On this week’s episode: A question from a mom who is feeling like the only parent at home due to her husband’s time-consuming commitment to assistant coaching a high school basketball team. Also, Jamilah wrote about her experience talking about Kobe Bryant’s death in this week’s Care and Feeding column. The hosts discuss Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and the challenge of talking about death with kids. During the discussion Elizabeth recommended two books: Margaret Wise Brown’s The Dead Bird and Melanie Watt’s Bug in a Vacuum.

For Slate Plus, the hosts answer a second listener question from a mother-to-be wondering how she can preemptively set family boundaries with her eager in-laws. Sign up for Slate Plus here.

Recommendations:

Dan recommends an adhesive whiteboard to transform your non-magnetic refrigerator into a centralized family bulletin board. Just don’t forget to remove the plastic lining!

Jamilah recommends Cartoon Beatbox Battles on YouTube.

Elizabeth recommends Stick-lets - little silicone rings that keep sticks together to help build things… like forts!

Join us on Facebook and email us at [email protected] to tell us what you thought of today’s show and give us ideas for what we should talk about in future episodes. Got questions that you’d like us to answer? Call and leave us a message at 424-255-7833.

Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson.

Hosts

Dan Kois is an editor and writer at Slate. He’s the author of How to Be a Family and the co-author of The World Only Spins Forward.

Jamilah Lemieux is a writer, cultural critic, and communications strategist based in California.

Elizabeth Newcamp is a traveling mother of three boys who chronicles her misadventures at Dutch, Dutch, Goose.

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