Newborn to Teen and Everything in Between

We met Josephine at The International Women’s Podcast Awards when she was nominated for her podcast ‘Gloriously unready’ and we were nominated for ours 😉. 

Josephine was mum to 3 boys – quite the challenge (her words!). However, two of her children told her (completely independently and within a few months of each other) that they were transgender. One of Josephine’s daughters has now been on hormones for about 8 years (she is now, at the time of recording, 30) and the other daughter for about 3 years (she is now 26). Josephine now has 1 son and 2 daughters. 

Amongst alot of things, we spoke with Josephine about: 

• How hard it was to accept – Josephine had to readjust all her thinking and deal with her own feelings of loss and fear – were her children they wrong, were they making a mistake? 
• Josephine’s feelings when the children told her (you can listen to Josephine's youngest daughter’s side of the story at the start of the second series of Josephine’s podcast Gloriously unready). 
• How there were no signs of the children questioning their gender in childhood, yet one of the girls said to Josephine that she had felt like it for the whole of her life.  
• How Josephine's middle child has felt about it all. 
• Whether the religious side of Josephine's life made it harder for her especially with regards to acceptance of what had happened in her church. 
• How while the explosion of social media and open discussion around sexuality and gender has opened up the conversation for teens, it can be difficult for parents to navigate how to handle this.  
• How important it is that people might not understand transgender but that having a respectful society is what we need. 
• Puberty blockers, surgery and the recent Cass review. 
• How meeting transgender people and having conversations with them about the process and hearing their stories has provided Josephine with support and understanding in this area.  
• Practical things that can be done to change your gender and how much easier it is to do these things in other countries. 
• How Josephine's wider family reacted to the girls including how, since her 2 girls came out, and just a couple of years ago, Josephine’s brother also came out as transgender and is now her sister. 
• What Josephine would say to parents whose children have just told them they are transgender. 
• The real positives of being a transgender parent.  

Another of our podcast episodes you might find interesting – Gender and Sexuality 

Josephine’s podcast page - Gloriously unready 

Instagram @bespokefamily / @TheJosephineHughes 

Facebook @bespokefamily 

For information about a Bespoke Family Parent Consultation click here: https://www.bespokefamily.co.uk/parent-consultations    

‘Your Guide to...’ (our downloadable webinars including behaviour, toilet training, sleep and more)  

This podcast is produced by Decibelle Creative 

Are you a hugger? Becks is, Claire isn’t (she just doesn’t feel the need all the time!)! 

We spoke about: 

• Our own experiences with hugging and showing affection. 
• How to approach situations with children and hugging – should it be an expectation that your child hugs people? 
• If not, what should you do? 
• Having conversations with people about the fact your child can say no they don’t want a hug and when to do it. 
• Kissing little ones and reasons we don’t kiss newborn babies (or you could kiss their feet!). 
• Teaching children life skills so they know the importance of saying no if something doesn't feel right – that their body is their body and it’s OK. 
• How showing affection can be done in many different ways.  
• The pandemic and how we weren’t allowed to hug! 
• 5 Love Languages and how helpful they are for all of us. 
• The power of the Disney Hug. 
• NSPCC and the PANTS rule. 

Blogs – Should I make my child hug people? 

You might also find this blog interesting – Why doesn’t my child show much affection? 

NSPCC PANTS rule 

Find your Love Language with this free quiz 

Instagram @bespokefamily  

Facebook @bespokefamily 

For information about a Bespoke Family Parent Consultation click here: https://www.bespokefamily.co.uk/parent-consultations    

‘Your Guide to...’ (our downloadable webinars including behaviour, toilet training, sleep and more)  

This podcast is produced by Decibelle Creative 

This episode was so much fun!  Vern joined us from Carifit, the original baby wearing fitness programme. Cari stands for Cardio and resistance intervals and when he started the classes for new mums Vern used to wear the babies while the parents worked out - he had a light bulb moment that parents could wear their own babies to work out and it went from there! 

We talked about: 

• How from small beginnings the Carifit classes grew and then the baby carrier was born. (Shout out to Hannah Lowry who was one of the first mums to join Vern at a class!) 
• Groupology and the science and benefits of moving in sync. 
• The benefits of mood, energy and mental health from doing exercise like Carifit – it can even improve postnatal depression symptoms. 
• The marvels of the women’s body and how incredible it is! 
• How the Carifit caters for parents from the moment they become pregnant and how attitudes to postnatal and ante natal exercise has changed / is changing. 
• Shifts in attitudes to ‘getting back in shape’ after having a baby over the years Vern has been working in this area.   
• Benefits of Carifit eg no separation, no childcare required, no other people required. How Carifit works if you have multiple babies.  
• Carifit classes and the App. 
• How great baby wearing is in general - ”A tool for freedom and movement – wear your baby and move!”.  
• Golden rules for babywearing and positioning of baby’s legs. 
• Is babywearing ‘making a rod for your own back’ - spoiler alert – absolutely not, in fact research supports that babywearing will help keep your day successfully moving forward! 
• Three things that Vern wishes he had been told before he had children. 
• Babywearing benefits for baby’s brains! 
• Shout out from Vern to Mamma Social and Blaze Trails – two highly recommended babywearing walking groups. 

Instagram @cari_fit 

Carifit website - https://www.getcarifit.com/ 

Instagram @bespokefamily  

Facebook @bespokefamily 

For information about a Bespoke Family Parent Consultation click here: https://www.bespokefamily.co.uk/parent-consultations    

‘Your Guide to...’ (our downloadable webinars including behaviour, toilet training, sleep and more)  

This podcast is produced by Decibelle Creative 

July going into August is a month of birthdays and celebrations for us – starting with our business birthday at the end of July, Becks’s dog Olive’s birthday on 1st August (!), then Becks and her twins (all on the same day!), Claire’s birthday exactly a week after and then Becks’s husband at the end of August! So, we thought that this was the ideal time to look at birthdays, presents, parties and everything that goes along with it! 

We spoke about: 

• Why birthdays are Becks’s very favourite thing!  
• Baby’s first birthdays (they don’t know..!) 
• Birthday parties – for all ages and how the most important thing is making it personal for everyone and celebrating as a family together.   
• Inviting the WHOLE class from school (and the associated presents!)! 
• How parties can be quite overwhelming if the birthday girl / boy doesn’t like being the centre of attention. 
• Present alternatives – perhaps give experiences instead (thanks @nannyanita – they are quite often better as a gift for older children). 
• Parties – thanks to Mel @sleepNannymelaniehastings – who suggested picking a theme for the party to help keep focus on the party planning. 
• Claire’s party project for nanny training (and her duck cake..!). 
• Birthday cakes (and some of Becks’s creations for the twins’ birthdays!!). 
• Birthday build up and managing expectations and emotions. 
• Birthdays and multiple children – twins, triplets and more. 
• Christmas and New Year birthdays. 
• Party bags (no whistles please!). 

Ps – following up on something we said in this episode, Ben actually pulled it out of the bag and ended up giving Amy a beautiful Pandora charm for her birthday 😊! 

Instagram - @bespokefamily / Facebook - @bespokefamily  

For information about a Bespoke Family Parent Consultation click here: https://www.bespokefamily.co.uk/parent-consultations    

‘Your Guide to...’ (our downloadable webinars including behaviour, toilet training, sleep and more)  

This podcast is produced by Decibelle Creative 

Co-parenting mentor Sarah joined us from Australia for the podcast! She specialises in supporting (mainly) women and their children when relationships break down. 

We talked about: 

• The importance of putting children first, but how difficult it is when your co-parent isn't on the same page as you in terms of their approach. 
• How Sarah started working in the field having had her own traumatic personal experience and being a co-parent herself. 
• How Sarah coaches parents to regain their confidence and ‘step into their power’. 
• Sarah’s recommendations for effective communication when co-parenting along with what parallel parenting looks like  
• Narcissistic ex-partners, what this means and Sarah’s advice when faced with that level of challenge in a co-parenting relationship 
• How all co-parenting relationships can be tricky and how making sure you are focussed on the children is of paramount importance. 
• The ripple effect of the wider / extended family - the opinions and ‘sides’ that come with this and how to navigate it all. 
• The importance of a support system and identifying who is on ‘team me’. 
• Recognising that you are a ‘good girl people pleaser’ and breaking this cycle for the sake of your children.  
• Sarah’s 3 key tips for your co-parenting journey. 

Find Sarah @unshakeablecoparenting on Instagram where she has something for every stage of coparenting. Although Sarah is based in Australia, she works with parents all over the world. 

Instagram - @bespokefamily / Facebook - @bespokefamily  

For information about a Bespoke Family Parent Consultation click here: https://www.bespokefamily.co.uk/parent-consultations    

‘Your Guide to...’ (our downloadable webinars including behaviour, toilet training, sleep and more)  

This podcast is produced by Decibelle Creative 

Janine is mum of 2 children, who are now 10 and 12.  She runs her own business helping coaches and consultants with their marketing and sales. 

We spoke to Janine about: 

• Whether there is such a thing as a natural born parent and Janine’s feelings on this. 
• The stress of getting children out of the house - mum guilt and shouting at children! 
• How taking an online parenting course when the children were around 2 and 4 changed things for Janine. 
• ‘Feeling maternal’ - the expectation that everything should come naturally to parents and how we haven’t replaced the ‘village’ that helped us to raise our children. 
• Having a growth mindset and how this helped Janine to develop in her parenting. 
• How Janine felt that she lost her identity and that her world had shrunk when she had her children. How having her own business helped her to get her identity back.  
• Three things Janine would say to herself as a new mum.   

Instagram - @bespokefamily / Facebook - @bespokefamily  

For information about a Bespoke Family Parent Consultation click here: https://www.bespokefamily.co.uk/parent-consultations    

‘Your Guide to...’ (our downloadable webinars including behaviour, toilet training, sleep and more)  

This podcast is produced by Decibelle Creative 

Founder of Onle Networking (an online business network) Kelly West, talked to us about her daughter Kennedy (16) who has global development delay (she has a cognitive age of 2-3) as well as about her business which she founded 5 years ago with her husband and her older daughter. 

 We discussed: 

•  How they love people which is why the business was founded (Kelly met her husband at networking!) 
• All about Kennedy the signs the family first saw in her and the challenges the family had and still face especially with the lack of support the family have received.  
• The experiences Kennedy had in mainstream school and how this currently looks for the family moving forward. 
• How Kennedy will never be able to live independently and how Kelly navigates this for the future, including how this and other sensitive topics (like death for example) can be communicated to Kennedy. 
• A behaviour (PBS) group that Kelly attended and how helpful she found it. 
• The challenges of going out and about with Kennedy and how Kelly deals with situations that arise. Using the sunflower lanyard. 
• The autistic spectrum and the huge difference between the ‘severity’ of how this affects different people.  
• How Kelly manages the demands of the business alongside the needs of Kennedy and how exhausting it can be day to day. 
• How Kelly does (or doesn’t) look after herself...and how she is OK with that. 
• The positive support networks that Kelly would recommend and how she also is very open to having conversations with people in the same kind of situation.  

Kelly’s business – OnleNetworking 

Linked in - @KellyWest 

Instagram - @bespokefamily / Facebook - @bespokefamily  

For information about a Bespoke Family Parent Consultation click here: https://www.bespokefamily.co.uk/parent-consultations    

‘Your Guide to...’ (our downloadable webinars including

behaviour, toilet training, sleep and more)  

This podcast is produced by Decibelle Creative 

Rebecca started her business when her children were quite young (the youngest was starting school) and she wanted to ‘find her thing’. 

We chatted about: 

• Rebecca's background – she set up an outsourcing agency ‘Get Ahead’ in 2010 working with companies to provide Virtual Assistants (VAs).  
• Having an open mind and a confidence to see where things go and how setting up a business feels like nurturing another child! 
• Balancing having a family and young children when setting up a business and how Rebecca managed it. 
• The challenges Rebecca faced along the way, how she tackled them and the impact this has had on the children and how they have developed. 
• How Rebecca transfers what she did when setting up her business to the VAs (who Rebecca calls ‘Virtual Experts’) working in the business empowering them to also work around their families. 
• Lockdown and how nothing really changed for Rebecca during that time (except for having the children at home!) and how the authenticity of working from home has been made so much easier since then. 
• Work / life balance and whether there is such a thing for people running their own business. 
• The joy of WhatsApp!! 
• Empty Nesting, the children in your life and how that feels for Rebecca and other business owners. 
• Rebecca’s proud moments and 3 tips for parents setting up their own business! 
•  

Get Ahead VA (Rebecca’s company) - https://getaheadva.com/ 

Get Ahead VA on Instagram - getaheadva 

Instagram - @bespokefamily / Facebook - @bespokefamily  

For information about a Bespoke Family Parent Consultation click here: https://www.bespokefamily.co.uk/parent-consultations    

‘Your Guide to...’ (our downloadable webinars including behaviour, toilet training, sleep and more)  

This podcast is produced by Decibelle Creative 

Cate is a Senior Associate at Kingsley Napley and spoke to us about what’s involved when parents divorce.  

We covered: 

• The 3 strands to a divorce – the divorce itself, the finances, the children. 
• No fault divorce and what it is / what it means. 
• What happens when courts get involved in terms of making an order about how the children spend their time between parents and whether there is any flexibility. 
• Particular patterns of how to share the care of children that Cate would recommend to parents. 
• How long the divorce process can take particularly when children are involved. 
• Mediation and how that works as part of the process. 
• What happens if you aren’t married and have children but want to separate.  
• Whether there is such a thing as common law marriage in the UK. 
• Child maintenance, what it is and how it is calculated (link below). 
• Cate’s tips for communicating your breakup with your child/ren and managing the relationship going forward.  
• Cate’s tips for trying to avoid an acrimonious divorce including making sure you have lots of people and systems around to support you both. 
• Having goals in place for the future with your children and the importance of communicating these to your lawyer.  
• Pre-nups / post-nups – the law around these and how they work. 

Instagram - @bespokefamily / Facebook - @bespokefamily  

Kingsley Napley Family Law - https://www.kingsleynapley.co.uk/insights/blogs/family-law-blog 

About Cate - https://www.kingsleynapley.co.uk/our-people/cate-maguire 

Child maintenance calculator - https://www.gov.uk/calculate-child-maintenance 

One of the Apps Cate recommends – Our Family Wizard   

Our co-parenting blog - https://www.bespokefamily.co.uk/blog/coparenting 

For information about a Bespoke Family Parent Consultation click here: https://www.bespokefamily.co.uk/parent-consultations    

‘Your Guide to...’ (our downloadable webinars including behaviour, toilet training, sleep and more) - get 25% off any guide with the code ‘PODCAST’     

This podcast is produced by Decibelle Creative 

Laura was born and raised in Southern California and has been in London since 2021.  She is the daughter of an Occupational Therapist (OT) and now runs a private practice – Kid Kind Collective and works with children as a Paediatric OT. 

We spoke about: 

• What an OT actually does (Becks had no idea!) and why they do what they do in terms of outcomes for the children. 
• How OTs help people be adaptive with how they get to the end goal. 
• All about sensory processing – what this means and how an OT can help as a ‘sensory detective’ and getting the whole family involved with this.  
• How an OT can help when children just can’t sit still (more detective work!) 
• How you can get your child referred to an OT and what happens at their first appointment (often work can start before an ADHD or Autism diagnosis for example). 
• The link with emotional regulation and how the work that an OT does to support children can impact on this. 
• Laura’s top 3 things that she loves about being an OT. 
• What Laura’s childhood was like as the daughter of an OT and what she learnt. 

Instagram - @bespokefamily / Facebook - @bespokefamily  

Laura’s website:  https://www.kid-kind.com/ 

For information about a Bespoke Family Parent Consultation click here: https://www.bespokefamily.co.uk/parent-consultations    

‘Your Guide to...’ (our downloadable webinars including behaviour, toilet training, sleep and more) - get 25% off any guide with the code ‘PODCAST’     

This podcast is produced by Decibelle Creative