Meghan Leahy is one of our favorite parenting experts.

Her advice is grounded in experience (she's got 3 kids and is a parenting columnist for the Washington Post), understanding (again: she's got 3 kids!), and compassion (like the rest of us, she's exhausted and overwhelmed). She's honest, engaging and an absolute hoot.

Her latest book, Parenting Outside the Lines: Forget the Rules, Tap Into Your Wisdom and Connect with Your Child, was published just over a year ago -- so we thought this would be a good time to re-visit our conversation with her, which we originally released in September 2020. (You know, just as most of us were freaking out over the beginning of a very unconventional school year.)

Some gems:

“I haven’t yet found a parent who’s really changed their parenting based on ‘studies say,' I’ve never told a parent, ‘Well, studies say if you don’t yell, your kid will be happier,’ and had the parent say, ‘oh my god, I didn’t know that! Now I’ll stop yelling.'”

and

 “Strategies are neither here nor there. One may work; one may not. But if the underpinning of compassionate, boundaried connection isn’t there, it doesn’t matter.”

In this episode, Jen, Janet & Meghan Leahy discuss:

The importance of connection

Learning to trust yourself

How modern culture has made parenting more difficult

Why it’s OK to not know what to do

What to do when your son doesn’t want to do an activity he once loved

Parenting during the pandemic

The link between kindness and resilience

Screen time (and why you need to look at your screen habits before tackling your kids’ screen time)

How to enjoy parenting

Links we mentioned (or should have) in this episode:

Parenting Outside the Lines: Forget the Rules, Tap Into Your Wisdom and Connect with Your Child — Meghan’s book

Meghan’s Washington Post On Parenting columns

mlparentcoach.com — Meghan’s website

How to Raise a Boy with Michael C. Reichert — ON BOYS episode mentioned at 07:11

The Neufield Institute — courses, events and resources from Gordon Neufield, PhD (mentioned at 8:47)

Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier and More Secure Kids, by Kim John Payne and Kim Ross — book mentioned at 16:07

My Suddenly Sedentary Teen Seems Stuck. How Much Should I Push Him to Move? — Meghan’s column about the soccer player (mentioned at 17:24)

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will you check the beginning to make sure it lines up okay?  thank you!!  and we should let her know it's going live, too...

 

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