It was such a joy to get to chat with Wendy Snyder, parenting coach and founder of Fresh Start Families. Her passion for shifting the way we think about parenting and relationships with our kids is such an inspiration. If you are a parent of a spicy/strong-willed child, then this is the episode for you! She discusses “out of date” parenting models that are heavy with punitive measures and why these not only cause disconnection and harm in our relationships with our kids, but ultimately why they’re not effective or the way we all flourish. She opts instead for compassionate discipline which she talks about in the episode. I love the practical ways she gives us to empower our children and ourselves by meeting our needs and attuning to our kids. Her personal story and how she landed on this way of parenting resonates so much with my own story and I love the way she talks about strong-willed children and discusses their intense needs to feel powerful and a sense of belonging. So often times we hear this “need for power” as a negative thing, but Wendy talks about how we all have this need, it’s biological, and we all have it in varying degrees. When this bucket isn’t getting filled, this is when we see resistance or less desirable behavior in us all. She gives the example of even how we see adults speak to a coffee barista rudely, when that bucket isn’t being filled. Wendy’s passion is contagious and I am so excited to share our chat with you. 

You can find Wendy and learn more about Fresh Start Families and her resources, coaching services, course information, and membership group information on:

-Instagram @freshstartwendy

-her website FreshStartFamilyOnline.com

-her podcast Fresh Start Family Show

I mention the following people/resources in the episode:

Spicy Ones, coined by Mary Van Geffen @maryvangeffen

@singinghome and how she helps moms yell less through regulation awareness, music, and singing

*Raising Your Spirted Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, and Energetic by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka

*This is an affiliate link. I may earn a small commission if you choose to purchase, at no additional cost to you.

I had the great pleasure of chatting with Amy Hughes, ⁠@simplelittleamy⁠ over on Instagram. Amy is a gentle parenting coach, writer, & has signed a contract, working on a new book, launching in 2025! I am so excited about these and all the wisdom she has to offer! Her passion for encouraging parents, especially parents of faith, to throw off punitive & shame based ways of parenting, and move into peaceful and connected ways of parenting is so beautiful! It really is so timely that I am publishing this right now, as I’ve been sharing so much over on Instagram about my disheartenment over misconceptions many Christian parents have about gentle/respectful parenting. This has been really on my heart and Amy and I discuss all of this in our chat. I love the way she says "Connection before correction" and "All feelings are fine but not every behavior or reaction is fine".

I also adored the way she said we can be "Christ honoring & child honoring at the same time." We also delve into talking about her journey from a more rigid Charlotte Mason based homeschool, to a more freeing unschooling style with Charlotte Mason still be a huge influence in their homeschool. Amy talks about the way she naturally exposes her kids to important things and things she finds value in and building trust with them. She also talks about the choice and autonomy she gives her kids in all of this. 

We end on her encouragement for families that our homeschool truly does not have to look like anyone else. That we often leave the public school system to homeschool, but can end up finding ourselves comparing ourselves to another system, some kind of homeschooling system we feel we need to measure up to, or feeling like social media tells us there’s a “certain right” way to homeschool. Amy is such an encouraging voice, reminding us that we can throw off all of these perceived pressures, and find calming, peaceful ways of educating our children, and learn to let go and give our children more freedom. She talks about a quote from Patrick Farenga, who worked with John Holt, where says unschooling is giving our children as much freedom as we can comfortably bear. We can build a foundation of trust and connection with our kids, and trust the process.

Thanks Amy for coming on the podcast! It was a joy to chat! Amy just released a new e-book, ⁠A Guide to Strewing⁠, which gives us such great wisdom on how to strew in our homes! Here's the link to her ⁠Instagram Bio.⁠ & ⁠website⁠. Let me get us right over to our chat!

Hey friends! This podcast episode is long over due! I had such a blast chatting with Meredith Miller, author of Woven: Nurturing a faith your kid doesn't have to heal from.

She has such a gift for articulating to parents how we can raise kiddos in a faith centered home, when we don’t have all the answers (who does?), & even when/if we are struggling to with doubts and concerns of our own! She talks to parents who are wanting to raise their kids in a different faith culture than the one they were raised in. She talks about how we can we move away from an obedience training paradigm to a trust based paradigm. She tells us about something called moralistic therapeutic deism, a kind of faith a lot of people were & are taught. I love the way she explain it to us and why we want to move away from it and what to do instead. I laughed out loud about the way she says we don’t apply the Bible, it’s not sunscreen!Instead she says, we introduce children to the God whose story is told in the Bible.

I can’t wait for you to listen to this chat & hope you enjoy it as much as I did! Thanks Meredith for coming on the show and sharing your heart with us! This work you’re doing is so needed!

Here we go!

Meredith's Website

New Book! Woven: Nurturing a faith your kid doesn't have to heal from

Podcast: Ask Away

Instagram: @meredithannemiller

It was wonderful getting to chat with Sarah Collins from Homeschool OT @homeschoolot over on Instagram. She has been such a valuable resource to our family and our occupational therapy needs and is such a passionate, wise voice for homeschool families, as we seek to address the roots of our children’s behaviors and create homes with rhythms, peace, and well-being. In this episode, we chat about boredom! We, as homeschool moms have heard that age old cry from our children “I’m bored!” And often our responses can be something along the lines of “good, that breeds creativity!” Or “go find something to do” or whatever our go to answer may be. And no shame, mamas! We all have likely said similar things. But, Sarah and I chat in this episode about why for some children, it might not be as easy as it seems to just go find something to do and why children struggle to find something to do in the first place. It’s such a fascinating conversation and I have been learning so much. Sarah talks to us about task initiation and why some kids have a harder time initiating tasks. She talks about how depending on the stimuli around them and the choices they have (and clutter!), they may be over or underwhelmed and may need our guidance to help them. She gives us some great practical strategies and tips. We talk about windows of tolerance and zones of regulation and how we can cater to our individual child’s needs to help them thrive. It was such a blast hearing from Sarah. The way she is able to give us insight into the root and why behind our children’s reactions to things and their needs, is so incredibly insightful. She is a gem of knowledge! I hope you love our conversation as much as we did and you can find Sarah on Instagram @homeschoolot. And on her website HERE. She also has a monthly membership available that I currently subscribe to. This is a great way to be able to pick her brain, gain community, do book studies, and so much more!

Hi friends! I’m beyond excited to introduce this new episode to you, as I had the sincere pleasure of chatting with one of favorite unschooling gurus, Sue Patterson over @unschoolingmom2mom. Sue is an unschooling coach and mentor and has 3 grown adult children that she unschooled. I won’t say much bc she just says it so much better & with such sheer joy, but we chat about how we really can unschool and it actually does work! It was such a fresh breath of air to chat with Sue and I could literally listen to her all day! She has such wisdom and encouragement to share with us about how we truly can live a life of learning without school, pressures, and societal expectations regarding learning, especially math. One of the biggest questions I get about unschooling is but what about MATH?? How will children learn math if we don’t use curriculum & air them done for lessons every day? Or what about teens and how do we unschool them? Sue and I talk about alllll of this and more on the episode. 

Sue’s website is www.unschoolimgmom2mom.com and she is offering a discount code for 1/2 off her math course (as well as her Confused About Unschooling? course), through the end of this month July 2023, use the code SUMMER2023

Today, I’m flashing back to an Instagram live that was recorded last year with Maggie Nick, LCSW, MSW @maggiewithperspectacles. Maggie is a licensed trauma therapist and parenting expert. Founder of parenting with perspectacles. She helps parents “reparent” themselves & has a “revolutionary approach to healing low self worth” by help[ing] you understand yourself on a profound healing level so you can be the parent you needed to your inner child, & your [current] child, if you’re a parent”. Her content and basically everything she says resonates with me & she has been such an amazing encouragement and practical help in my motherhood journey, so I was thrilled when she said she could come on the show!

We chat about something Maggie calls “the gameface mama”, when we are white knuckling our way through, trying harder, we're overstimulated, & seemingly can’t come up for air. Do you relate? I certainly do!

Maggie walks us through how she came to a point in her life when she said no more. She refused to live that way anymore and she talks to us about how we can put our Perspectacles on, get compassionate and  curious about our triggers and feelings (and our children’s), accept all the different parts of us, tangible ways we can regulate ourselves in times of stress and frustration, & widen our capacity so we can gain compassion.

It was such a gem of a conversation & one I constantly need to come back to.

Maggie has amazing content on her Instagram feed & parenting courses that I highly recommend. So head on over & check her out. She also has a Facebook Group Community! Here's a LINK to all her goodness!