On this week’s “You’ve Got This,” I talk with Tierney Boggs about discovery, dream, design and destiny in our parenting. PCI Certified Parent Coach, Tierney Boggs supports parents to be present, authentic and intentional all while using their God-given strengths fully to release their arrows with all of their might.

“Often, we are so focused on a tiny piece of the picture, we can’t see the whole,” Tierney said. “We need to think about planning what we would love our ideal situations in parenting to look like. … Then we actually use our child’s strengths to make this ideal happen. … As we give our children autonomy, they take ownership over that in a new way.”

Listen to the podcast for more insights and suggestions about how encouraging Philippians 4:8—“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things”—can be in raising kids.

 

On this week’s “You’ve Got This,” I talk with Eva Klein about why we’re so worried about our kids and their sleep habits. Eva is a wife and mom of three, a recovering lawyer, a certified infant and child sleep consultant, and the owner and founder of My Sleeping Baby and the Sleep Bible program. Eva’s main goal is to assist her clients establish healthy sleep habits for their children. After experiencing the debilitating effects of chronic sleep deprivation from her two children, Eva was inspired to help families overcome their sleep challenges.

“Sleep deprivation is torturous. When we aren’t sleeping well, we are not at our best,” Eva said. “I’m a little bit the scary person to be around when I don’t have enough sleep. … It’s easy to forget that toddlers are little humans with similar needs: They need sleep, they need food, they need activity. When they don’t get the sleep that they need, they are not able to function at 100%.”

Listen to the podcast for more insights and suggestions about how to get your toddler or preschooler sleeping well.

On this week’s “You’ve Got This,” I talk with Bernie Rosquites about granting grace, not judgment, to our fellow moms. Bernie is a stay-at-home mom, wife and a mother of one awesome six year old. She is also one of four cohosts for a parenting podcast. One of her favorite episodes of this podcast is Understanding Your Child’s Meltdown.

“What mother has not lost it once in public [with her kids]? We have all been there,” Bernie said. “I’m a really big supporter of having a mom tribe, a mom village, and making sure that mom village is going to be a positive and supportive mom village because when mom shaming happens, it’s so easy to get so caught up in that. … Let’s hug each other more, let’s squeeze that shoulder a little more. Check in a little bit more.”

Listen to the podcast for more insights and encouragement about being a mom.

On this week’s “You’ve Got This,” I talk with Doug Morneau about how to talk to our teens about finding their passion and path forward after graduation. Doug is a best-selling author, speaker, podcaster and serial marketer. He’s also a CrossFit and Olympic weightlifting athlete, husband, dad and granddad. Married for 30 years, Doug and his wife, Heather, live in Vancouver, Canada. Together they have three adult children, two grandchildren with the third one on the way. You can often meet up with Doug as he’s serving his local church and at community events both locally and globally. In his spare time, you can find him in the CrossFit box, Olympic weightlifting, and chasing his grandsons around.

“We just encouraged our kids to try different things. Our kind of rule of thumb in our household was try it for a season before quitting,” Doug said. “We are not trying to put our goals and ambitions on our kids. My advice to my kids was to find something that wakes you up 30 minutes before your alarm every day and do that. And that something didn’t necessarily mean going to college.”

Listen to the podcast for more insights and suggestions about letting our kids make their own life choices.

On this week’s “You’ve Got This,” I talk with Dr. Orlena Kerek about how to help kids expand their palates at the dinner table. Orlena is a pediatric doctor from the United Kingdom and the mother of four. In 2011, she moved to Spain and started her first parenting site, snottynoses. She’s done a lot of work on picky eaters and how to help kids eat healthily. Her books include Feeding Toddlers Crunch! Put a Stop to Picky Eating and Help Your Kids Love Veggies. She’s also a weight loss coach for moms and talks about easy and simple ways to reduce the risk of illness on her podcast, Fit and Fabulous.

“It’s really, really frustrating when you are faced with a toddler or a child who doesn’t want to eat. We’ve spent a lot of time making dinner, and we want to sit down and have a nice family dinner together,” Orlena said. “Our ideas are about our children eating healthily and nicely, and connecting with our kids, but the reality is hugely different. … [But] toddlers’ tastes change, and it’s really normal to see what we call picky eating.”

Listen to the podcast for more insights and suggestions about helping your picky eater eat.

On this week’s “You’ve Got This,” I talk with Emirick Haro about the importance of helping our kids learn perseverance. Emirick is a mom of three busy boys, a happy wife, and an eighth grade math and science teacher. She also co-hosts a parenting podcast, Tired Moms, to discuss the joys and challenges of mom-ventures.

“Grit is the quality in a person to stay committed to a goal even when it starts to get hard and boring,” Emirick said. “It’s the quality to see things through and to push through the hardness without getting turned off by hard work. .. The number-one killer of grit I’ve noticed is when we tend to overpraise our children’s natural abilities, which gives our kids a false sense of invincibility for not even trying.”

Listen to the podcast for more insights and suggestions about giving our kids opportunities to strengthen their own grittiness.

 

On this week’s “You’ve Got This,” I talk with Pam Whyte about the fun (yes fun!) of taking road trips as a family.. Pam is a wife and mom to two boys age 11 and 12. She’s from a family of six and has 17 nieces and nephews. Pam is currently a middle school teacher, and past school principal. She regularly consults with schools about collaboration, student behavior and engaging students as well as write a family travel blog, FamilyFunJoy.com, with her husband and boys.

“I think I have much more fun when I travel with my kids. They almost give you like a license for fun,” Pam said. “Road trips provide tons of memories that you never even plan for. … It’s more than the destination. We’re really building on that family fabric.”

Listen to the podcast for more insights and suggestions about how to traveling as a family brings you closer together.

On this week’s “You’ve Got This,” I talk with Josh Burnette about what our kids need to know before graduating high school. Josh is a husband, dad, business owner, and author who currently resides in Little Rock, Ark. Originally from Virginia Beach, Va., he started working for Chick-fil-A as a team member when he was barely old enough to see over the counter. He received his bachelor’s degree in business management from James Madison University, and throughout college, he served as a Young Life leader for a local high school, and his passion for mentoring young people began. After graduating, he went to work full-time for a Young Life camp in Buena Vista, Colo. He decided to come back to Chick-fil-A to combine his loves for business and working with young people. He serves as the owner/operator of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Little Rock that employs more 100 people. Josh is a certified speaker with SCORRE workshops and recently enjoyed the opportunity to be the keynote speaker for Verizon Wireless. In his free time, he enjoys reading, traveling, volunteering on several boards in the community, and snowboarding. Josh is married and has two children. His new book, Adulting 101, answers many of the questions young people today have about starting out in life.

“What I’m noticing is that a lot of [my young employees] are not developing the world skills that they’ll need to be successful beyond school. … I have had a lot of the same conversations with them over the years on how to purchase a car, how to get into an apartment, or a whole variety of things that they didn’t have the chance to learn while they were at home or at school,” Josh said. “A lot of [young people] are now looking to their employer to help raise them. … Oftentimes as their first boss, I’m seeing the gaps that those lack of experiences are creating.”

Listen to the podcast for more insights and suggestions on how to teach our kids the essential life skills.

We often let others dictate what we do or don’t do for Christmas…even if they never actually tell us directly. In this week’s podcast, I talk about how to let go of what we think (or know) others expect us to do for the winter holiday and instead figure out what’s right for our families this year.

On this week’s “You’ve Got This,” I talk with Malinda Fuller about being mindful with our parenting. Malinda is a bold communicator who is passionate about people growing as disciples of Jesus, and seeing couples and families thrive. She and her husband, Alex, have been married for over 14 years and have served on staff at several churches and ministries for even longer. Their love for travel has taken them to nearly every state and across Canada – Malinda’s home and native land. She is a proud homeschooling mom to two spirited girls. Malinda’s writing has been featured in multiple publications including Relevant, Propel Women, Thrive Moms and numerous others. Her newest book is Obedience Over Hustle about the tension that we have to be obedient and yet not overburden ourselves.

“When I know what it is that God wants me to do—whether that’s paying attention to the business that I’m running if I’m a businesswoman, or homeschooling my kids—we said yes to that,” Malinda said. “It means that I can say no very easy and very quickly to everything else that the world is going to throw at me. … I don’t know if there’s ever a perfect balance because I think our lives ebb and flow when we are in different seasons, …but it’s having a continual conversation of us coming to the Lord and saying, ‘Okay, what is it that you want from me now? What is it that you want me to say yes to?’ and being obedient to that.”

Listen to the podcast for more insights and suggestions about not letting the hustle and bustle of our daily lives make us less intentional in raising our kids.