We can raise our children so that they're equipped to build the world we want instead of adhering to the norms of the world we're trying to get away from. 

After spending 17 days at home with my kids for winter break, I reflected on the relationship between screentime, hands-on parenting, and low restriction environments.  In homes where adults don't have a lot of time or bandwidth to interact with the kids and where there are a lot of restrictions about what the kids are allowed to do, it is very natural that those kids might have more screentime.  This is another example of "we can't have it all, at the same time" and is a good opportunity to think about and settle into what's most important for you right now.  For me, it's creating a low restriction home, where my kids can make a lot of messes and spend a lot of time making them, so that they are deeply engaged in mostly calm play instead of quietly watching TV (which they also do PLENTY of, because I don't prefer hands-on parenting).  Check out the corresponding Instagram post to see pictures of my kids messes!  Or facebook if you're old, like me.

In this short episode, I reflect on the ways that I've made my home full of pleasure and comfort for myself so that I am well regulated and better able to meet my own parenting goals.  Check out the corresponding Instagram post to see pictures! Or facebook if you're old, like me.

How well are we modeling empathy, perspective-taking, and gratitude in our daily lives so that our children will learn these critical justice-building values?

Let's explore it together.

How did COVID impact our parenting, particularly for those of us who were having and raising babies in 2020 and who had kindergarteners in 2020?

This is a heavy topic to talk about.  Make sure that you take good care of yourself, even if that means skipping this one.

Trigger warnings: Talk of COVID, anxiety, and infant feeding issues

Welcome back for Season 3!  The back to school season has me thinking about grades and connecting the dots between our habit of expecting success to be easily measurable as 100% and what we should reasonably expect from our children.

I love it when there's evidence that my long-term goals for my kids are in motion.  This meltdown turned out to be an unexpected milestone.

Finally!  After months upon months of teasing this episode, here it is:  I'm talking about how I gave up family dinner so that I could work towards the family dinner that I really wanted.

How confident are you that you're succeeding in your parenting?  How can you know if you don't know what you're measuring?  In this episode, I share a story about how my daughter's confrontational nature allowed me to double-down on my own confidence in my success.

In this episode, I offer a follow up to explain some of my responses to my children as we talked about slavery in American History.  I also describe a conversation about racism and colorism that my family had over dinner.