1 hour

As a family of eight with three in elementary school and weekly visits to the church nursery, the odds of someone catching some kind of virus or another are stacked against us. We do our best through proper hygiene, diet, and sleep, to avoid sickness, but it's inevitable.

Working and maintaining a healthy family life is hard enough, but throw in a sick spouse or child and things can become exponentially more difficult.

There were times when a sick spouse or kid would completely derail us. The loss of time is frustrating, but the loss of momentum can make things even more difficult even when you can return to work.

We've gotten plenty of experience working through sickness, and in this episode we share some of the techniques we've learned to keep our productivity up when managing sickness in our household. You can't avoid sickness completely, but if you can purposefully plan for it you can get through it and still keep things up and running.

1 hour, 4 minutes

We want our children to thrive in their relationships; to experience a healthy give and take, to know how to communicate, and to feel the freedom to operate within what comes natural to their personality. The culture sometimes elevates behaviors and personality traits, and even builds social structures around them, making it more challenging for people who don't fit the mould.

In this episode, Ben and Rachel talk about how to recognize introversion in your child and how to teach your child to have healthy communication, enforce necessary boundaries, but also step out of their comfort zone and make connections and enjoy the benefits of establishing healthy relationships.

1 hour, 12 minutes

When I was growing up, my parents were pretty laid back about where and with whom we spent our time. That's probably why I took a pretty relaxed approach with our oldest when he started spending time at his friend's house. That is, until I went to pick him up one day and found that the environment he was in conflicted with some of our non-negotiable family values. As I went to walk him out of the house, a stream of curse words coming from the video game one of the older kids was playing, I was mortified. I felt frustrated, embarrassed, and guilty. What kind of parent was I to allow my child to be exposed to that?

I realized that I had an important role to play in protecting my child, but I also didn't want to go overboard and never let him spend time with his friends. I wanted to be respectful of others' values, because it's their home, but also still assert our families values because it's my child. I found myself asking, "How can I protect my child, but still allow him to experience an environment that is different from ours?"

In this episode, Rachel and I talk about the rights we as parents have when it comes to ensuring a safe environment for our children, and the opportunity we have, if we can be strategic about what we allow, to help our children develop their own sense of responsibility. We also talk about the value of making connections with people who are different from us and how we can use those connections to encourage all parties involved to work toward the goal of preserving our child's safety and well-being.

46 minutes

Life seems to just get more and more complicated as you grow up. It's great having freedom as an adult, but with all of that freedom comes a great deal of responsibility. Part of the role we play as parents is keeping our children from having to experience the complexity and stress of all of that added responsibility, but at some point they'll need to know the things we know and have the skills we possess if we want them to be successful as adults. How early is too early to start preparing them for life as they grow up?

Ben and Rachel talk through this topic and share practical ideas from their own experience for equipping your child without overwhelming them. They explain how children are naturally curious and inclined to learn and grow in new skills, and how using these natural tendencies can make the learning process easier and fun for everyone.

1 hour, 13 minutes

One of the biggest frustrations we experience as parents is when our kids aren't getting along. Especially if one is hurting or doing something unfair to another. It's easy to get emotionally involved and express our feelings through our correction, but this can have adverse effects and can end up pitting our children further against one another.

In this episode Ben and Rachel talk about a healthy approach to dealing with sibling conflict that will allow our children to see the value in maintaining good relationships with their brothers or sisters. They share some practical steps and language to foster good conflict resolution skills and lead our children into closer relationships with one another.

1 hour, 4 minutes

As a parent who has a sticky brained child and a non-sticky brained child, I can attest to the difficulty this trait can add to a situation. This is where we tend to become broken records, hoping our message can penetrate through our child's concentration. It's tempting to want to see it as an undesirable behavior of which we should try to break them.

In this episode we discover more about what goes on inside the sticky brain and how we can help shape the strengths that come along with this trait. We will talk about some practical things you can do to help your child work through their sticky brained tendencies without changing who they are.

1 hour, 15 minutes

Do you remember being a kid and having big dreams? I wanted to be an actor. I used to put on plays for my parents starring me and my brother which, most of the time, ended up being me yelling at my brother for not remembering his lines, or cues, or blocking. It may have seemed silly at the time for the practical person, but as a kid I could see no reason that dream couldn't be a reality.

We have a great privilege as parents to have a front row seat when it comes to our child's dreams. It's difficult to resist the temptation to shrug off something that seems impossible, or to try to steer them in a more practical direction out of our desire to keep them safe and well taken care of. In this episode Ben and Rachel talk about when and how to support our children's interests and how to strike a healthy balance between being protective and being supportive.

1 hour, 2 minutes

Growing up, we had a fairly neutral relationship with screens. It was regulated like almost anything else we used to pass the time as kids. With today's technological advances and the increasing usefulness of screens, combined with the information we consume about the negative effects of screens on child development, it's easy to be very hard-lined about the use of screens. Maybe you're a parent who allows your child to use screens all the time.

Ultimately, this conversation is not about screens, but about the values through which we approach the use of screens. Ben and Rachel go to the deeper issue and talk about how we can help our children develop a healthy relationship with the ever growing landscape of screen technology and avoid the struggle of negotiating screen time altogether.

1 hour, 2 minutes

We are natural boundary testers from a young age. It's in our nature to discover how far we can go and what we are allowed (and not allowed) to do. This process can be a frustrating one for everyone involved. We as parents don't just want blind obedience. We want children who are eventually capable of deciding for themselves what they will do and who also make choices with us that are in the best interest of everyone in the boat. But how do we get there.

Ben and Rachel talk about the things we can do at any age to begin fostering cooperation and helping our children see and enjoy the benefit of being on the same team. Even as adults we don't always agree and sometimes have difficulty working together. In this episode Ben and Rachel will share how being grounded in connected relationships with our children causes cooperation to become more of a natural tendency instead of a fight.

1 hour, 20 minutes

Even as adults, our emotions aren't always under our control. We experience a wide range of emotions and express them in many different ways. Our children are daily having new experiences with emotions and trying to figure out how to communicate what's going on inside with the outside world.

In this episode, Ben and Rachel talk about the purpose of emotions, how emotions grow and develop in our children, and how we as parents can guide our children as they learn how to express their emotions in healthy and appropriate ways.