Parenting with Gratitude™

Start where you are with what you have. What are your mindset goals for 2023? And what are the obstacles that get in the way of well-being and embracing the "same you" as you have always been? We will talk about all these things while hopefully discovering new things about ourselves that don't come from "fixing" a thing about our motherhood or who we really are at our cores.

We use The Happiness Equation by Neil Pasricha as our guide in this episode and dive into the first of two obstacles he identifies as happiness blockers: Relying on external circumstances to make you happy and Seeking approval from others.

Other references in this episode include:

Psychologists agree that acting inauthentically is one of the underlying causes of that nagging unfulfillment many of us feel – and the research here shows that these feelings of discomfort and inauthentic behavior go hand-in-hand.

And the Buddhist concept of the Second Arrow – which you can read more about here.

Follow along for more gratitude and parenting advice:

👉Instagram

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Buy my bedtime book: "The Middle of the Night Book "here.

Subscribe and share so you can ALL listen as a parenting expert and author, Stef Tousignant, offers you a sneak peek into her journey to normalize imperfect parenting and discover the gifts a committed gratitude practice can bring to modern family life.

Parenting with gratitude is not the end goal - it's the method. 🎟 It's the means to achieving the goal of parenting differently.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you were raised.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you did 5 years ago.

The kids of my good friend Alison Mountford of Ends and Stems, a family meal planning and food waste expert, provided our fantastic and giggly intro. More about her here: https://endsandstems.com

Motherhood changes our relationship with joy. We often wonder if we are worthy of its benefits or if it's even achievable when exhausted or burned out. Using gratitude, we can remind ourselves of our innate worth – despite what the Negativity Bias and our Inner Critics have to say – and access Joy and even Delight! How? Well, you'll have to listen, won't you 🙂

Follow along for more gratitude and parenting:

👉Instagram

👉TikTok

👉Youtube

Buy my bedtime book: "The Middle of the Night Book "here.

Subscribe and share so you can ALL listen as a parenting expert and author, Stef Tousignant, offers you a sneak peek into her journey to normalize imperfect parenting and discover the gifts a committed gratitude practice can bring to modern family life.

Parenting with gratitude is not the end goal - it's the method. 🎟 It's the means to achieving the goal of parenting differently.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you were raised.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you did 5 years ago.

The kids of my good friend Alison Mountford of Ends and Stems, a family meal planning and food waste expert, provided our fantastic and giggly intro. More about her here: https://endsandstems.com

What would change if you asked yourself: "What is my perfect day?" Let's figure it out. When I sat down to reflect, I discovered something very disjointed about my exercise routine - and I decided it was time to make a change - to the Hot Girl Walk - or as I call it, The Hot Mom Walk.

The Hot Mom Walk is so much more than hip swings and curve-accentuating leggings; it is a valuable component to my daily gratitude practice and one that I think you could incorporate too. The Hot Girl Walk was invented by Mia Lind on TikTok during the pandemic and is a time to reflect on your goals, your gratitude, and how hot you are.

Exercise is good but sometimes not great, especially if you pick the wrong type as I did before my Hot Mom Walks. I want you to discover just what type of exercise you would do on your perfect day – and remember exercise is individual, and so is keeping physically fit, so what works for me may not work for you and vice versa!

Follow along for more gratitude and parenting:

👉Instagram

👉TikTok

👉Youtube

Buy my bedtime book: "The Middle of the Night Book "here.

Subscribe and share so you can ALL listen as a parenting expert and author, Stef Tousignant, offers you a sneak peek into her journey to normalize imperfect parenting and discover the gifts a committed gratitude practice can bring to modern family life.

Parenting with gratitude is not the end goal - it's the method. 🎟 It's the means to achieving the goal of parenting differently.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you were raised.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you did 5 years ago.

The kids of my good friend Alison Mountford of Ends and Stems, a family meal planning and food waste expert, provided our fantastic and giggly intro. More about her here: https://endsandstems.com

January feels like a good time to get deep on caregiver burnout and the simplest way to lose the overwhelming funk we may be experiencing now that the holidays are over. We take a look at the scarcity mindset as well as some really fun activities that do not involve any more work that will help to bring the Joy back for 2023!

Referenced in this episode:

For the study on sleep lost when visitors are at your home click here.

More about David W. Chan's burnout work with teachers can be found here. His quote from the episode is as follows: "the burnout components (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a reduced sense of personal accomplishment) are diametrically opposite views of the good life (pleasant, engaged, and meaningful life), suggesting promoting the good life or well-being could be an effective positive approach to combating burnout."

Limiting your perspective is one of scarcity's most problematic effects. In fact Havard behavioral economists Sendhill Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir argue that the Scarcity Trap creates a mindset that rarely considers our long-term best interests. "To put it bluntly," says Mullainathan, "if I made you poor tomorrow, you'd probably start behaving in many of the same ways we associate with poor people." And just like many people who live at or below poverty, he adds, you'd likely get stuck and stay stuck in the scarcity trap.

Follow along for more gratitude and parenting:

👉Instagram

👉TikTok

👉Youtube

Buy my bedtime book: "The Middle of the Night Book "here.

Subscribe and share so you can ALL listen as a parenting expert and author, Stef Tousignant, offers you a sneak peek into her journey to normalize imperfect parenting and discover the gifts a committed gratitude practice can bring to modern family life.

Parenting with gratitude is not the end goal - it's the method. 🎟 It's the means to achieving the goal of parenting differently.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you were raised.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you did 5 years ago.

The kids of my good friend Alison Mountford of Ends and Stems, a family meal planning and food waste expert, provided our fantastic and giggly intro. More about her here: https://endsandstems.com

Have you ever heard: "You are not broken. You don't need fixing"? Well, what does that actually mean? How can we accept the messes, crying, yelling, and general chaos of parenthood without wanting to fix it all - to become better parents and to raise happier, well-adjusted kids? This episode get right to the point - we need to see our fixing mindsets as products of our culture and learn to look at our home life through a different lens - one that reminds us that we have everything we need right now, that our kids are ok and will be ok - and we are good AF moms.

Follow along for more gratitude and parenting:

👉Instagram

👉TikTok

👉Youtube

Buy my bedtime book: "The Middle of the Night Book "here.

Subscribe and share so you can ALL listen as a parenting expert and author, Stef Tousignant, offers you a sneak peek into her journey to normalize imperfect parenting and discover the gifts a committed gratitude practice can bring to modern family life.

Parenting with gratitude is not the end goal - it's the method. 🎟 It's the means to achieving the goal of parenting differently.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you were raised.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you did 5 years ago.

The kids of my good friend Alison Mountford of Ends and Stems, a family meal planning and food waste expert, provided our fantastic and giggly intro. More about her here: https://endsandstems.com

Being in the present moment is your greatest ally as a parent. And so we will talk about mindful awareness in this episode, dealing with out-of-body distractions and cozy thought patterns that keep us stuck in the future and the past. And you will learn a simple technique to incorporate into your daily routine - no meditation needed - called Stop Signs.

If you want to learn more about why neuroplasticity and neural pathways are essential to our overall well-being work and just how the brain can jump into "reactive mode" so quickly – check out Dr. Rick Hanson's book Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence.

Click here for a great graphic of how our brain develops year after year.

Follow along for more gratitude and parenting:

👉Instagram

👉TikTok

👉Youtube

Buy my bedtime book: "The Middle of the Night Book "here.

Subscribe and share so you can ALL listen as a parenting expert and author, Stef Tousignant, offers you a sneak peek into her journey to normalize imperfect parenting and discover the gifts a committed gratitude practice can bring to modern family life.

Parenting with gratitude is not the end goal - it's the method. 🎟 It's the means to achieving the goal of parenting differently.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you were raised.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you did 5 years ago.

The kids of my good friend Alison Mountford of Ends and Stems, a family meal planning and food waste expert, provided our fantastic and giggly intro. More about her here: https://endsandstems.com

Food is such a big issue for parents, from toddlers to teenagers. And that's why my conversation with Alison Mountford is so essential. We talk about picky eaters vs. opinionated ones. Hobbies and habits help us pause and combat entitlement by teaching children the valuable skill of waiting, whether tending a garden or cooking a simple meal. Alison is a chef and a self-proclaimed food waste expert, so I make sure to ask her just how we can be better earth citizens while also acknowledging the mental load of being super busy moms.

We also tackle this listener question: What's the difference between a picky eater and a child who just knows what they like and don't like? And where do you draw the line and just say forget it when it comes to offering the same foods over and over again?

Ask your parenting question on parentdifferently.com, and I will invite a guest onto the show to answer it.

More about Alison Mountford, first off, her kids are the silly and cute voices you hear at the beginning of every PDWG episode! She is the owner of Ends and Stems, a meal-planning website packed with easy recipes for busy parents that reduce food waste. Join her newsletter list on her website or give her a follow on TikTok or Instagram!

Follow along for more gratitude and parenting:

👉Instagram

👉TikTok

👉Youtube

Buy my bedtime book: "The Middle of the Night Book "here.

Subscribe and share so you can ALL listen as a parenting expert and author, Stef Tousignant, offers you a sneak peek into her journey to normalize imperfect parenting and discover the gifts a committed gratitude practice can bring to modern family life.

Parenting with gratitude is not the end goal - it's the method. 🎟 It's the means to achieving the goal of parenting differently.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you were raised.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you did 5 years ago.

The kids of my good friend Alison Mountford of Ends and Stems, a family meal planning and food waste expert provided our fantastic and giggly intro. More about her here: https://endsandstems.com

Another evidence-based practice, but this week, we will give our Mom Brains a rest and look at the messages our bodies are trying to tell us. How can we give ourselves the thanks and appreciation we deserve while also training our brains to notice the somatic cues that can be easily ignored? Well, I wrote the book on this one - literally. My children's book was our inspiration today - and our practice: A Love and Kindness Bodyscan.

In my book, The Middle of the Night Book, I introduce a body scan meditation to help babies and toddlers develop the skill of body awareness. When you are aware of the cues your body is trying to tell you, it's much easier to notice when you are tired, or for us moms, when we are sad, or even more subtle, feeling a little uncomfortable or disingenuous or lonely.

I hope you give it a try and let me know what you think on Instagram!

More on my book, The Middle of the Night Book, here.

More on Somatic Therapy here.

Save the Date for the 'Parent's Day of Rest' on December 21st, where parents all over the country will pause and take the day to themselves right amid the hustle and bustle of the holidays.

Follow along for more gratitude and parenting:

👉Instagram

👉TikTok

👉Youtube

Subscribe and share so you can ALL listen as a parenting expert and author, Stef Tousignant, offers you a sneak peek into her journey to normalize imperfect parenting and discover the gifts a committed gratitude practice can bring to modern family life.

Parenting with gratitude is not the end goal - it's the method. 🎟 It's the means to achieving the goal of parenting differently.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you were raised.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you did 5 years ago.

Our fantastic and giggly intro was provided by the kids of my good friend Alison Montford of Ends and Stems, a family meal planning and food waste expert. More about her here: https://endsandstems.com

Could gratitude work for you too? Let's talk about what gratitude does to your mindset and how it can shift it away from all that negative self-talk we parents know so well.

"The Feel Good, Do Good" phenomenon naturally kicks in when we feel good - but how do we bridge the gap from burnout and exhaustion to feeling better? First, we have to assess where we are at and if we have reached our 'enough is enough' moment be brave enough to stop and notice the messages within.

And, there are preventative measures we can take. One: train your brain to notice the good with a daily gratitude practice. Two: Identify your Gratitude Anchor or the one thing so rooted in your life's purpose that no matter your state, you can feel grateful for it. (hint for me, it's my kids, but for you, it could be something totally different like your dog or nature)

And don't worry, we definitely touch on toxic positivity in this episode with support from OG gratitude research Professor Robert Emmons and this quote:

"When people are grateful, they aren't necessarily free of negative emotions—we don't find that they necessarily have less anxiety or less tension or less unhappiness. Practicing gratitude magnifies positive feelings more than it reduces negative feelings. If it was just positive thinking or just a form of denial, you'd experience no negative thoughts or feelings when you're keeping a gratitude journal, for instance. But, in fact, people do."

Other episodes mentioned in this one:

Broaden and Build Research: Episode 13

Benefit Finding: Episode 15

Links from this episode:

Follow me on Instagram to meet me in real life!

The Mayo Clinic's Guide to Caregiver Burnout

How We Heal by Alexandra Elle

Intrinsic Motivation Research

The Balanced Parent Podcast with Dr.Laura Froyen

Save the Date for the 'Parent's Day of Rest' on December 21st where parents all over the country will pause and take the day to themselves right amid the hustle and bustle of the holidays.

Follow along for more gratitude and parenting:

👉Instagram

👉TikTok

👉Youtube

Buy my bedtime book: "The Middle of the Night Book "here.

Subscribe and share so you can ALL listen as a parenting expert and author, Stef Tousignant, offers you a sneak peek into her journey to normalize imperfect parenting and discover the gifts a committed gratitude practice can bring to modern family life.

Parenting with gratitude is not the end goal - it's the method. 🎟 It's the means to achieving the goal of parenting differently.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you were raised.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you did 5 years ago.

Our fantastic and giggly intro was provided by the kids of my good friend Alison Montford of Ends and Stems, a family meal planning and food waste expert. More about her here: https://endsandstems.com

December is the perfect month to talk about resentment, isn't it? The mental load becomes a bit heavier this time of year - especially for the Primary Caregiver. In this episode, we talk about what is underneath the obstacle of resentment and what we can do to ease up and be a little less bitter. We also look at choices vs. circumstances, as well as the shocking things that happen when you start to go to therapy...

Gratitude is just one part of the many facets of who you are - but if you feel resentful, you will not feel grateful. So if you find yourself saying, "I should be grateful right now" don't worry there are plenty of things that get in the way that just part of the modern parenting package.

Of course, uncomfortable emotions are messengers that remind us to look within. Checking in with yourself is the simplest way to be generous, so offer yourself the gift of 30 seconds, and maybe whatever your resentment is trying to protect you from will rise to the surface, and then you can offer yourself the self-compassion you crave.

Save the Date for the 'Parent's Day of Rest' on December 21st where parents all over the country will pause and take the day to themselves right amid the hustle and bustle of the holidays.

Follow along for more gratitude and parenting:

👉Instagram

👉TikTok

👉Youtube

Buy my bedtime book: "The Middle of the Night Book "here.

Subscribe and share so you can ALL listen as a parenting expert and author, Stef Tousignant, offers you a sneak peek into her journey to normalize imperfect parenting and discover the gifts a committed gratitude practice can bring to modern family life.

Parenting with gratitude is not the end goal - it's the method. 🎟 It's the means to achieving the goal of parenting differently.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you were raised.

🎧 Listen to this podcast if you want to parent differently than you did 5 years ago.

Our fantastic and giggly intro was provided by the kids of my good friend Alison Montford of Ends and Stems, a family meal planning and food waste expert. More about her here: https://endsandstems.com