Many say boredom is good for kids’ creativity, but gone are the long summer days where kids find things to do by riding bikes, exploring creeks, and running around the neighborhood til dinner. Today’s boredom is more often filled indoors with ever-present online content. So how do we keep our middle schoolers safe online this summer, when many have little oversight and maximum down time? In this episode, Jason Zeigler of AdaptShield discusses how parents can target the risks their family is most vulnerable to online so families can enjoy summer without constant monitoring.

Referenced in this episode:
The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt

About the Guest:
Jason brings 15 years of experience in financial services and healthcare sectors, with a focus on information security and risk management. Drawing on his professional expertise and personal experience as a parent, he was inspired to establish AdaptShield. The company is dedicated to helping families navigate the complexities of their digital worlds by offering free best practices, customized product recommendations, and personalized one-on-one consultations, all designed to reduce the risks families may face online.

Learn more about AdaptShield.
Use coupon code RSM2025 for a 10% discount on any AdaptShield services for Raising Middle School Girls listeners.
Connect with Jason on IG and FB.

Connect with Raising Middle School Girls:
Thank you for listening to the Raising Middle School Girls podcast. Want to hear more from experts who can help you support your middle school girl? Please subscribe to the podcast or sign up for the Raising Middle School Girls newsletter.  Do you have a burning question about raising your middle school girl? Send a DM to @RaisingMiddleSchoolGirls on Instagram to have your question considered for a future episode. We're in this together, parents!     

Sex. Drugs. Family finances…There are so many uncomfortable conversations we need to have with our kids! Many parents are waiting “until they get a little older,” but is that the right approach? In this episode of Raising Middle School Girls, educator and parenting coach Dana Kaplan talks to us about why we need to talk to our kids early and often about the hard stuff. Dana shares practical strategies for approaching tough topics. Learn how creating open communication can strengthen your relationship and empower your child during these pivotal years.

Useful Links
This episode includes a sponsored ad, and the links below may be affiliate links. I might earn a small commission if you buy—thanks for supporting the show! 

Get the Brain on Board Executive Function course for parents and teachers - On sale NOW through 4/27/25!! 

About the Guest: Dana Kaplan
Connect with Dana on Instagram.
Connect with Dana on LinkedIn.
Learn more about Dana's work at https://www.danakaplanteach.com.

Dana Kaplan is a renowned, award-winning Educational Coach for Neurodiverse and Out-of-the-Box Learners, specializing in rich self-investigation as a direct pathway to disrupt and dismantle stigmas, conscious and unconscious biases, and shifting one’s thoughts in order to build a Compassionate Community for ALL.

Connect with Raising Middle School Girls:
Thank you for listening to the Raising Middle School Girls podcast. Want to hear more from experts who can help you support your middle school girl? Please subscribe to the podcast or sign up for the Raising Middle School Girls newsletter.  Do you have a burning question about raising your middle school girl? Send a DM to @RaisingMiddleSchoolGirls on Instagram to have your question considered for a future episode. We're in this together, parents!     

Feeling more like roommates than romantic partners lately? Maybe you wish you could talk more openly with your significant other about what you want out of your marriage, or maybe you're not sure what the future holds for your relationship once it's just you and your significant other left at home.  In this episode, licensed therapist Andrea Burkly offers up expert tips on navigating marital disconnect during the tween and teen parenting years. Andrea provides actionable steps to rebuild intimacy and connection with your spouse before the kids leave the nest. 

Referenced in this episode:
The New Rules of Marriage: What you need to know to make love work, Terrence Real

The Challenges of mother-daughter relationships, episode released 10/17/24

About the Guest
Connect with Andrea on IG.
Listen to the Sounds Like Therapy podcast.
Learn more about Andrea's work.
Get Andrea's FREE 7-step weekly partnership guide.
Check out Sounds Like Therapy episode on good partnering.

Andrea Burkly is a therapist, speaker, and host of Sounds Like Therapy, where she helps couples stay connected through the parenting years—when marriage often takes a back seat to the demands of raising kids. Coming up on her 20th anniversary and raising four kids of her own, she’s learned as much from personal experience as she has from thousands of hours of work and training. With a relatable, no-nonsense approach, Andrea gives couples the insight and tools they need to build a strong, lasting partnership—even in the busiest seasons of life.

Connect with Raising Middle School Girls:
Thank you for listening to the Raising Middle School Girls podcast. Want to hear more from experts who can help you support your middle school girl? Please subscribe to the podcast or sign up for the Raising Middle School Girls newsletter.  Do you have a burning question about raising your middle school girl? Send a DM to @RaisingMiddleSchoolGirls on Instagram to have your question considered for a future episode. We're in this together, parents!     

Some days it feels like everyone is a parenting expert, but they don't always agree on the "right" way to parent. How do we, as everyday parents know which parenting advice to listen to? In this episode, Emily Edlynn, PhD, talks to us about the role of parenting experts and how we parents can develop the internal compass to raise our children according to our values and kids' needs.

About the Guest
Connect with Emily on IG.
Connect with Emily on FB.
Purchase Autonomy-Supportive Parenting.
Learn more about Parent Smarter, Not Harder program.

Dr. Emily Edlynn is a clinical psychologist specializing in children and adolescents who writes about parenting on her blog, Parent Smarter, Not Harder. Emily is co-host of the podcast, Psychologists Off the Clock, and has written a parenting advice column for Parents.com since 2019 as well as articles for the Washington Post, Scary Mommy, and Motherly. Emily is currently the director of pediatric behavioral medicine at a private practice in Oak Park, IL, where she lives with her husband, three children, and two rescue dogs. 

Connect with Raising Middle School Girls:
Thank you for listening to the Raising Middle School Girls podcast. Want to hear more from experts who can help you support your middle school girl? Please subscribe to the podcast or sign up for the Raising Middle School Girls newsletter.  Do you have a burning question about raising your middle school girl? Send a DM to @RaisingMiddleSchoolGirls on Instagram to have your question considered for a future episode. We're in this together, parents!     

Family life tends to get even busier in the middle school years. Parents often wonder how they're supposed to get everything done without somehow creating more time in the day to do it all. In this episode, Lisa Zawrotny, productivity coach, parent, and podcast host, offers up the realities of navigating this busy life season and her best techniques for staying on top of the important stuff when life gets extra busy. Check out this episode if you're ready to be productive without feeling constantly overwhelmed.

About the Guest
Connect with Lisa on Instagram.
Learn more about Positively Productive.
Listen to the Positively Living podcast. Check out these episodes referenced in the interview:
Episode 228: How to avoid forgetting things when life gets hectic


Lisa Zawrotny is a Personalized Productivity Coach, founder of Positively Productive Systems, and host of the Positively Living® Podcast. She helps creatives and caregivers reduce overwhelm and achieve more with less so they can make space for what matters. When she’s not sharing how to simplify and stress less, you’ll find her hanging out with her husband and kiddos exploring the world through traveling, chilling out with movies, and sometimes acting like a rock star. Lisa has current certifications in time + stress management, life coaching, and positive psychology. She’s helped hundreds of clients do less, live more, and breathe easier.

Connect with Raising Middle School Girls:
Thank you for listening to the Raising Middle School Girls podcast. Want to hear more from experts who can help you support your middle school girl? Please subscribe to the podcast or sign up for the Raising Middle School Girls newsletter.  Do you have a burning question about raising your middle school girl? Send a DM to @RaisingMiddleSchoolGirls on Instagram to have your question considered for a future episode. We're in this together, parents!     

Is your middle school girl more into her skincare regime than you are? Do you wonder if the chemicals in her products are safe? In this episode, Janice talks with Kimberly Grustas, founder of Good for You Girls, the first clean line of skincare dedicated to girls in the US. Kim explains how the chemicals found in skincare can be harmful to our girls and offers simple but powerful steps for moms to stay relevant and remain their daughter’s biggest influencer.

About the Guest
Visit goodforyougirls.com to learn more or purchase Good for You Girls products. Use discount code RMSG20 for 20% off your order!
Download Good for You Girls Ingredients to Avoid in Skincare for Girls, Tweens and Teens.

Kimberly Grustas founded Good For You Girls to protect girls from toxic chemicals during puberty. With over 15 years in natural products and nutrition, Kim recognized the risks of estrogenic chemicals and was concerned by the harmful ingredients in products marketed to young girls. The lack of safe, effective and age-appropriate products combined with her knowledge about the lowering age of puberty was all she needed to launch this transformative brand to help other moms keep their daughters safe.

Connect with Raising Middle School Girls:
Thank you for listening to the Raising Middle School Girls podcast. Want to hear more from experts who can help you support your middle school girl? Please subscribe to the podcast or sign up for the Raising Middle School Girls newsletter.  Do you have a burning question about raising your middle school girl? Send a DM to @RaisingMiddleSchoolGirls on Instagram to have your question considered for a future episode. We're in this together, parents!     

The tactics that motivated our younger kids often don't work on our tweens and teens. So what does it take to get your kid to care about the stuff they need to do at school and beyond? In today's episode, Becca Block, author of Can you Help Me Give a Sh*t?, gives us the recipe to create an environment where our kids want to do the things that are good for them to do, and why some of the most common tactics for motivation result in burnout in some of our kids and apathy in others.

About the Guest:
Dr. Rebecca R. Block has been working in service of young people for over twenty years, and is the lead author of the new book Can You Help Me Give a Sh*t? Unlocking Teen Motivation in School and Life, which she co-wrote with undergraduate student Grace Edwards. As an educator, researcher, youth coach, and parent, she is steeped in both the research on motivation, positive youth development, and learning science as well as the lived experience of connecting with young people as they learn and grow. She's passionate about supporting young people in developing their agency, goals, and sustainable motivation so they can thrive not just in school but throughout their life.

Learn more about Becca's work at www.beccablock.com.
Listen to the Can You Help Me Give a Sh*t? podcast.
Purchase Can You Help Me Give a Sh*t?
Follow Becca on IG.

Connect with Raising Middle School Girls:
Thank you for listening to the Raising Middle School Girls podcast. Want to hear more from experts who can help you support your middle school girl? Please subscribe to the podcast or sign up for the Raising Middle School Girls newsletter.  Do you have a burning question about raising your middle school girl? Send a DM to @RaisingMiddleSchoolGirls on Instagram to have your question considered for a future episode. We're in this together, parents!     

Does it feel like your middle schooler requires constant reminders to do the important things? Or does it feel like they're willfully not doing the things they need to do? It may not be intentional, but rather a gap in their executive functioning. In this episode, executive function coach Carrie Bonnett helps listeners understand how their children's brains work and provides strategies to help kids get things done. The good news is that even though some struggle with executive functioning, these are skills that can be taught to improve our kids' time management, organization, and more.

Books referenced in this episode:
The Gift of Failure, Jessica Lahey

About the Guest:
Carrie Bonnett is a veteran teacher and lifelong list-maker. She is an Executive Function coach based in Bend, Oregon, where she lives with her husband and two children. Carrie works with students and families all over the world. Her no-shame approach and the strategies she teaches:

• empower students to thrive in life and in school, 
• help parents and teachers to better support their children, and
• help adults get on top of all that life requires. 

Get Carrie's quick-start blueprint to help your middle schooler get things done without constant reminders.
Connect with Carrie on IG.
Learn more about Carrie's work at www.carriebonnett.com.

Connect with Raising Middle School Girls:
Thank you for listening to the Raising Middle School Girls podcast. Want to hear more from experts who can help you support your middle school girl? Please subscribe to the podcast or sign up for the Raising Middle School Girls newsletter.  Do you have a burning question about raising your middle school girl? Send a DM to @RaisingMiddleSchoolGirls on Instagram to have your question considered for a future episode. We're in this together, parents!       

Do you worry about what kind of "information" your kids are exposed to? From fake news, to clickbait headlines, to sneaky sales tactics, we're exposed to faulty logic everyday designed to make us think, feel or do things. What if your kid (and you) could learn how to spot these tactics and not fall victim to their attempts? With a little bit of knowledge it may be easier than you think. In today's episode, I talk with Kathy Gibbens, host of the Filter it Through a Brain Cell podcast. Kathy is a mom who's made it her mission to help teens learn how to think clearly in a world filled with bad reasoning.

Books mentioned in this podcast episode:
The Fallacy Detective

About the Guest
Kathy Gibbens loves teaching people how to think well. As a homeschool mom, one of her goals has been to teach her daughter HOW to think, not just WHAT to think. Kathy's daughter was in 7th grade when the pandemic broke out and that year they read a book about logical fallacies. To Kathy's surprise & delight, her daughter started to be able to recognize bad thinking everywhere! That's when Kathy realized that people who are trained to recognize truth and foolishness are impossible to fool!

She knew she had to start teaching this topic - our world desperately needs people who can think well! The Filter It Through a Brain Cell podcast was born and in each short, fun episode, Kathy teaches teens (and their parents!) how to recognize bad thinking, practice media discernment and think well.

Take Kathy's free meme fallacy quiz.
Listen to the Filter It Through a Brain Cell podcast.
Connect with Kathy on IG.

Connect with Raising Middle School Girls:
Thank you for listening to the Raising Middle School Girls podcast. Want to hear more from experts who can help you support your middle school girl? Please subscribe to the podcast or sign up for the Raising Middle School Girls newsletter.  Do you have a burning question about raising your middle school girl? Send a DM to @RaisingMiddleSchoolGirls on Instagram to have your question considered for a future episode. We're in this together, parents!       

Do you feel like your relationship has become more challenging with your daughter in middle school? It may not be just a feeling. Many factors impact the mother daughter relationship during middle school. In this episode, Andrea Burkly and Jessica Hutchison, Emotionally Focused Couples therapists, mothers, and co-hosts of the Honest Women podcast, discuss how to preserve and foster a healthy relationship with our daughters through these challenging years.

About the Guests:
Andrea Burkly and Jessica Hutchison are two very real mental health therapists with thriving private practices in the suburbs of Chicago. They are the co-hosts of the Honest Women podcast, where they take the topics that come up all the time in therapy (aka, LIFE) and discuss them.  It's the podcast equivalent of drinks with your best mom-friends, if you best mom-friends just happen to be therapists!

Listen to the Honest Women podcast.
Connect with the Honest Women podcast on IG.
Connect with the Honest Women podcast on FB.
Learn more about Andrea Burkly's work at www.andreaburkly.com.
Learn more about Jessica Hutchison's work at www.jlhutchison.com.


Connect with Raising Middle School Girls:
Thank you for listening to the Raising Middle School Girls podcast. Want to hear more from experts who can help you raise a competent, confident, & kind middle school girl? Please subscribe to the podcast or sign up for the Raising Middle School Girls newsletter.  Do you have a burning question about raising your middle school girl? Send a DM to @RaisingMiddleSchoolGirls on Instagram to have your question considered for a future episode. We're in this together, parents!