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

Recently, a number of parents in the Parenting Membership have posted in our community about challenges they've faced that they've navigated with grace that would have seemed insurmountable a couple of years ago.   Many of these are parents of children who are already through the toddler stage, and the parents are starting to see the tools they've been using come alive in their interactions with their children.   I thought: There's a podcast episode in that!   I asked parents to submit short videos to me responding to the question: What do you wish you had known about parenting when your children were young?   The resulting videos are collected, along with my commentary, in this week's episode.   The insights that these parents offer are profound. I don't want to give too much away, but let's just say that you're not going to hear advice about a must-have crib or wipe warmer or toy.   This is advice about: How we see ourselves What is our role as parents to guide

All of our children go through phases when they do things we wish they wouldn’t do. Sometimes those things are relatively harmless but are pretty annoying, because they take extra time for us to clean up - things like eating (and making crumbs) in areas where we don’t want them to eat, shaving up a bar of soap, or piling up all the toys and refusing to help clean them up. Other times it’s not so harmless.  They might hit us.   Or hit a (smaller) sibling, for what seems like no reason.   We want to get that behavior to stop…but how?In this episode we’ll meet a parent who’s struggling with the annoying behaviors…and we’ll hear directly from two parents who have found ways to navigate resistance and hitting, and these are no longer the problem they once were.   There is hope.  We don’t have to keep walking on eggshells waiting for the next explosion, or worried about what our child is doing as soon as our back is turned.   Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits   Do you have a

Giving choices’ is a hot tool in the respectful parenting world.  In the scripts, it usually goes like this:   Child: “I want a snack!” Parent: “OK!  Would you like an apple or a banana?” Child: “A banana, please!” And the parent hands over the banana. But when you actually try it in your own home, it usually looks more like this: Your child:: “I want a snack!” You: “OK! Would you like an apple or a banana?” Your child: “I want cookies!”   WHY IS THAT?!  Why does it never ‘work’ the way it’s supposed to?  Why doesn’t our child follow the script? There’s a simple and easy reason, and in this episode I break it down - and teach you the effective tool to use instead of giving choices.   Questions this episode will answer Why do parenting experts recommend giving choices to kids? Giving choices is often recommended as a "magic bullet" for getting kids to cooperate. In theory, offering limited options should give kids a sense of control while still getting them to do what you want. But there's mor

  If there’s one topic that never fails to rile parents up, it’s sibling fighting. Why does it affect us so much?  (There are two main reasons.) Why is this happening, and what can we do about it?  There are two main reasons, and one strategy to use with each reason. That’s it! There are not an infinite number of reasons why this is happening, or an infinite number of things to try to get it to stop. This episode will help you to identify the cause of the fighting, and how to make it stop. Sound too good to be true?  It isn’t.  Check out what parents have said about the workshop and sign up:   Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits Do you have a child aged 1 - 10? Are they resisting, ignoring you, and talking back at every request you make? Do you often feel frustrated, annoyed, and even angry with them? Are you desperate for their cooperation - but don't know how to get it? If your children are constantly testing limits, the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits masterclass is for you. Go fr

This Q&A episode comes from a special education preschool teacher had listened to the Why We Shouldn’t Read The Your X-Year-Old Child books anymore, and wondered:      My first thought was: There’s no way I’m touching that question, because I don’t have the relevant qualifications and I’ll get torn apart.   I’ve been in some groups for Autistic parents for several months now, and one thing that’s abundantly clear is that qualified professionals use ‘treatments’ for Autistic children that these now-grown up people describe as abuse (and believe me; I don’t use that word lightly.  It’s a direct quote from many different people).   So if the qualified professionals are using methods that the people who have experienced them call abusive, I think I have a responsibility to at least offer thoughts for parents to consider as they’re navigating the process of diagnosis and treatment.   Too often, parents are pushed to take their child directly from diagnosis to treatment, as i

If you're anything like me, navigating conflict comes pretty easily to you. You always know what to say to make your point in a tone that's firm but still inviting, right? You listen for the purpose of understanding the other person and don't just use the time while the other person is speaking to form your own rebuttal? You never get overwhelmed, and maintain your own sense of boundaries even when the discussion argument gets really heated?   (Yeah, me either, really...)   A few months ago I put out a request for folks who disagree with me on a social issue to let me know if they would be willing to come and discuss the topic with me on a podcast episode.   I had just read Mónica Guzmán's book I Never Thought Of It That way, which concludes with an invitation to practice the tools she teaches about navigating conflict more effectively, and I thought: "Well, let's do it!" Mónica agreed to moderate a conversation and I put out a call for folks to participate...   ...and let's just s

Do you ever have that voice in your head that tells you things like: "You shouldn't have laid in bed for so long; you should have got up earlier to get ready for the day"?Or how about: "You shouldn't let your kids watch TV; good mothers don't let their kids watch TV"?Or: "If I was any good at this parenting thing, my kids wouldn't fight with each other"?If you do, have you noticed that sometimes that voice comes out when you talk to your children, in that exasperated, shaming voice: "Why would you do that?"If you have, you're not alone.My guest for this episode is parent Katie, who is a therapist with a Master's in Counseling.She's specifically trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is a method of changing people's behavior - essentially by teaching them to ignore their body's signals of fear and anxiety.Despite knowing everything there is to know about how to change a person's behavior, Katie still struggled as she transitioned from two to three children, and was suddenly dealing with massive sleep d

 In this episode I take a look at the main reasons why we have these hard days - from our child's temperament to our temperament to attachment relationships, trauma, and neurodivergences - all of these intersect especially tightly on the hard days. Then we look at three ways to get through these days with a little more grace - and maybe even without having to apologize to your child at the end of it. Taming Your Triggers Ready to break free from the cycle of triggered reactions and conflict in your parenting journey?If you want to:

Do you ever feel ashamed? Many people find it among their most physical emotions, resulting in a big knot of tension or a hot flush that washes over their whole body. But what is shame, and where does it come from? I recently read a LOT of academic papers and books, and also popular books about shame, and the most helpful resource I found among all of the ones I read was written by my guest today, A.J. Bond. A.J. is a wrier and a filmmaker who experienced a shame-related breakthrough in his own therapy several years ago, and who subsequently became certified as a Healing Shame Practitioner through the Center for Healing Shame in Berkeley. We discuss, among other things:The origins of shame all the way back in our childhoodsWhat kinds of shame really are helpful in our livesHow to heal from toxic shame so we don't pass it on to our own children AJ's book: Discomfortable: What is shame and how can we break its hold? (Affiliate link) Taming Your Triggers As you're listening to this episo

This episode kicks off a series of new episodes that I'm very excited about, which is based on listeners' questions. My goal is to produce shorter episodes that cut across the research base to help you answer the questions that are on your mind about your child's behavior and development.Our first question comes from Dee in New Zealand, who wants to know: should she should do what her preschooler is asking and buy a pair of inflatable boxing gloves so he can hit her when he's feeling angry. Or would hitting a pillow be a better option?If you'd like to submit your own question, you can record a video of yourself asking it in two minutes or less, upload it to a platform like Drive or Dropbox, and send a link to it at support@yourparentingmojo.com. Alternatively you can go to the homepage and click the button to record your question for an audio-only option.Taming Your TriggersIf you need help with your own big feelings about your child’s behavior, Taming Your Triggers will be open soon.We’ll help you to:Underst

In this most personal episode I've ever created, I'll share with you how my autism self-diagnosis has helped me to understand the experiences I've had in ways that bring a great deal more clarity and insight than I've had up to now.   In addition to hearing from me, you'll hear the actual voicemail the therapist who has been helping me left to explain the results of my autism screeners, as well as conversations with friends about things that are hard in our friendships.   You'll hear from listeners who find things I do on podcast episodes to be hurtful and judgmental and also relatable and approachable, and sometimes it's the same things I do that prompts both the 'positive' and 'negative' reactions.   And you'll hear from a listener in my membership community who has been on a similar journey to understand how her ADHD diagnosis wasn't really about her as much as it was about her reactions to the ways her family interacted with her - they encouraged creativity and expression in her artwo

Most of the resources related to parenting and neurodiversity are geared toward helping neurodivergent children, not neurodivergent parents, so this episode aims to help close that gap. Whether you (or your partner, if you have one) have a diagnosis or you see yourself (or them) struggling but can't quite figure out why, this episode may help. Autism and ADHD are diagnosed at wildly differing rates in girls and boys (in large part because boys' symptoms often turn outward while girls' symptoms turn inward), which means that girls are very often undiagnosed and unsupported well into adulthood. Dr. A. may help you to identify neurodivergence in yourself or your partner, and then connect you to resources to support you on your journey. Find more about Dr. A's practice at SpectrumServicesNYC.com I also very much appreciated Dr. A's memoir The Rose Hotel (affiliate link) about her experiences in Iran during the revolution, and later in the U.K. and the U.S.   Jump to highlights (00:03) Introduction to

Have you ever seen recommendations for the books called Your One Year Old, Your Two Year Old, and so on, by Louise Bates Ames?  Every few weeks I see parents posting in online communities asking about some aspect of their child’s behavior that is confusing or annoying to them, and somebody responds: “You should read the Louise Bates Ames books!”   This usually comes with the caveat that the reader will have to disregard all the 'outdated gender stuff,' but that the information on child development is still highly relevant. In this episode I dig deep into the research on which these books are based. While the books were mostly published in the 1980s, they're based on research done in the 1930s to 1950s.   I argue that far from just 'stripping out the outdated gender stuff,' we need to look much deeper at the cultural context that the information in these books fits within - because it turns out that not only were the researchers not measuring 'normal,' 'average' child development, but that they

Are you a shitty parent?   Or do you ever think you might be?   Parenting today is so hard, and there are so many models of 'perfect parenting' available on social media that we can compare ourselves against that provide 'evidence' that we're not doing it right.   Things can get even more difficult when we believe in respectful parenting, because we have a model for what we know we want parenting to be like - and every time we fall short of that ideal, the voice is there:   "You don't know what you're doing." "You'll never be able to do it right." "You're a shitty parent."   My guest today, Carla Naumburg, is the author of the bestselling book How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t With Your Kids, which was conveniently released just before a global pandemic started when we suddenly all started losing our shit with our kids.   Now she's back with a new book: You Are Not A Sh*tty Parent which helps us to understand: Where these stories about ourselves come from How we can s

Did you read Little House on the Prairie when you were a child? I didn't, but I know it's a common American rite of passage. My guest in this new episode, Dr. Dolly Chugh, got entirely immersed in the story with her two young daughters - so much so that they took a vacation to the places depicted in the story, and her daughters danced around in prairie dresses.   Dr. Chugh didn't realized until afterward that there was something missing from both Little House on the Prairie and from her family's exploration of the Midwest: settlers didn't arrive to find unoccupied land ready for farming; the government actively removed Native Americans from the land so it could be occupied by 'settlers.' Dr. Chugh studies issues related to race as a professor, and yet she completely missed this aspect of our country's history.   In her new book, A More Just Future, Dr. Chugh asks why so-called Good People act in ways that are counter to their beliefs because we don't have all the information we need, or we prior

Our culture says that people procrastinate because they're disorganized and lazy. After all, how hard can it really be to do a task you've committed to doing, and one that you even know will benefit you?!   But I learned through this episode that procrastination isn't about disorganization or laziness at all - it's much more about managing how we feel about tasks - and we can learn how to do this more effectively.   Those of us who don't struggle with procrastination can also do quite a bit to support the folks who do, to make it easier for them to get stuck in and be successful at the task.   Learn more about navigating your own procrastination and supporting your child in doing this as they get old enough for it to become relevant to them in this episode.   Amazon affiliate link to Procrastination: What it is, why it's a problem, and what you can do about it by Fuschia Sirois: https://amzn.to/3Tl9WTH (https://amzn.to/3Tl9WTH)

Liann did not have an easy entry into motherhood.  Her first child’s birth was pretty traumatic; it was followed by a miscarriage and then very quickly by another pregnancy.   And then by COVID.   She was already overwhelmed and then everyone was isolated…and suddenly Liann had a whole lot of anger that she hadn’t seen before.  She didn’t think things could be more difficult than they were in the immediate postpartum period…and then they were.   Her toddler, Hewitt, resented the new baby: Liann would be sitting on the couch nursing the baby and Hewitt is rolling on the floor shouting “NO BABY!  NO BABY!”   Transitions weren’t a problem before, but now they couldn’t make it out the door to go anywhere.   Liann doesn’t deny that she was looking for a quick fix.  She wanted Hewitt’s difficult behavior to stop, so she could stop feeling so freaking angry.   She listened to a few of my podcast episodes and realized that she had no self-compassion.  She saw that she could b

I know it can be really difficult to navigate all the events happening in the world today.  It seems like things are falling apart, with wars, climate change-caused drought and wildfires in some areas and flooding in others, with hunger not following far behind.  And things aren’t any better on the political front either.   When difficult things happen out there in the world, they spill over into our relationships with our children.  We suddenly find ourselves snapping at them far more easily than usual.  The things they do that are normally mildly irritating now push us to the limit, and we end up reacting to them in ways that we don’t like.     In this episode we discuss the reasons why you feel emotionally yanked around by things that are happening out there in the wider world, as well as by the ways these things are discussed online and in our families as well.     We look at the tools you can use to regulate your emotions when this happens…but also that regulating your emotions and t

In this conversation with Dean Spade we resolve a long-running challenge in my understanding: when https://www.yourparentingmojo.com/othering (we talked with Dr. john powell on the topic of Othering and Belonging) a couple of years ago we discussed how volunteering promotes othering, because it perpetuates the idea that the volunteer is a person with resources to give, and the recipient has little in the way of useful knowledge or resources of their own.  Dr. powell agreed, but we didn’t have time to discuss what to do instead.   In this episode we finally punch out that lingering https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/01/17/the-legacy-of-hanging-chads (hanging chad) of knowledge and talk with Dean Spade about the concept of mutual aid, which is the topic of his book: http://www.deanspade.net/mutual-aid-building-solidarity-during-this-crisis-and-the-next/ (Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And The Next)).  In this conversation we discuss:   What is mutual aid, and how it’s mor

Claire had used respectful parenting methods since her children were babies, so child-led learning seemed like a natural fit for her.  She protected her toddler’s free play time and involved her in household chores and nature walks.Claire attended school as a child (just like I did!); she even enjoyed elementary school. By high school she didn’t see the relevance between what she was being taught and the things she was interested in - by that time her biggest lessons came from extracurricular art classes with mostly retired classmates at an art school, and from a theater production which she and other students put on entirely by themselves - getting advice from teachers, but messing up and fixing their mistakes by themselves.It was the art classes and theater experiences that shaped the kind of learning that Claire wanted for her child, so she got herself pretty worked up over the idea of her oldest daughter attending public school.  It was actually joining my Learning Membership that helped her see