Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, Research-based Parenting Ideas To Help Kids Thrive

We've covered a number of episodes in the past that feed into this one, including https://www.yourparentingmojo.com/healthyboys (Raising Emotionally Healthy Boys with Dr. Judy Chu) (which focused on boys' understanding of masculinity in the preschool years), and https://yourparentingmojo.com/sports/ (Playing to Win with Dr. Hilary Levy Friedman) (which looked at the lessons children learn from sports...which aren't really related to the sports themselves...).   And of course there are the two episodes on patriarchy; https://yourparentingmojo.com/patriarchy/ (the interview with Dr. Carol Gilligan), as well as https://yourparentingmojo.com/parentingpatriarchy/ (my conversation with listener Brian Stout about what we learned during the interview).   A few weeks ago https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/youngfemininity/ (listener Caroline and I interviewed Dr. Marnina Gonick on the topic of girls' relationships), which stemmed from the question 'why are middle/high school-aged girls so mea

There are lots of books available now on how to talk with children about issues related to race, but Sarah W. Jaffe noticed a gap: there weren't any books geared toward non-academic audiences talking about how the choices that predominantly well-off, predominantly White parents make impact other people. From childcare choices to school to college, at every step of the way we make decisions that reflect Wanting What's Best for our own child, but very often these decisions are rooted in the fear of our child falling behind in some way, and when we try to elevate our own child we often do it at the expense of others.   Sarah's book uncovers the ideas that underlie the seemingly innocuous decisions we make so we can ensure that our choices are really aligned with our values. It also provides a great counterpoint to the book that I'm in the process of writing, which will be on the ways we either pass on or disrupt the tools of White supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism to our own children through the daily

I've been wanting to do this episode for a loooong time. We covered episodes a long time ago on how children form social groups, and what happens when they exclude each other from play, but I wanted to do an episode exploring this issue related to slightly older girls, and from a cultural perspective. There are a lot of books and articles out there on the concept of mean girls and I wanted to understand more about that. Why are girls 'mean' to each other? Is it really a choice they're making...or is it a choice in response to a complex set of demands that we put on them about what it means to be female in our culture?   I had a really hard time finding anyone who was doing current research on the topic, and I mentioned this on a group coaching call in the Parenting Membership. A member, Caroline, said: “I know someone who can speak to this!”   Caroline had explored girls’ relationships in young adult literature for her master’s thesis, and knew Dr. Marnina Gonick’s work. Caroline introduced us,

I read a lot of textbooks on parenting for my Master's in Psychology (Child Development), I've read tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers on the topic, and part of the reason it's hard work is that you can't ever take things at face value.   In her now classic book Deconstructing Developmental Psychology, Dr. Erica Burman explodes a number of our ideas about child development by calling our attention to what's really going on in an interaction, rather than what we think is going on.   For example, there's a classic study where researchers put a baby on a solid surface which changed to glass, which had a design underneath implying that there was a 'cliff edge' that the baby would fall off if it went onto the glass. Researchers designed the experiment to find out what babies could understand about depth perception, but perhaps what they were actually testing was the extent to which the mother's encouragement or lack of encouragement (and it was always the mother) could entice the baby across t

For the first time, in this episode I bow out and and let listeners Jenny and Emma take over, who wanted to share how they’ve been supporting each other over the last few months.   They started from pretty different points: Emma wasn’t having parenting struggles, but often over-communicated with her husband and he would stonewall in response, agreeing to whatever she asked so she would stop talking. Then he would resist later, and she couldn’t understand why…because he had agreed, right?   Jenny’s sleep had been disturbed by her child for more than four years…she was exhausted, and had no idea how to deal with her rage-filled kindergartener who would hit her whenever he was upset.   Neither of them had much confidence that being on a Zoom call together for 40 minutes a week would help them.   Emma and her husband now communicate in a way that meets both of their needs, and can navigate the challenges that come up with their preschooler.   Jenny is sleeping! And she has learn

Adrianna and Tim had read all the parenting books. (And I mean ALL the books.)   But NOTHING seemed to be working.   They were still feeling frustrated with their kids on a very regular basis.   And their kids were fighting what seemed like every second of the day.   They joined the Parenting Membership last May, and the transformation our community has seen in them has been profound.   The shift started after we had a consult about their youngest daughter’s difficult behavior, which we realized was a sign of her unmet needs. (I do these 1:1 (or 1:2!) consults on a regular basis for members when I see them struggling with an issue that just can’t be addressed in writing.)   Ideas percolated. They increased the amount of 1:1 time they were spending with her, doing things she liked to do.   They attended a couple of group coaching calls and we talked more about their specific situation.   Things improved a bit.   But then it all came to a head when

Recently someone posted a question in one of my communities: “Is it really so wrong to want my child to just LISTEN to me sometimes?  It seems like such a no-no in gentle parenting circles, and I’m worried that my child is growing up to be entitled and won’t know how to respect authority when they really HAVE to.” Parent Chrystal gave such a beautiful and eloquent response to this question that I asked her to come back on the show (her first visit was last year) to talk us through how she approaches getting her (three!  spirited!) children to listen to her…and what tools she uses instead.And this doesn’t end up creating entitled children who refuse to cooperate with any authority figure; in fact, her most spirited child was called a “conscientious and rule-abiding upstanding model student” by her teacher (which just about made Chrystal laugh out loud). Chrystal has been on this respectful parenting journey for a while now, but I learned during this interview that she first interacted with me in the Setting

“On average, authoritative parents spanked just as much as the average of all other parents.  Undoubtedly, some parents can be authoritative without using spanking but we have no evidence that all or even most parents can achieve authoritative parenting without an occasional spank.”    I was fascinated by this statement, since authoritative parenting is the best style.     We know it’s the best, right?   I mean, everyone says it is.  Including me.   And who was the co-author on this paper this statement comes from?     None other than Dr. Diana Baumrind, creator of the Parenting Styles (although they weren’t called that then; they were originally called the Models of Parental Control.     Just to make sure we’re on the same page here, I’m going to say that again: Dr. Diana Baumrind, who created the parenting styles/model of parental control, says you can’t achieve the parenting style that has the ‘best’ outcomes for children without an occasional spank.   So in

In her book Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, Toko-pa Turner talks about the disconnection we feel from others, as well as from our own selves, because of the experiences we’ve had in our childhood.  While Toko-pa’s childhood was traumatic by any definition, even those of us who didn’t experience severe trauma were told - either verbally or non-verbally:    You’re not enough.   You’re not good enough.      Or even: You’re too much.   And we shut off that part of us, whatever it was.  Our sense of joy, our creativity, our need for autonomy.  We set aside those needs so we could be accepted by our family, whose love we craved more than anything in the world.   But that doesn’t mean we need to always live our lives in this way.  We can accept the pain and suffering we’ve experienced, and incorporate that into new, more whole ways of being in the world.     A big part of this is finding a new relationship with our needs - seeing them, understanding them, being willing to a

I don’t know about you, but I spent a LOT of time thinking about my birth plan before Carys was born.  I mean, that thing went through multiple iterations as I read new books about the birth process and thought about what I wanted mine to be like.   And I got lucky; we didn’t stray too far from the plan (except that that whole ‘urge to push’ thing?  Well I never felt that.  It seemed like she was quite happy where she was.  Perhaps that explains why she enjoys being wrapped in fluffy blankets so much?)   So I put all this effort into what the Big Day would be like, and practically zero into what life would be like afterward.   I mean, we got the nursery ready without realizing that she wasn’t going to spend any time in it at all for the first three months.   And the whole visitors thing - well that didn’t even cross my mind.   I guess I just assumed that people would come and visit, because that’s what people do after you have a baby.   But most of the time I didn’t w

We've already covered a couple of episodes on sleep, including the https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/sleep/ (cultural issues associated with sleep), then more recently we talked with https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/restedchild (Dr. Chris Winter about his book The Rested Child) where we looked at sleep issues in older children.   But if you have a young child who isn't sleeping well, from the baby stage all the way up to about preschool, this episode is for you!  My guest is Macall Gordon, senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Antioch University Seattle, and who has studied young children's sleep for 20 years.  She's particularly interested in the intersection between children's temperament and their sleep, and how parents of the children she calls 'little livewires' can support these children so everyone gets more sleep.   If you have questions about sleep training - particularly when and how to do it - this episode is for you!   And if you're ex

The band The Alphabet Rockers consists of lead members Kaitlin McGaw and Tommy Shepherd, and a multi-racial group of children who are also involved in writing and performing.  They write about their real lived experiences and their desire to live in a world where everyone belongs. Kaitlin and Tommy are actually fellows at the Othering and Belonging Institute, run by Dr. jon powell, whose work I really respect and whom we interviewed in the https://www.yourparentingmojo.com/othering (episode on othering). They also do work in schools - in an hour-long program they work with a class to compose a song, which gives children the experience not just of songwriting, but of truly being heard and having their ideas respected. Kaitlin and Tommy have now written a children's book called https://www.alphabetrockers.com/books (You Are Not Alone), which we discussed in the episode - along with a host of other juicy topics related to parenting...and racism...and White supremacy...

This episode is a continuation of the series on the intersection of children and food.  We've also heard from https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/eating/ (Dr. Lindo Bacon on busting myths about fat), https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/sugarproof/ (Dr. Michael Goran on how sugar affects our children), https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/sugarrush/ (Dr. Karen Throsby with a more high-level view on the sugar topic), and https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/dor/ (Ellyn Satter on her Division of Responsibility approach).   My guest in this episode, Dr. Shiri Sadeh-Sharvit, co-author with Dr. James Lock of https://www.amazon.com/Parents-Eating-Disorders-Intervention-Guide-ebook/dp/B07KY2T66B (Parents with Eating Disorders: An Intervention Guide).  The book is written for professionals but it's short and very approachable and may be beneficial for parents who are navigating disordered eating as well.   In the episode we discuss: The impacts of disorder

One day Iris took her daughter to the park, with enough snacks with for both of them.  When Iris got hungry, she asked her daughter to share some of the food - but her daughter refused.  Iris knows that hunger is a factor that dramatically narrows her Window of Tolerance and makes it more likely that she’ll snap at her child’s behavior, so she asked again for food and again her daughter refused.   Then out of nowhere a crow swooped down and tried to steal some of the food, causing the whole lot to fall on the ground - and Iris exploded.  She was so angry that she felt a hot energy coming from her gut, and her daughter is standing in the park with tears flooding down her face, because Iris yelled at her.   And then, of course, the guilt and shame spiral begins: “What am I doing?  Why am I so angry?  And why can’t I stop?”   Now, Iris is in a very different place.  She’s not perfect, of course - none of us are.  But even Iris, the raised-Catholic-and-prone-to-unworthiness-and-guilt-tripping

We’ve covered the topic of boundaries before, in our conversation with Xavier Dagba.  In my work with parents, I see that an inability to set boundaries is a MAJOR cause of feeling triggered by our child’s behavior.     When we snap at our child’s behavior, it often (not always, but often) comes somewhat later in the day.     There’s a reason for that: it’s because we haven’t been able to set boundaries early in the day, so each time our child crosses where a boundary should have been, we get more and more irritated.  Then finally we can’t take it any more - and after one last not-boundary crossing, we snap.   (If you snap early in the day, I’d ask you to consider what boundaries were crossed for you the day (or many days) before, and whether you’re still feeling the effects of that?)   So we’ve discussed this before, and yet…boundaries continue to be a struggle for almost all of the parents I meet.  Why is this?   We’ll get into that in this episode, which draws on Nedra Ta

I’ve been thinking about producing this episode for several years now, and I always wished I wouldn’t need to do it.  Then every few months I’d see a post in an online community saying something like “Is spanking really that bad? I was spanked and I turned out fine” and I knew that one day I’d have to do an episode on it - so here it is.   My guest, Professor Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, has studied and written extensively about physical punishment of children, and believes spanking should be considered an Adverse Childhood Experience (which is a marker of severe trauma).  I mean, if you think about it, we are actually talking about physical abuse here: hitting another human being.  We only call it spanking because it’s supposed to be controlled and as punishment for an infraction.  But if my husband were to hit me in a controlled way as punishment for something I’d done wrong, would we still call it spanking?  (And as Dr. Grogan-Kaylor notes, if we’re spanking our child we’re almost by definition not doing i

https://www.yourparentingmojo.com/restedchild (When I interviewed Dr. Chris Winters) last year, I described how we’ve been using a No Set Bedtime method with our daughter Carys.  He used it with his children starting in the Elementary years, and his eyes nearly fell out of his head when I told him we’d been using it since Carys was about three.   In the email about the Dr. Winters interview I asked any listeners who wanted to learn more about this method to be in touch, so in this episode we’ll meet listeners Katherine and Gila.  Katherine’s daughter is three and Gila’s son is seven, and in this episode I explain the No Set Bedtime approach and then they pepper me with questions about how to make it work in their families.     We recorded our conversation back in November 2021, and in January I followed up with them to see how it’s going.  I share their feedback and my ideas on what’s going well and what they might adjust.   [embed]https://vimeo.com/671735528[/embed]  

In this episode we hear from parent Amy, who is a White parent married to a Black man raising four biracial children in Colorado.  Amy has been on quite a journey to explore her role as a descendant of Puritans who came to the United States looking for religious freedom on her father’s side, and of Irish Catholics on her mother’s side.  She sees how her parents were able to get advanced education and a loan to buy a house and start a business, and that from the outside they looked like a pretty happy family.   But behind closed doors, things were not so pretty - they were actually chaotic and volatile.  Amy was an intense, spirited child and her parents didn’t have the tools they needed to meet her needs.  She learned to use her intellect to protect herself, and projected an image of having her stuff together - a habit that she then continued as a parent, as she projected a Supermom-type image.  Our culture rewards us for looking like we’re keeping it together, even when everything’s falling apart insi

This episode continues our conversation on the topic of children and food.  A few months ago we heard from https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/eating/ (Dr. Lindo Bacon about how the things we’ve learned about obesity might not actually be the whole story).  Then we talked https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/dor/ (with Ellyn Satter about the approach she devised called Division of Responsibility), which holds the parent/caregiver responsible for the what, when, and where of eating and the child responsible for whether and how much.   We followed that with a https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/sugarproof/ (conversation with Dr. Michael Goran, a world-renowned expert on the impact of sugar on our bodies, and specifically on children’s bodies) – and co-author of the book SugarProof.  While the research seems to indicate that consuming large amounts of sugar isn’t necessarily the best thing for us, when I dug into the original papers that form the backbone of SugarProof I

“Storytelling? I’m already reading books to my child – isn’t that enough?” Your child DOES get a lot out of reading books (which is why we’ve done a several episodes on that already, including https://yourparentingmojo.com/readingbooks/ (What children learn from reading books), https://yourparentingmojo.com/reading/ (How to read with your child), and https://yourparentingmojo.com/003-your-toddler-isnt-reading-yet-neither-is-mine/ (Did you already miss the boat on teaching your toddler how to read?). But it turns out that storytelling benefits our relationship with our child in ways that reading books really can’t, because you’re looking at the book rather than at your child. If you ask your child what kind of story they’d like you to tell, you also get incredible insight into both their interests and concerns – I can attest to this, as I’ve been singing story-songs about poop and various kinds of baby animals who can’t find their mamas on and off for several weeks now (we had an incident a few months back w