Model Minority Moms

If you weren't worried about climate change already, don't worry! Becoming parents will surely increase your climate change anxiety. From the very real concern of leaving behind a burning and unlivable planet to your children, to the very real concerns now of protecting your young ones from excessive heat, wildfire smoke, floods and storms, parenthood is **guaranteed** to give you greater climate anxiety.

But in all seriousness, we break down this very real, very concerning issue through the lens of parenthood. We also recorded this episode back in the summer so... there might be some summer references.. sorry/ not sorry?

Most of our listeners (and us) grew up in a pretty traditional education system. There were lessons, there was a lot of practice, there were tests and if you got a A, someone asked why it wasn't an A+. For many of us, it also was layered with a ton of stress and constant anxiety. It was all supposed to lead one day to admission to a top tier college and then a rather hazy happily-ever-after. Now raising our own kids, we are often conflicted on how to approach education - how much should we care about test scores? Should we just let kids do whatever they want because it should be all kid-led? What if they don't learn how to read or do math?

We break it down with Susan Yao, a veteran educator, school leader, mom of two, and founder of the Vermont Village School, an independent experimental school centered around the UnSchooling movement. We get real about the benefits and concerns of traditional and less-traditional schooling approaches, and what questions parents can ask themselves to form an educational approach that best serves their family.

WARNING: This episode contains spoilers for Bridgerton (seasons 1, 2 and 3), Queen Charlotte, the Kdrama Crash Landing on you and C-Drama The Double.

In this episode, we're talking about the Golden Hour - the time between roughly 9pm-10pm, when the kids finally have fallen asleep, the house is decently cleaned up, and you finally have a little time to do something that *you* want to do. Sometimes, a great TV show is just the ticket - something that's interesting but also a little fantasy. We bring you what we've been loving watching lately and break down our thoughts for each show.

Tells children "doe" means "small deer" (that's wrong). Bops sideview mirror from minivan for the nth time. Cannot remember garage code that you've had for the last two years. Having more trouble finding phone than usual. Maybe thinking about putting kids' cereal in a timed pet food dispenser. Maybe.

If you can relate at all, this episode is for you mom/ parent of young children. If you're just confused, join the club and listen anyway - it's a funny episode, albeit scattered. (See! We remembered the word 'albeit' - we are definitely not having early dementia).

We humbly present to you, our mini-dad-bootcamp in podcast episode form. If you're thinking about being a dad, listen to it now. If you're already a dad, listen to it before it's too late. If you're a woman in a heterosexual relationship, send this to your partner. What we say isn't easy but it's real, and we hope our 15+ years of experience parenting in the context of a marriage can help you, your marriage and your family survive (dare we say even thrive) in the throes of raising little human beings.

It's your birthday, it's your birthday, we're going to partay like it's your birthday... ok maybe it looks a little different when you're nearing 40 with young kids. In this episode, we hash out our feelings around our birthdays - the expectations, the disappointments, the meltdowns we're not proud of and Susan's dream birthday... a FUN-eral.

In the part two of this interview, we dive deeper with Peipei into the impact that her mental health journey has had on her relationship with her partner and her children, and ways she has tried to rebuild from the toll that her struggles have taken on her relationships.

In this episode, we sit down with Peipei Fiore, a former television executive and mom to three girls, who was forced to confront her long-running anxiety and depression when she unexpectedly became a mother and wife. She's also an OG MMM listener who was gracious enough to share her story with us. In this two-part series (second part to be released in two weeks), we dive deep into Peipei's journey of wrestling with eating disorders, anxiety, depression, and the pressures of keeping up in school, work and social dynamics, and the milestone events along the way that finally convinced her to seek the help she needed to get better.

Kat Lieu is the mastermind behind the popular Subtle Asian Baking IG/FB account as well as the cookbooks Modern Asian Baking and Modern Asian Kitchen. While her food content has found a rapidly growing audience going from zero to over 150k+ followers in just a few years, she actually spent the first decade of her adult life in a totally different career path that was chosen for her by her parents. Her career and family journey has been full of twists and turns and all the while, she kept her passion for food, writing and storytelling alive. We were inspired by Kat's philosophy of living a creative life, and how that affects her parenting outlook as well. Bonus cooking tips included!

You can find Kat's cookbooks and IG for further inspo here:

Modern Asian Baking at Home

Modern Asian Kitchen

@katlieu

Need we say more? Most moms - we daresay every mom - is familiar with burnout. How can you not be when you are meeting the demands of helpless, emotionally unregulated littles 24/7 for years? Especially when people around you often seem to minimize, not notice and/or actively criticize what can feel like an endless trudging sacrificing juggle. Here in true MMM fashion, we feel our feels and put out some real talk about why it is, does it need to be this way and what can we do to may be make it better.