Want to increase your child's co-operation? Have them listen more? Reduce clinginess?

Sometimes special time can feel like the magic balm in parenting.

It can:

• Boost your child's confidence.
• It can build their resilience.
• It can ease your own parent guilt about not spending enough "quality time with your kids.
• And, one of the biggies, it can INCREASE children's co-operation.

It does all these things! We've seen it countless times in our own families, but here's the thing. Although it can increase co-operation, it isn't guaranteed to.

Especially if you aren't setting up Special Time the right way.

So today, we're talking about exactly why special time is so useful for increasing your child's levels of co-operation.

• How to set it up so that you stand the best possible chance of seeing this happen.
• Are you using Special Time as maintenance or rescue? Why does it matter?
• And the difference between Special Time as a bargaining tool and the genuine invitation of setting everything aside for your child and the big effects that has.

If you've ever felt like Special Time wasn't delivering the way you hoped, come problem-solve with Abigail and Elle on the Podcast this week.

Listen to Can Special Time really increase my child's level of cooperation?

Set Up Your Special Time for Success

Get all the help you need making Special Time a regular feature in your family. Join the Special Time Challenge, and increase your child's co-operation and reduce parent guilt.

You'll get a daily tip to action to make sure you are getting the most you can from this amazing tool, and access to our pop-up group, with even more support, including lives with our instructors.

It starts on September 4th and its free, so what are you waiting for?

Join here

What gets you super seething mama mad?

Is it the constant asks and requests, the "Mom where's my… that's so overwhelming?

Maybe it's the piles of toys and dishes and chip packets you asked to be tidied but are still smirking at you from the living room?

Maybe it's the stubbornness and defiance your child shows when you ask them to take a bath after giving them a wonderful day out?

At least, you think it's that the cause of all your parent anger!

But what if that's not really it at all?

What if the source of your rage is connected to the limits you are setting. Or, more correctly, not setting?

What does parent anger have to do with setting limits, anyway?

This week on the podcast we're sharing what behaviors make us blow and figuring out why. We show you how why, when you peel back the layers of feelings tightly packing your parent anger, you might well find a mama who was too exhausted, too overwhelmed, or too oblivious to set limits with her kids.

And we talk about why not setting limits leads to rupture.

Do you know the best way out of Parent Anger?

This week, we're talking:

• How to start identifying your triggers and trace the source of your dissatisfaction
• Why setting limits (or not setting them) leads to arguments and rage
• What your parent anger can teach you, and how to recover from it
• The power of frontloading to keep your family on track and running without disruption
• Why good limits begin with getting clear on your values
• Abigail also shares two good tips for getting good "anti-rage" systems in place

Join us on the podcast this week for Do you know the best way out of Parent Anger?

Listen now:

Abigail and Elle are Taking A Break

We're nine episodes away from 100! And while we love and appreciate the chance to connect with you weekly, we also need to set some limits - with our own schedules.

We'll be taking a bit of a break after episode 100, and we'd love to ask you a favor!

How Have Things Changed?

We want to feature your voices in episode 100. If you want to be included leave us a message.

All you need to do is to include these three things:

• Your name or pseudonym
• Where you are from
• And answer, "What has this podcast done for your parenting?"

You can also call: 818-643-1714

And if you can't call, email Abigail and Elle at [email protected]

More support for Parent Anger:

These five ideas and wonderful in times of parent meltdown: Crazy Mad: Five Ways To Ward off Parent Anger

Listening Partnerships are THEY BEST way to offload anger and examine your triggers. We also use them to explore our parenting values. Download this free guide to Listening Partnerships to get some set up.

For daily answers to your parenting questions join our wonderful free community. Join Parents Connect

What Could We Do Better?

While we're rebooting, share your ideas! Please let us know how we can do better, and what parenting topics you'd most like for us to cover in future episodes at [email protected]

Stay connected

We'd love to hear about your parenting challenges. You can follow Hand in Hand on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Be sure to drop Elle and Abigail a message at [email protected]

• Listen on iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher
• Don't forget to subscribe!

Get weekly tips, ideas, and inspiration for your parenting in our newsletter

If you catch yourself late at night, surrounded by toys, folding clothes and wondering why you don't have time or energy to take a shower, ask yourself:

• Why am I doing all the chores?
• Where are my kids when I need them?
• And why aren't those helpful little mice from Cinderella a real thing?

And then breathe.

Because chances are if you don't, you'll explode the mother lode with a tyranny of "Why do I never get any help around here?

"Why do you NEVER pick up?"

"Why do I have to ask you THREE times,"

You know, all that fun explosive stuff you promised you wouldn't yell.

Things Are About to Change

This week on How to Make Your Kids Love Chores we're looking at some great ways you can actually get down and dirty with getting your kids on board with helping around the house.

On the podcast this week, we're talking:

• Working with your toddler's natural inclinations to help
• Getting clear on what works for you and your kids when it comes to chores
• Working on a feedback loop that encourages chat and change
• Figuring out what's holding you and your family back from a workable chores plan
• The debate between rewards, charts, and consequences

And Guest-Starring...Chores From a Kid's P.O.V

Abigail's son even makes a (surprise) guest debut this week and shares some very insightful reasons on why he detests doing laundry! (We giggled!).

Join us this week if you are tired of battling the kids around chores, or you just don't know where to get started on setting chores for your kids.

More To Help You In Your Quest in Managing Chores for Kids

Take a look at this primer on Hand in Hand Parenting's approach to chores

Here's our podcast on Emotional Projects

Remember that study we talked about where kids love to help pick up? Here it is

And, since it's good to harness help in the toddler years, get this Transition to Toddlerhood guide if you have an ankle-biter. Download now

Stay connected

We'd love to hear about your parenting challenges. You can follow Hand in Hand on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Be sure to drop Elle and Abigail a message at [email protected]

• Listen on iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher
• Don't forget to subscribe!

Get weekly tips, ideas, and inspiration for your parenting in our newsletter

What's the one thing you want for your child when they are sick?

To have them feel better.

What's the one thing that most often gets in the way of that?

When you walk away with a specialist appointment or wonkily-written script from Doc you have two things: A ticket better health for your child, hopefully, and also a potential prescription for tears and battles.

How do you keep calm and carry on?

This week on the podcast we show you how you can use the tools to overcome medical worry, emergencies, trauma and stress.

Because when you are parenting sick kids, it isn't just them who suffers.

Whether your child has been through common childhood complaints or more serious medical challenges, we'll show you what you can do to soothe things (that don't just rely on a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down).

On Parenting Sick Kids this week, learn:

• How Abigail armed herself with the tools to make a complete care package for her son's heart-surgery - and her own sanity. This is really inspiring stuff.
• Why a slowly-slowly approach can eradicate all fears and battles
• What happens when medication NEEDS to happen
• How Special Time can totally turn things around - and what to do when it doesn't And how to take care of you, your other half and your kids when procedures get traumatic

If your child gets dotty about doctor's visits or mad about meds, listen in today and turn that panic around.

Listen to Parenting Sick Kids: How To Navigate Medicine, Worry and Stress

And if it's you who is sick? Read this post on how to be sick and a mom

Parenting a sick child can be hard enough, and it gets even tougher when your other child feels left out. Discover how to balance things out in this post

Stay connected

We'd love to hear about your parenting challenges. You can follow Hand in Hand on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Be sure to drop Elle and Abigail a message at [email protected]

• Listen on iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher
• Don't forget to subscribe!

Get weekly tips, ideas, and inspiration for your parenting in our newsletter

You probably got very excited when you discovered that Hand in Hand Parenting had five tools that could rescue you when parenting got sticky (or downright dirty).

Very excited.

It was the exact result you wanted Google to deliver. It may even have been how you found our podcast.

You needed answers.

Here they were.

Even better. These five tools were kind parenting tools. They meant you could stop feeling like a demon mother ready to explode the moment your child said no, got sassy, or gave you a kick in the shins.

Which is often, by the way.

With new and ever rosier visions of running together with your kid through green and blooming fields (or, maybe the park, or the mall if you are city dwellers like us) you couldn't wait to stop yelling and start connecting. To start forging beautiful, sunset-glowy memories...

So why do you still feel like you are messing it all up?

Your Parenting Fails are A-OK

Why do you still feel yourself sliding into motherlode-ready-to-explode mode?

Why are you tearful, or fearful, or just too plain exhausted to dig deep into the tools? (All you want to dig deep into is the cookie jar).

Why?

Because, dear mama, if you set out to master motherhood you are chasing an impossible dream.

We've been there too!

Let us tell you something - we tell other parents how to parent and we still mess up.

Bigtime!

Yes, our stories are littered with so-called parenting fails.

Getting Real on our Parenting Fails

This week we're celebrating 500,000 downloads (break out the ice-cream cake and some Pinot) by getting real about our parenting fails.

• What stretches our patience to the max?
• The moments we lose it (and what happens afterward)
• And how the rockiest parts of our parenting journey have lead us to some surprising new destinations

See, we're learning (always learning!) that these "parenting fails" are not fails at all. (In fact, after this episode we vow to NEVER call these diversions that at all!).

Join us this week as we dish the dirt on our mothering mishaps and mayhem and share some shinier thinking on how it all fits together in the end.

This is for you if you ever felt like you failed at motherhood - because you just never ever deserve to feel like that.

Listen now to How to Master Motherhood (and other parenting lies) now

Stay connected

We'd love to hear about your parenting challenges. You can follow Hand in Hand on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Be sure to drop Elle and Abigail a message at [email protected]

• Listen on iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher
• Don't forget to subscribe!

Get weekly tips, ideas, and inspiration for your parenting in our newsletter

You just dropped one child at his playdate. Now you have 15 minutes to scoot across to the pool for your younger kid's swim lesson. Easy, right? Actually no. Your child is refusing to scoot. He doesn't want to put on his swim clothes. He won't go to the pool. "I HATE swim class," he yells defiantly. Why Reasoning Won't Work Oh, and when you tried reasoning? He kicked his scooter across the car park and laid flat on the tarmac. He isn't going anywhere. How Do You Set Limits WIth A Defiant Child? If you are using the Hand in Hand Tools you know that a child's defiance shows they are having a hard time. You also know that one of the best ways to work through this is by letting your defiant child work through their anger and frustration. Staylistening through their upset works great—when you have time. But What Happens When You Don't Have Time? Right now the clock ticking in your head sounds like a bomb waiting to explode. Your indecision on how to move forward mounts with every second that passes. You notice passersby eyeing up your situation, and you're ready to blow. Do you: A: Sit and listen to your child's outburst, and watch the clock tick past the start of the swim lesson. B: Pack your defiant child under one arm and the scooter under another and march over to the pool. C: Announce that class is off and suggest getting an ice-cream instead. You'll tackle this some other time. Surprise! None of these are right. And none of them are wrong! Today on the podcast we share ideas and tools that will help you decide how to respond when your child gets defiant and simply says "No." Listen in for: - Surefire strategies to prevent these stands-offs from happening in the first place - Why every limit you give your child is actually multiple limits bound together as one and how to unravel them - How to get clear on limits you want to hold and those you can let slip away - What to do when you absolutely, really, definitely need your child do something and they are defiant in saying no STAY CONNECTED We'd love to hear about your parenting challenges.;Be sure to drop Elle and Abigail a message at [email protected]

Your child grabs the one extra cookie you said he wasn't allowed…

What do you do?

Or your daughter whines the minute she sees you pull out peanut butter for her toast...

Or, when your son hears that his sister is having a sleepover he yells that you're a mean mom...and that you have wrinkles!

Yes he did.

To Play or Not to Play...That is the Question

Would you, could you playfully parent in these situations, or would you Staylisten to your child's upset?

A lot of parents ask us when to play and when to stay and we answer in the podcast this week:

When to play and when to stay...

When can you play and then stay…

And why would you stay then play…

Ok, we'll stop with the rhyming now and get down to business.

Listen to Yes! You can Playlisten when your child is upset. We're talking:

• Discover the signals children use to tell you play is ok today or that it's better to stay...
• Playful parenting ideas you can use when storm clouds are just brewing
• How to move from Staylistening into play
• How to decide if you are Staylistening too much when you could be playing instead
• And why play isn't a substitute for Staylistening and why we can't replace tears with laughter

Become Mother-Flipping-Awesome!

Join Abigail's rocking new community and be mother-flipping-awesome. Go here to get registered now.

Stay connected

We'd love to hear about your parenting challenges. You can follow Hand in Hand on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Be sure to drop Elle and Abigail a message at [email protected]

• Listen on iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher
• Don't forget to subscribe!

Get weekly tips, ideas, and inspiration for your parenting in our newsletter

Since we have all personally gone through potty training and we will all have to go through it with our kids, you'd think we'd have nailed down one, surefire potty training method.

But the 11,000 google results you get when you type in 'How to potty train my child,' clearly shows that a one-size-fits-all approach is about as likely as you getting a 5-minute shower with no disruptions.

Yerright.

Sadly, there is no magic potty training method. And sometimes it feels like you'll still be sitting with your child and wiping their butt when they go off to college! But, don't fear...

So Many Methods, So Many Questions

• Potty-train in 3 days or wait till they lead?
• Will pee but won't poop...
• Is fine at home but won't pee at pre-school...
• Pull-ups or bare bums?

The questions are endless.

Which is why we get wholly confused, flabbergasted, frustrated, impatient and exhausted when it comes to potty training.

Does this rite of passage have to be so arrrgh?

This week, a few ideas to help.

No matter which potty training method or approach you lean towards you can incorporate the Hand in Hand tools to de-stress the process. And we can certainly promise some fun solutions too.

This week, find out out how you can laugh, play and cry your way to the potty and back. You'll discover...

• Play methods you can use to reduce potty pressure and power battles.
• What to expect from the potty training years, whichever method you choose.
• Why we veer clear of rewards and use laughter instead
• A slowly-slowly approach that really works with fearful kids

We're talking the good, the bad and the stinky in potty training. Join us for How to Potty Train Your Child in 10 Easy Years and then get the super fun potty training games in 8 Ways to Make Potty Training Playful.

Join the waitlist for the Hand in Hand Parent Club. Entry is closed right now, but we'll be back open in the fall.

Become Mother-Flipping-Awesome!

Join Abigail's rocking new community and be mother-flipping-awesome. Go here to get registered now.

Stay connected

We'd love to hear about your parenting challenges. You can follow Hand in Hand on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Be sure to drop Elle and Abigail a message at [email protected]

• Listen on iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher
• Don't forget to subscribe!

Get weekly tips, ideas, and inspiration for your parenting in our newsletter

"Mom, I can't go to camp today. I have a stomachache."

This is the third time this week your child has complained of a sore stomach, and yet she shows no other symptoms of being unwell.

You wonder…is something else going on under the radar?

• Does your child complain of stomachaches?
• Does she get tearful or angry regularly, refuse to go places or try new things?
• Does your child worry a lot, gets obsessive or compulsive? Does he or she act clingy or have trouble sleeping?

Or, do you see all of these?

what are the signs my child is anxious?

Child anxiety is on the rise, but even if your child has not been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, all children have anxious moments. And what can look like defiance or stubbornness can indicate your child is feeling anxious.

Reading the signs and responding to them with actionable strategies can help a child shake off anxiety and emerge stronger and more resilient.

try these 3 ideas to flip your child's anxiousness

On this episode of the Hand in Hand podcast, we look at the causes and signs of child anxiety, and Abigail shares three really useful flips you can use to turn your child's anxious behavior around. You'll share new insights and mindshifts that will point your child towards strength and confidence.

Listen now.

More on How the Hand in Hand Tools Work with trauma

You can learn more about the therapeutic benefits of using Hand in Hand Parenting here. Get download.

Become Mother-Flipping-Awesome!

Join Abigail's rocking new community and be mother-flipping-awesome. Go here to get registered now.

Stay connected

We'd love to hear about your parenting challenges. You can follow Hand in Hand on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Be sure to drop Elle and Abigail a message at [email protected]

• Listen on iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher
• Don't forget to subscribe!

Get weekly tips, ideas, and inspiration for your parenting in our newsletter

Have you ever asked your child to do something simple, like pack their toys away before dinner? For a second they stare back and you wide-eyed, all chubby-cheeked cherubic sweetness.

And then they scrunch those eyes and tell you to $#@ off?

oh no, she didn't…

Kids who cuss are more common than you might think. If you put those terms into any search engine results throw up videos full of kids swearing.

Some people, apparently, find kids swearing hilarious.

Others not so much.

And as we share on the podcast this week where you are on the parenting swearing spectrum has much to do with how swear words showed up in your own childhood.

• This week we're talking about why some kids swear with glee and other kids, well meh, they'd rather go draw a comic.
• We're talking the parenting shame and humiliation that happens when your kid swears and what you can do.
• We're talking about getting light around swearing while at the same time setting limits on sassy language.
• And we're talking about how swearing can offer fertile grounds for connecting. Yes, you read that right, you can use swearing to bring you closer.

try a little four-letter fun…

And because this podcast is the shizzaz we're sharing four strategies you can use to get clear on where your family stands with swearing and handling your kids when their searing looks like its spiraling.

If you've been asking why is my kid swearing? Listen to the podcast this week and discover why there may are many reasons your child is swearing, and why none of them are bad.

a little something extra

Oh and here are 15 of Shakespeare's swears (that Abigail mentioned) and they are way too fun. Would thou wouldst burst?

This post shares more on why kids get hooked on bad words and how you can respond.

find your tribe School's out and so are we

Summer enrolment for the Parent Club is closing soon. Check out our special summer offer…before it's gone

Become Mother-Flipping-Awesome!

Join Abigail's rocking new community and be mother-flipping-awesome. Go here to get registered now.

Stay connected

We'd love to hear about your parenting challenges. You can follow Hand in Hand on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Be sure to drop Elle and Abigail a message at [email protected]

• Listen on iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher
• Don't forget to subscribe!

Get weekly tips, ideas, and inspiration for your parenting in our newsletter