some topics that might be difficult for some people to listen to. These could include the topics of suicide and stillbirth. And so, we're not going to delve deeply into

This episode builds on our recent conversations with Dr. Moira Mikolajczak on https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/burnout/ (Parental Burnout) and with Dr. Susan Pollak on https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/selfcompassion/ (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, and our role as their parents which may make us feel as though we have to constantly put our own needs on the back burner in favor of theirs. We may even feel like we lose our own sense of self and our own ability to understand and meet our needs in this process. Why do we feel maternal ambivalence? What are the different forms that this experience can take? And what should we do about it if we feel it? We discuss societal-scale issues, as well as things we can do locally and personally to navigate this tension we feel related to our children. Some key points from the interview: 5:03     Maternal ambivalence is, having extreme emotional conflict in one's feelings towards my [one?s] children. Dealing with intense love and sometimes intense hate, the needs to be very intimate and close to one's children or one's child, but also to have a sense that one needs to get distance to have strong feelings. 8:34    I'm thinking about Bell Hooks' work, and she had said, ?but had Black women voiced their own views on motherhood, it would not have been named a serious obstacle to our freedom as women, racism, availability of jobs, lack of skills, or education would have been top of the list, but not motherhood.? I'm wondering, is maternal ambivalence a middle-class, white phenomenon? Or do you see it in other places as well? 11:27   If a woman lives in a culture where there's an intense romanticization of the mother-child relationship, and she feels that she can't express any kind of conflicted emotion at all. And then when you have these things piling on top of each other, then you start to see it gets more and more and more intensified. The more these things compound, the less a woman is able to reflect on these emotions, think about them, share them get relief, get that kind of distance that the feelings are telling her. 15:41   The idea that maybe, just maybe, this whole guilt thing and the whole ambivalence thing is a product of our culture, where, on one hand, women are required to be these productive citizens who contribute to the capitalist economy, and on the other hand, were supposed to give our all to our child and mother intensively. 18:35   One thing I want to really draw out here is the idea that women ourselves are very often the ones that police this. It's sort of like patriarchy, it's not just men saying, well, this is your role, and this is what you're going to do. Women are just as responsible for the socialization of this idea. 20:54   "How could you say that you don't love being a mother at every moment?" And I think I mean, you're already stating the solution, you know, we have these brave women coming forward, saying that they don't always love it. 29:18    She [Simone de Beauvoir] writes about devotion and the devotion of the mother, and how this can be a very twisted thing and how, oftentimes, mother's devotion is really something that can be very awful for herself and her child because it can be a replacement for her having anything else in her life. And it can become a sort of twisted obligation for both of them. And, you know, a sort of martyrdom...   https://www.unf.edu/bio/N01447164/ (Dr. Sarah LaChance Adams' faculty page) Dr. Adams' books:...

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 those moments when it seems like everything is falling apart. Dr. Pollak is a psychologist in private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is a long-time student of meditation and yoga who has been integrating the practices of meditation into psychotherapy since the 1980s. Dr. Pollack is cofounder and teacher at the Center for mindfulness and Compassion at Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance, and has just stepped down as President of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, a position which she held since 2010. She also writes regularly for Psychology today on the topic of integrating mindfulness into daily life. Other episodes related to this topic: https://yourparentingmojo.com/burnout/ (Parental Burn-Out) https://yourparentingmojo.com/self/ (No Self, No Problem) https://yourparentingmojo.com/compassion/ (Helping children to develop compassion) https://yourparentingmojo.com/patriarchy/ (Patriarchy is perpetuated through parenting) https://yourparentingmojo.com/mindfulmama/ (Mindfulness tools with Mindful Mama Hunter Clarke-Fields)   Some key points from the interview: 4:08  Many of us, present company included, we're not raised to be kind to ourselves. 10:47 Mindful self-compassion acknowledges that we need to start with mindfulness. (I've been teaching this course for over a decade, and I've seen that) a lot of people just can't start with compassion because it's foreign for most of us to treat ourselves kindly. 53:59 Allow yourself to rest for a moment feeling that you have distance from the storm, some space from the turbulence to recognize that you are not the storm. (paraphrased) 59:03  It's such a common misconception about mindfulness that you have to sit still and not think about anything. And, you know, people are relieved to know that [mindfulness] is not about stopping our thoughts. It's really about finding a different relationship with our thoughts. [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:03 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths That We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about, subscribe to the show at YourParentingMojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us. Jen 01:00 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. In this episode, we're going to draw threads together from across a number of recent episodes. Most obviously it picks up on our interview with Dr. Moira Mikolajczak where we discuss parental burnout. After that episode concluded Dr. Mikolajczak and I emailed a bit about tools that could potentially help parents, and the primary one that she found useful was the idea of self-compassion. And that's what we're going to discuss today. This topic also picks up on our...

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 https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/anxiety/ (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 Psychology at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Hewitt has spent decades researching perfectionism and recently received the Donald O. Hebb award for his distinguished contributions to psychology as a science by the Canadian Psychological Association. He is currently doing research on the treatment of perfectionism, and trains clinicians in the treatments of perfectionistic behavior. In this interview, he tells us what we know about perfectionism, what we still don't know, and how to help our children who have perfectionist tendencies. [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:03 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths That We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about. Subscribe to the show at YourParentingMojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen 01:01 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we're going to look at a topic that bubbles up fairly often in online parenting groups, and that's related to perfectionism. The typical post goes something like this, my child starts an activity but as soon as something doesn't go exactly the way they hope to maybe a crayon wasn't the color they wanted, or they extended a mark too far on the paper. Or they got an answer wrong on a quiz for school. They screw up the paper in a ball and throw it away. And when this happens on a regular basis, it just seems debilitating. How can I help my child to overcome this now while they're still young, so it doesn't have a big impact on their life?   Jen 01:39 And I was actually in the library a while ago looking for books on another topic for another podcast episode and right next to the one I was there to get was an edited volume on perfectionism. And inside was an essay by our guest today Dr. Paul Hewitt. And when I read that essay, and I delved into his body of work, I knew he was exactly the right guest to speak with us.   Jen 01:59 Dr. Hewitt works mostly with adults. But just as we learned when we covered anxiety a few months ago, it can be really difficult to find someone to interview who doesn't just focus on treating the symptoms of the problem, and instead goes beneath the symptoms to understand the real causes, which is what Dr. Hewitt's work does so effectively. Dr. Hewitt is a professor of psychology, and a registered clinical psychologist who has conducted extensive research on the construct of perfectionism, which is the idea of what perfectionism actually is, and whether it's harmful to people. He's currently doing research on the treatment of perfectionism and trains clinicians in the treatment of perfectionistic behavior. Dr. Hewitt received his BA from the University of Manitoba, his M.A.,...

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 listeners who subsequently joined the Your Child's Learning Mojo membership said in our private community before the membership had even officially started:   https://yourparentingmojo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/23.png ()   The Your Child's Learning Mojo membership is now open once again to new members, and Megan, Heidi, and Denise are already inside (with me!) waiting to welcome you. https://www.yourparentingmojo.com/learningmojo (Click here to learn more about the membership - we can't wait to meet you!) [accordion]   [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"]   Jen 00:00 We've got to both commit on the one hand to a more greater focus on individuality, and to commit to something more personal, but at the same time, hold open this idea of diversity and inclusion, and a recognition that some groups of people have been profoundly poorly treated by the system we have and commit to starting our work and our innovation in those corners and working your way in rather than inside out.   Jen 00:27 Hi, I'm Jen, and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths That We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about. Subscribe to the show at yourparentingmojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Measure Podcast. I'm actually doing something I've never done before with today's show that I see other podcasters doing all the time. And that's to rerelease a previously released episode. It seems like there are some times when an episode that you've already released just speaks so clearly to an issue of the moment, and I really feel like that's the case here. So, today's episode came to us via a bit of a different route than they often do. A friend of mine actually heard our guests Dr. Todd Rose on the Art of Manliness Podcast and said hey, you might want to listen to this because it sounds a lot like what you're trying to do with the way your daughter Carys learns, and I listened to the episode and then I did something that I'd also never done before. Actually, the message that I heard from Dr. Rose in that podcast made him feel like such a kindred spirit in terms of how we think about learning and work that I reached out to him and asked him to talk with us before I'd even read his book. And rather than go over that ground that's already been covered elsewhere, I'd really encourage you to go to this episode's page at yourparentingmojo.com/toddrose to find a link to that episode on the Art of Manliness because there's so much there to help adults discover and follow their passions if you're feeling unfulfilled in the work that you do. And if you might need some help charging a different course.   So today we're going to look at the outcomes for what Dr. Rose calls dark...

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 where we know we want to do things differently than the way we were raised. But cultural norms are still telling us: we need to be in charge. (Because if we aren't in charge, who is?)   A conversation with the hosts of Upbringing My guests today, Hannah and Kelty of the https://www.upbringing.co/ (Upbringing )podcast, see this dissonance more clearly than almost anyone I've met. In their podcast they explore how we live one way as people (who believe in freedom! respect! consent! empathy!) and another way as parents (timeouts, shame, control, consequences), and how we're unwittingly undermining the very skills and values we hope to promote.   But blaming and shaming helps nobody (not us...and certainly not our children). By instead approaching the topic with compassion and optimism, we can get out of an us vs. them relationship with our children, and take back our parenting practices from our cultural conditioning, and parent in relationship with our children in a way that's deeply aligned with our values.   Hannah and Kelty describe their https://www.upbringing.co/resistapproach (RESIST approach) (Respect, Empathy, Sync up, Innovate, Summarize, Trust) and also have a new guide to https://www.upbringing.co/shop/sibs (navigating sibling conflict) (use discount code MOJO at checkout for 15% off!) on their beautiful website. If our conversation strikes a chord, I'd definitely encourage you to check out their podcast and weekly Q&As on https://www.instagram.com/up_bringing/ (Instagram).   Finding Your Parenting Mojo is open to new members I know many parents are struggling right now. Even if you feel like you know how you want to parent, the stresses of being around your child so much can really wear on you.   Parents who had been working with me before the start of COVID lockdowns reported feeling tired and emotional about all the uncertainty we were experiencing back in February - and yet at the same time confident that they have the tools they need to not just survive, but thrive as parents when everything else seemed like it was falling apart. Member Denise said:   "I feel like we've spent the last year training for exactly this moment."   And the good news is that you don't need a year to train. I've restructured the memberships so you can now access 12 modules of content as soon as you join. You can watch the whole lot in one go if you'd like...or we'll support you through it one module at a time.   You'll learn how to find an end to the meltdowns over Zoom-School, getting dressed, and what's for dinner. In fact, if your child regularly has meltdowns about the same issue over and over again, I can pretty much assure you that you won't have to go through another one on that topic.   You'll get aligned with your parenting partner, and you'll set goals for your family that are uniquely grounded in your values. And from that foundation, you'll address what seem to be the most pressing challenges right now - screen time, raising healthy eaters, emotional regulation - knowing where you want to go, so you'll be able to work confidently with your child to solve problems together, always keeping your relationship with your child (and not their obedience) at the center. When you have the core tools, the answers to the problems...

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 talk through the immediate issue, as well as all the layers underneath that question, on this episode.  And Denise's children make a surprise guest appearance at the end! You can find Denise on Facebook at facebook.com/DeniseSuarezConCarino     [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast where I critically examine strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. In this series of episodes called Sharing Your Parenting Mojo, we turn the tables and hear from listeners. What have they learned from the show that's helped their parenting? Where are they still struggling? And what tools can we find in the research that will help? If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about, subscribe to the show at YourParentingMojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us. Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast and to today's episode of Sharing Your Parenting Mojo. And today I'm here with Denise. And Denise, do you want to say hi and tell us a bit about you and your family?   Denise  01:09 Hi, hi, Jen. I'm Denise. I'm from the Philippines. But I live in Madrid. I have two kids age two and four. And I am also a parenting coach and certified how to talk so kids will listen workshop facilitator.   Jen  01:24 Yeah, so it always feels like we're old friends at this point. And they're never met we've been working together for it's got to be almost two years by now. It was   Denise  01:32 I would say, well for you. You've known me for almost two years. I would say I've known you much longer.   Jen  01:41 Isn't that weird?   Denise  01:44 Yeah, because I started listening to your podcast, I think my daughter must have been like four months old, and she's four now.   Jen  01:57 Okay, now now this is getting really weird. There are a few listeners out there, I know of a few of them by name, who have listened to every podcast episode and I believe you're one of those, aren't you?   Denise  02:08 Yeah.   Jen  02:10 Awesome. So um, so you were curious about coming on to Sharing Your Parenting Mojo to talk about kind of, I guess, an interconnected issue around big feelings and cultural issues and, kinds of stuff related to that, right? I guess that probably comes up a lot for you, because you are raising children in a culture that is not the one that you were raised in yourself.   Denise  02:31 Yep. And all of this really started with you.   Jen  02:34 Oh, my goodness, I'm sorry.   Denise  02:38 It all started with that guide on, I didn't even remember what the name of the guide was.   Jen  02:44 Holding values in the Finding Your Parenting Major Membership. Yeah.   Denise  02:49 Yeah. It all started from there. And there were and the questions that you asked which were just like, what are the cultures that you identify with? How do you want to raise your children in line with these cultures, in what ways are you going to be working against them? For me just really made me realise like, oh, there are really...

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 series: https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/advertising/ (Reducing the Impact of Advertising to Children) https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/playroom/ (How to Set up a Play Room) https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/consumerism/ (The impact of consumerism on children) https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/mindovermoney/ (How to pass on mental wealth to your child) https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/money/ (The Opposite of Spoiled)       [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Dr. Opree 00:00 Basically, if you want to reduce materialism, you need to make sure that's those human connections. And those other values such as generosity, that they are amplified. And so I think what works best if Why do you see young kids to invest in their self-esteem a little bit as well also for adolescence, but I think also teaching young people to be grateful to be grateful ourselves as well for all the things that we have. And really just focus on making those connections. And the tricky thing is that sometimes possessions enable these connections. But I think if we're more focused on what's intrinsic to us, what makes us happy, outside of possessions that then basically the emphasis will shift.   Jen 00:52 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths That We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about, subscribe to the show at yourparentingmojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. And today's episode we're going to bring our series on the intersection of children and money to a conclusion we started out so long ago by talking with New York Times money columnist Ron Lieber about his book The Opposite of Spoiled. More recently we heard from Dr. Brad Klontz, about how we pass on money scripts to our children. And then we talked with Dr. Allison Pugh about the meaning children make out of the messages they receive about material goods. And then Dr. Esther Rozendaal on how children's brains process advertising. And in between we looked at what research there is on how to set up a playroom, which has of course many links with the items that we buy and use. And so finally, we're here today with Dr. Suzanna Opree to bring the discussion up to a level that kind of draws all this together as we try and understand what materialism is, and how we pass it on to our children and what we can do if we don't want our children to be very materialistic. Dr. Opree is Senior Assistant Professor of quantitative methods in the department of Media and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research focuses on the effect of advertising and commercial media on use, materialism, and...

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 take a look at the other kinds of socialization that happen in school that you may not have even realized happens until we dig into the research on it. I also let you know about a new Pandemic Pods 'in a box' course. A lot of parents are thinking of forming what are being called Pandemic Pods - a small group of children who are working together either in some kind of parent care exchange or with a hired teacher/tutor. As I'm sure you can imagine, there are a host of ways to set up these pods in a way that exacerbate existing inequalities that pervade the public school system. And there are also ways to set them up that might actually help us to begin to overcome some of these issues. Listen in to learn how! https://yourparentingmojo.com/pandemicpods/ (Click here to learn more about the Pandemic Pods 'in a box' course)   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today?s podcast episode is on the topic of socialization, because one of the questions I?m seeing most often in parenting forums these days runs along the lines of "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 that?s the main topic for our conversation today. But I also wanted to let you know about some other resources I?ve been putting together for parents who are struggling to cope right now, and this episode is related to those as well. You might have already seen that I have a course called The Confident Homeschooler, which gives you all the information you need to decide whether homeschooling could be right for your child and your family. It?s based on scientific research, as everything I do is, but it?s not huge and indigestible. It?s a series of short videos that you could binge-watch in an evening or two, and it gives you everything you need to make a decision about whether homeschooling can really work for you whether you?ll need a curriculum, and if so, how to choose one; how to use your child?s interests to develop their intrinsic love of learning, the social and emotional learning that will enable your child?s success when they return to school, overcoming problems like working with children of different ages, and ways to assess your children?s learning so you can feel confident they are keeping up with academic standards, if you decide that?s important to you. If you want to find out more about The Confident Homeschooler you can do that at yourparentingmojo.com/confidenthomeschooler.     But with many districts announcing that they are moving to remote-only learning for at least the first part of the fall semester, many parents are no longer in a position where they?re choosing whether homeschooling is right for them, they?re doing some form of it whether they want to or not. And parents are panicking. They?re panicking about their children?s learning, and whether their children are somehow going to ?fall behind? if they can?t make attending school two days a week work, or if they already know from what happened in Spring that their child just isn?t going to be able to sit in front of Zoom calls for even an hour each...

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, https://amzn.to/39Xjyig (Raising good humans: A mindful guide to breaking the cycle of reactive parenting and raising kind, confident kids) on Amazon or at your local bookstore.   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast where I critically examine strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. In this series of episodes called Sharing Your Parenting Mojo, we turn the tables and hear from listeners. What have they learned from the show that's helped their parenting? Where are they still struggling? And what tools can we find in the research that will help? If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about, subscribe to the show at yourparentingmojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us. Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast and we're here with another sharing your parenting merger episode today with Hunter Clarke-Fields who is the author of the book Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids. Welcome, Hunter! It's great to have you here!   Clarke-Fields 01:15 I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me, Jen.   Jen 01:17 So do you want to tell us just a little bit about who you are and what is your work in the world?   Clarke-Fields 01:21 Sure. I'm the Mindful Mama mentor. I do the Mindful Mama podcast and I wrote the book Raising Good Humans. And I basically help parents stay calm so they can have stronger, more connected relationships with their children. And I'm really interested in changing generational patterns, like shifting through the old harmful stuff we don't want to pass on.   Jen 01:47 Yeah, there's some of that, isn't there? Okay so you've always been a mindful parent, right? When your daughter was born, you were immediately mindful and...   Clarke-Fields 01:52 Oh, yes. First, they just shout out of my ears,   Jen 01:57 ...and that's what I thought you're going to say okay, so tell us how that really happened.   Clarke-Fields 02:01 I discovered mindfulness when I was younger, I had already always kind of suffered from extremes of ups and downs. And I would kind of fall into I guess I was like a highly sensitive kid, I'm highly sensitive person. And I would fall into these pits of, you know, just felt like I couldn't handle life every week, or every couple of weeks or so throughout my whole life. And I just thought, this is the way life is, in fact, my father once told me, he was like, rubbing my back after I'd been crying and crying. And he said, this is Hunter. This is just your artistic nature. And this is the way life is going to be for you. And I was like, Wow, thanks. So not helpful. But he was right. And I started to read about mindfulness as a teenager kind of desperate for some relief. And then, about 10 years after that, I finally started doing my own meditation practice. And lo and behold, it is much more effective if you actually do it than if you read about it. And it really transformed my life and I, you know, it's interesting because you're, you're sitting and, you know, once one starts a sitting meditation practice, you...

[accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:02 Hi, I am Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast where I critically examine strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. In this series of episodes called Sharing Your Parenting Mojo, we turn the tables and hear from listeners. What have they learned from the show that is helped their parenting? Where are they still struggling? And what tools can we find in the research that will help? If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide To 7 Parenting Myths We Can Safely Leave Behind 7 Fewer Things To Worry About, subscribe to the show at yourparentingmojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you will join us.   Jen 00:59 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Regular listeners might remember that a few months ago we talked with listener Kelly and Dr. Moira Mikolajczak on the topic of parental burnout. And we discussed how parental burnout is a constellation of symptoms that can include mental and physical exhaustion and emotional distancing from children, loss of feelings of being effective as a parent. And it can lead to an assortment of risks for both the parent and the child including shame and loneliness and the risk of neglect of the child or violence towards the child. And the feeling that the situation can only be escaped through divorce or abandonment or suicide. And we talked about how one of the big causes of parental burnout is the unrealistic expectations that we put on mothers to somehow sacrifice everything for their child, and also lead a fulfilling life for themselves. In the show notes, I gave a link to an assessment the Dr. Mikolajczak and her colleagues developed to help you figure out whether you might have burnout because it might not be as obvious as you think. And after the interview, I emailed with her and we discussed how powerful self-compassion can be as a tool to deal with burnout.   More recently, I was listening to a podcast that I really enjoy called Psychologists Off the Clock which features four psychologists discussing the principles that they use in their clinical work, and how they can help the rest of us to flourish in our work and our parenting and our relationships as well. And one of the hosts is Dr. Yael Schonbrun, and she is here with us today. Dr. Schonbrun Brown is a licensed clinical psychologist with a private practice. She is also an assistant professor at Brown University. And she is writing a book on the topic of work-family conflict, which can be an important precursor to parental burnout, which is how these topics are connected. So I got to chatting with her about this by email and I realized that not only are a large proportion of my listeners, working parents, but the ideas that she's thinking about are actually applicable to anyone who feels tension between their family and some other aspect of their life. So, she is going to talk us through this and also give us some new tools to deal with the days when our lives just seem a little bit out of control. So welcome, Dr. Schonbrun.   Dr. Schonbrun 03:00 Thank you so much Jen for having me. And I just want to take a quick moment to compliment your podcast, which is awesome. I love that you integrate data and compassion for parents and the work that you put out there is amazing. I am really honored to be a part of it.   Jen 03:11 Oh, thank you. It is great to have you here. So, I am always the first to admit, as far as working parenthood goes, I have it pretty easy. Even when I had a day job, I worked from home and so I never had that struggle of the commute time and the physical rushing from one place to another that I know a lot of parents and

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 Rosendaal of Radboud University in the Netherlands whose research focuses on children's understanding of advertising messages. Can children understand that advertising is different from regular TV programming? At what age do they realize an advertisement is an attempt to sell them something? And what should parents do to reduce the impact of advertising on children? It's all here in this episode.     Other episodes in this series This episode is the first in a series on the intersection of parenting and money. You can find other episodes in this series: https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/consumerism/ (The impact of consumerism on children) https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/mindovermoney/ (How to pass on mental wealth to your child) https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/money/ (The Opposite of Spoiled)     [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:03 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths That We Can Safely Leave Behind 7 Fewer Things to Worry About, subscribe to the show at yourparentingmojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast.   Today's episode is a continuation of a series that I'm doing on the intersection of childhood and money. We started by talking with New York Times money columnist Ron Lieber, on his book The Opposite of Spoiled and then continue the conversation with Dr. Brad Klontz about the money scripts that we pass on to our children. Next, we heard from Dr. Allison Pugh who studies the way that parents and children manage in our consumerist culture. Dr. Pugh is a sociologist who is more interested in how people interact with each other than the ways their brains work. And she also takes advertising as a given and says, since advertising and commercialization is happening, how do parents and children respond? But of course, there's another side to the story. And that's the perspective that yes, advertising is happening and what does this mean for our children? How do our children perceive advertisements? Can they understand when a company is trying to sell them something and can we teach them to be more aware about this or is it a lost cause?   Our guest today is Dr. Esther Rozendaal. She's an associate professor At the behavioral Science Institute, as well as an associate professor in communication science at Radford University in the Netherlands. Dr. Rozendaal is an expert on young people's media and consumer behavior and Her research focuses in large part on children and advertising. She obtained a master's in Business Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam followed immediately by an MSc in social psychology from the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands, followed by a PhD from the University of Amsterdam, for which she wrote her dissertation on the topic of advertising...

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 https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/money/ (The Opposite of Spoiled), https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/mindovermoney/ (How to Pass on Mental Wealth to your Child), https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/consumerism/ (The Impact of Consumerism on Parenting), and https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/playroom/ (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 parenting groups: How can I teach my child about volunteering? How can I donate the stuff we don't need without making the recipient feel less than us? And, of course, after the Black Lives Matter movement began its recent up-swing of activity, the topic took on a new life that's more closely related to my guest's work: viewing othering through the lens of race. My guest, Dr. john a. powell, is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties and a wide range of issues including race, structural racism, ethnicity, housing, poverty, and democracy. He is the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute (formerly Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society), which supports research to generate specific prescriptions for changes in policy and practice that address disparities related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and socioeconomics in California and nationwide. In addition, to being a Professor of Law and Professor of African American Studies and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor powell holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor?s Chair in Equity and Inclusion.   Our conversation was wide-ranging and touched on a host of topics and thinkers, which I promised to track down if I could. These include: https://amzn.to/310c4IM (Martha Minow's book Making All The Difference) https://e-revistas.uc3m.es/index.php/FONS/article/download/2529/1705 (Aristotle's theory of Arithmetic and Geometric Equality) https://amzn.to/3hO5FGv (Judith Butler's book Gender Trouble ) https://www.iadb.org/en/news/webstories/2001-07-01/amartya-sen-and-the-thousand-faces-of-poverty%2C9286.html#:~:text=According%20to%20Sen%2C%20being%20poor,social%20requirements%20of%20the%20environment. (Amartya Sen's idea that poverty is not a lack of stuff, but a lack of belonging) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963721417738825 (Dr. Susan Fiske's work on the connection between liking and competence) https://amzn.to/2YTLgaz (Lisa Delpit's book Other People's Children) https://amzn.to/2CkToJk (Dr. Gordon Allport's book The Nature of Prejudice) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/methodological-individualism/ (Max Weber's idea of methodological individualism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_Places (The movie Trading Places) (I still haven't seen it!) http://www.johnapowell.org/blog (This blog post touches on Dr. powell's idea of the danger of allyship) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/#ConCit (John Rawls' idea that citizens are reasonable and rational) https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html#:~:text=Maslow's%20hierarchy%20of%20needs%20is,hierarchical%20levels%20within%20a%20pyramid.&text=From%20the%20bottom%20of%20the,esteem%2C%20and%20self%2Dactualization. (Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs) https://books.google.com/books?id=lQfWDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=bernstein+regulative+ideal&source=bl&ots=XL7bQp2TKX&sig=ACfU3U3GoGOxP7NAQtqgK5iPdfI7z8SrPQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjB0_vij5PqAhWwGTQIHZ2uA54Q6AEwAXoECA4QAQ#v=onepage&q=bernstein%20regulative%20ideal&f=false (Richard Bernstein's concept of the regulative ideal)   [accordion]...

https://yourparentingmojo.com/confidenthomeschooler/ (Click here to learn more about The Confident Homeschooler course!)   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, but for others parents see big trouble ahead. What are the options? Even if you've never considered homeschooling as a realistic option in the past, it might now be the tool that gets you through the next few months. But are you terrified that you don't know everything your child needs to know? And how could it possibly work for your family? Join me for a conversation with Dr. Laura Froyen, who is considering homeschooling her two children next semester - even though she has a Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies and wrote a dissertation on supporting young children in learning to read, she's nervous that she doesn't know everything she needs to know - so if you're worried about this you're certainly not alone! We look at what we know about how long children actually spend learning in school (the answer is going to shock you!), how you can work AND homeschool, and how you can get confident that you really can support your child's love of learning - even if you know your child will eventually go back to school.   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"]   Jen Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast where I critically examine strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. In this series of episodes called Sharing Your Parenting Mojo, we turn the tables and hear from listeners. What have they learned from the show that's helped their parenting? Where are they still struggling? And what tools can we find in the research that will help? If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE guide to 7 Parenting Myths We Can Safely Leave Behind, 7 Fewer Things to Worry About subscribe to the show at yourparentingmojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us   Jen Hello, and welcome to Sharing Your Parenting Mojo. We are here with Dr. Laura Froyen today to discuss the topic of homeschooling. She's thinking about whether and how to do it over the next few months. And as we were chatting about it, we figured that some of the things that she's thinking about right now are probably similar to some of the things that other parents are thinking about too. And so we thought, why not just get on a call and discuss them live and share what we're thinking and what we're learning with other people as well. So that's kind of what we're going to do today. So welcome, Laura, do you want to tell us a bit about yourself and your background first?   Laura Absolutely. Thanks for having me and agreeing to answer my questions Jen. So so I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and I have my PhD in Human Development and Family Studies with a specialization in couples and family therapy. I am currently a peaceful parenting and respectful relationship coach and course creator, but I started right out of grad school in an academic job. And so I did my dissertation on how family processes influenced the home learning environment and children's early literacy skills. I'm a big believer in delaying, reading, teaching, active reading, teaching until in a developmentally appropriate age. I've always been deeply curious and, you know,

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 for a few months now. A friend of mine introduced me to meditation as a tool that I might find useful to explore when I was struggling with some personal issues. Not only did I find it interesting, but I also found elements of it that helped me to make sense of the situation I was in in a way that I had not been able to do until that point.   Like a lot of people, I had the common perception that meditation consists of sitting quietly on the floor cross-legged with thumb and pointing finger touching, saying ?ommmm? but when I looked into the research on mindfulness stress reduction that perception went away pretty fast. It had been shown in the scientific literature to be enormously helpful to people not just in reducing stress but also in reducing the severity of physical symptoms in the body that accompany stress.   But I was still having a hard time reconciling the thousands of scientific research papers I?ve read over the years on how children?s brains develop and some of these new ideas I was learning related mindfulness. And so that is kind of how I discovered Dr. Chris Niebauer and his book No Self, No Problem. After reading it I was able to reconcile those two strands - the psychological research and mindfulness - and I want to share that with you.  Along the way, we'll gain an understanding of the mind that may help us to overcome some of the challenges associated with Parental Burnout - so even if you're not officially (clinically) suffering from burnout, this episode could still help you to better reconcile the different aspects of your life and identity.   https://yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers/ () References Dienstbier, R.A. (1979). Attraction increases and decreases as a function of emotion-attribution and appropriate social cues. Motivation and Emotion 3(2), 201-218. Dutton, D.G., & Aron, A.P. (1974). Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 30(4), 510-517. Kabat-Zinn, J. (2011). Some reflections on the origins of MBSR, skillful means, and the trouble with maps. Contemporaty Buddhism 12(1), 281-306. Mays, J.C., & Newman, A. (2020, April 8) Virus is twice as deadly for black and latino people than whites in N.C.Y. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/coronavirus-race-deaths.html?searchResultPosition=3 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/coronavirus-race-deaths.html?searchResultPosition=3) Meston, C.M., & Frohlich, P.F. (2003). Love at first fright: Partner salience moderates roller-coaster-induced excitation transfer. Archives of Sexual Behavior 32(6). Niebauer, C. (2019). No self, no problem: How neuropsychology is catching up to Buddhism. San Antonio, TX: Heirophant [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 1:45 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. I'm really excited about today's topic because it brings together a couple of strands of my life that have been existing in parallel for a few months and they're now beginning to interweave themselves in the most interesting, useful and exciting ways. I've been struggling with some personal issues for several months and a friend introduced me to meditation, not specifically as a way to help me through it, but more of a useful tool that I might find interesting to explore. And I did find it

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 rooms - or even dedicated toys, never mind the incredibly beautiful and expensive ones that are available now! - what could I really say about this? Well, now's the time. Perhaps it shouldn't surprise you that this episode is coming in the middle of our series on the intersection of money and parenting. I hope it offers you some reassurance about how to set up your own play room - if you choose to and are able to. And even more reassurance if you choose not to or can't. [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we?re covering a topic that listeners have been asking for for ages, which is How to Set Up a Play Room. And if you hear some trepidation in my voice, it?s because there?s a lot of it in me. And if you think it?s an incredible coincidence that this episode is coming hot on the heels of a couple of episodes exploring children and consumerism then?I?m sorry to say that this is not a coincidence. I was uncomfortable enough with the topic that I felt I really couldn?t do this episode without covering those other topics as well as a counterpoint. The main reason I?m uncomfortable is, of course, even having the wherewithal to ask the question ?how do I set up a child?s play room? represents an absolutely enormous amount of privilege. It says that the person asking the question has so many resources that they can devote an entire room in their house to nothing but a child?s play, and on top of this, they have enough resources to equip the room with a sizeable proportion of whatever toys I suggest that the scientific literature says are necessary to bring about a positive outcome for their child. But when my listeners ask for something I do try my best to deliver. So here we go! While we?ve discussed the benefits of play on the show before in an interview with Dr. Stuart Brown, who is the Director of the National Institute for Play, we haven?t specifically looked at toys and play, or the role of parents in play. And it turns out that the concept of parents getting involved in children?s play, or directing children?s play, or providing materials for children?s play is something that?s pretty much unique to Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic (or WEIRD) countries ? plus Japan as well, and possibly China is heading in this direction too. For ethnographic evidence on this topic we look to our old friend Dr. David Lancy, who gathered hundreds of ethnographic studies on child development in his book The Anthropology of Childhood. Dr. Lancy reports that Sisala parents in Ghana regard an interest in children?s play as beneath their dignity. Even the face-to-face position where the baby is held facing the mother that is so common in Western cultures is very rare elsewhere. Western scholars consider talking to and playing with the infant essential to promote the bond between mother and infant, but this activity is rare in many cultures as well ? the !Kung people who live on the western edge of the Kalahari Desert not only don?t play with their children but believe the practice may be harmful to the child?s development because children learn best without adult intervention. Gusii children in Kenya may try to get their mother to play or talk but will be ignored, because the mother believes that responding would be simply pointless, as the child is not a valid human being until it reaches the age of ?sense,? at around six or seven. A...

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 on this topic, and on how to protect her two-year-old from its impacts. We did some searching around in the literature and it actually didn't take long to turn up the preeminent researchers in the field who actually work as a team and one of whom - https://uclouvain.be/fr/repertoires/moira.mikolajczak (Dr. Moira Mikolajczak), kindly agreed to talk with us. We learned about the warning signs to watch out for that indicate that you might be suffering from parental burnout, and what to do about it if you are. We ran a bit over time at the end of the episode and I wasn't able to ask about whether self-compassion might be a useful tool for coping with parental burnout but Dr. Mikolajczak and I emailed afterward and she agreed that it is - I'm hoping to do an episode on self-compassion in the future.   More information on Dr. Mikolajczak's work on parental burnout can be found at https://www.burnoutparental.com/ (https://www.burnoutparental.com/) The Parental Burnout Assessment, available in French and English, can be found here: https://en.burnoutparental.com/suis-je-en-burnout (https://en.burnoutparental.com/suis-je-en-burnout) If you need tools to help you in the short term, I'm running the Taming Your Triggers workshop starting Monday May 11. In the workshop you'll learn the true sources of your triggers (hint: it's not your child's behavior!), how to feel triggered less often, and what to do when you do feel triggered, and how to repair your relationship with your child on the fewer occasions when it does still happen. Click here to learn more about and join the Taming Your Triggers workshop. https://yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers/ ()   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen  1:45 So let's meet the people we're talking with today. First up is listener Kelly, who is enrolled in the Taming Your Triggers workshop and who reached out to us whether I'd be interested in doing this episode on Burnout since she's been experiencing it for several months. Kelly is a postdoctoral researcher in the health field in the Netherlands and wanted to know more about how her experience of burnout is impacting her daughter. After we found the leading researchers on this topic, Kelly graciously agreed to join me as a co-interviewer even though she's an introvert like me and is a little bit nervous about doing it. Welcome, Kelly.   Kelly  2:14 Hi. Thanks.   Jen  2:16 Thanks for being here. And so here with us today is Dr. Moïra Mikolajczak whose bio on her website firstly states that she's the mother of a daughter Louise and then secondly states that she's Professor of Psychology and Health at the Catholic University of Louvain, which is now known as UC Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve. She is a renowned expert in the field of emotional intelligence and has published several reference books on this topic. In 2015, she began a research program on parental burnout in conjunction with UC Louvain professor, Isabelle Roskam. Together they have published their results in several scientific articles and in two books, one for parents and one for professionals and I've read the one for parents which is currently only available in French but should be translated soon. With their Ph.D. student Maria-Elena Brianda, they have also developed and validated the first targeted treatment for parental burnout. Welcome, Moïra.   Moïra  3:06...

We began this mini-series a few weeks ago as listener Brian Stout and I co-interviewed Dr. Carol Gilligan as https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/patriarchy/ (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 raise our children. We discuss: - Why Brian, a cisgendered, heterosexual white male - an apparent beneficiary of patriarchal systems - is so interested in dismantling it - Some of the specific ways we parents perpetuate patriarchy through our parenting, even if we don't realize we're doing it! - Why 'masculine' qualities like logic are prized over 'feminine' qualities like understanding the physical experience of the body and recognizing emotions (and why it's ridiculous that these qualities are gendered in the first place) - How patriarchy hurts men (mentally, emotionally, and physically) as well as women - Brian's top four conclusions and actions to take to begin the work of dismantling patriarchy in our own families (and, by extension, in society more broadly) [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen:                                       https://www.temi.com/editor/t/PVUClxb5Z7pirdSKNQwq4L4rqj8ScPjauY_XMaz1sf-50GNBUzpnV11rwec20jPqZzJxDBf2pOW_c0pgpy_JkZkYMYw?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=85.91 (01:25)                    Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today's episode is a followup that my guest today, Brian Stout and I did recently with Dr. Carol Gilligan on the topic of patriarchy and if you aren't very familiar with what this is and the role that it plays in our lives as parents then I definitely recommend that you go back and listen to that one before you listen to this episode. And I'm glad today that we have a bit more time in this interview for me to properly introduce my guest whose name is Brian Stout. And as with so many of the topics that we've covered related to privilege and social systems, patriarchy is kind of one of those things I might never have considered as relevant to parenting and child development if someone hadn't helped me to draw that connection. And the connection was drawn in a really roundabout way. Jen:                                       https://www.temi.com/editor/t/PVUClxb5Z7pirdSKNQwq4L4rqj8ScPjauY_XMaz1sf-50GNBUzpnV11rwec20jPqZzJxDBf2pOW_c0pgpy_JkZkYMYw?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=129.08 (02:09)                    Brian actually first reached out to me because he had read a series of blog posts that I'd written on how to do a 10-day hike around Mont Blanc with my then 8-week-old daughter. And he wanted more information because he was planning to do a similar trip with his wife and daughter. And we've kept in touch on and off over the years. But it wasn't until recently that I learned a lot more about his work at the intersection of progressive philanthropy and social justice movements. And so Brian holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Amherst College and a Master's in International Relations from Johns Hopkins and he has a background in foreign policy, conflict...

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 Dr. Zak Stein, who has spent many years thinking about ways in which the education system in the United States could be reimagined to take advantage of virtual learning opportunities and 'learning labs,' which gather resources around learners instead of having learning take place in classrooms isolated from real-world experience. Dr. Stein is a big-picture thinker, and it was really exciting to sit with him and envision the future of learning. To learn more about the memberships I mention in this episode, please visit https://yourparentingmojo.com/together/ (yourparentingmojo.com/together)   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 1:46 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. To put the show into context before we get going, I wrote the questions for this episode on the night of Friday, March 20, 2020. And we recorded it on Sunday, March 22, which is coincidentally my birthday and I took at least half a day off. Here in the California Bay Area, we?ve been ordered to stay home for everything except non-essential errands for five days now. And the shutdown has now been extended to cover one in five Americans, including the entire states of California, New York and Illinois. Now, I plan to reach out to our guests for the show in a few months? time. But all of a sudden, on Friday night, I realized that I needed to talk with him now and that we need to hear from him today. And so our guest today is Dr. Zach Stein, whose book title tells you something of the breadth of scope of what we?re going to discuss, it is called Education in a Time Between Worlds: Essays on the Future of Schools, Technology and Society. We will lay some groundwork so we have a common understanding of how some of our global systems work, and then we?ll start to look at the role that education plays in the system. I think it?s become really clear to us in the last couple of weeks that many of the systems that we?ve built are unsustainable, and for a long time, that word has been used to mean that they?re bad for the environment. But I think that now we?re seeing that they?re actually not that good for us either. And so what will it take for us to do things differently? Well, first, we need to start imagining what kinds of systems we might want to see instead and how we and our children can both live within those and also shape those. So that?s what we?re going to think about in this episode. And we wrap up the show by thinking about some of the steps that we ourselves can take in the coming days and weeks to start to put this in motion. And it was really great to hear Dr. Stein share some surprising and very doable advice on this topic. One of the things that?s become most clear to me over the years that I?ve been doing this work is that the way we raise our children may be the single thing that we do that will have the most impact on the world. We talked about it a bit in the episode on Patriarchy a few weeks ago with listener Brian Stout and Dr. Carol Gilligan. The idea that systems that privilege men?s voices over women?s voices seems so huge and so deeply ingrained in our culture and they just seem impossible to change. But if we personally see the role that we are playing in the current system, and we accept that with grace and humility, but at the same time, take steps to do things differently with our own children, then we can actually make change happen. And I really feel like we?re on the

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 give you the tools you need to cope with this situation, please go to https://yourparentingmojo.com/coronavirus/ (yourparentingmojo.com/coronavirus)   Other episodes mentioned in this show https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/talk-sex-today/ (Talk Sex Today) https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/screen-time/ (Understanding the AAP?s new screen time guidelines) https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/digital-world/ (Raising your child in a digital world)   Resources https://www.zdnet.com/article/video-conferencing-deals-coronavirus-spurs-offers-from-webex-google-and-others/ (List of video conferencing companies offering free services) https://www.geocaching.com/play (Geocaching website) https://www.youtube.com/user/JohnMuirLaws (Nature journaling videos with John Muir Laws)   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast!  I know that listeners who have been with me for a while know that an episode is going to be different when I dispense with the music at the beginning ? I think the last time I did this was six months ago when I announced that I was taking a break from the show.  But have no fear; I?m not going anywhere ? I just did it today to indicate that this is not a normal show because these are not normal times.  I?m recording this on March 15 2020, four days after the World Health Organization declared that the coronavirus outbreak is a pandemic, which means it is dispersed across a very wide geographic area and affects many individuals at the same time.  Many, many things have been canceled in the last few days ? most schools are canceled for at least the next few weeks; big events are canceled or postponed, and we?re being advised to practice ?social distancing? by remaining six feet apart from other people. This all seems really big and super stressful and I?m not going to go into the details of much of the epidemiological information because frankly that isn?t my specialty.  But I also know that a lot of you are struggling with issues that very much do fall into my wheelhouse ? things like ?what on earth am I going to do with my kids for the next six weeks when we usually start to get on each other?s nerves on day six of a vacation,? and ?will my child get behind on school work,? and ?how am I going to still get my own WORK work done so I can get paid and keep us afloat while we?re all cooped up in this tiny space?? So in this episode I?m going to cover two main things ? firstly, resources for you, because you may well be feeling quite anxious and approaching the end of your rope already and unsure how you?re going to make it through the coming weeks. Then we?ll talk about issues that affect your children while we?re going through this and how to answer your children?s questions about the virus and how to be thoughtful about screen time when it seems like there?s nothing else to do and also how to support their learning while they?re out of school. And because I know some of you are REALLY stressed out about this, I also want to let you know about a FREE one-week workshop that I?m running starting on March 23rd. It draws together elements of many of the paid workshops and memberships that I?ve built over the last few years into resources that you can use RIGHT NOW.  So for example, I?m in the middle of hosting a workshop on Taming Your Triggers, where we spend...