This week's episode is with Kelly Pietrangeli, the founder of Project Me For Busy Mums. Kelly helps you when your life feels out of balance and has tools and strategies to help you find your focus so that you can shine as your best self.

Are you, like Kelly, a self-confessed recovering shoutaholic? Would you like to know how Kelly transformed the 'hot mess' of her family life and in the process found a new career path? Kelly is a veteran of The Parent Practice methodologies and she found so much success within her own family using the skills and techniques she learned in a positive parenting skills course with us that she decided to apply them to other areas of her life. Do you want to rediscover passions of your own?

Listen to this episode with Kelly Pietrangeli if you want to learn:

• About the life wheel and how you can use it to check if you're happy with the balance in your life in key areas (see myprojectme.com for a free visual)
• How to get balance in the areas of family, love, health, work, fun and friendships, money, personal growth, productivity and time management
• How to use tools like Trello (a list-making app) effectively
• Why it matters to look after your couple relationship and not become a Child Rearing Unit. What 'simmering' is and how it can enhance your love life and encourages intimacy.
• How to get more fun in your life. As Kelly's Grandma Milly says your children are under your roof for a very short time compared to the time after they've flown the nest so you need to cultivate interests of your own. Kelly has lots of ideas for preparing early for the post-children chapter in your life.
• How to make a 'power posse' work for you as a personal mastermind to look at each member's life and get support, motivation and accountability. Project We is Kelly's online membership group where members get this motivation and accountability.
• How to design your day every morning, identifying your MITs or Most Important Tasks as well as thinking about what you're grateful for. Kelly reminds us that you can do anything but not everything.
• How to manage your outer world to make headspace available to look at your inner world to get flow and ease in your life.

In our celebration of vulnerability and perfect imperfection Kelly shares with us a Low Parenting Moment of her own from years ago that makes her hold her head in her hands.

And Kelly also shares her top tip for raising children to be confident, happy and successful.

Links

www.myprojectme.com

kellyprojectme on twitter and instagram

projectme for busy mothers on facebook

Are you a step-parent? Or are you raising children with someone who is not your children's biological parent? Do you also have children together? Are you finding it challenging? Do you sometimes feel guilty for not really liking your step-children all that much, even though you desperately want to? Do you get frustrated with your other half for not disciplining their biological children? Maybe you resent the amount of your partner's time they take up. Perhaps you're having difficulty working out what authority you have as a non-biological parent.

According to Alison O'Mahony, founder of Be Stepwise, that's not surprising since many parents who find themselves in blended families have not had the experience of step-parenting before they come to it themselves. And yet step-families are the new normal. In fact statistically children born in the last decade are more likely to be step-parented than not before they reach adulthood.

Alison herself has had much personal experience of step-parenting and blended families. When she was a teenager, her mother died suddenly and her father met the woman who was to become her step-mother within six months. Alison had great difficulty accepting a step-mother while still mourning the loss of her mother and her step-mother likewise found her teenage step-daughter a challenge.

As an adult herself Alison became a step-parent to her husband's two young children before they had two children together.

Listen to this episode with Alison O'Mahony if you want to learn:

• Why being a step-parent is different from being a biological parent and what the role of hormones and genes are
• How to cope with the loss of the old family, whether through divorce or bereavement, and adapt to the new family
• What behaviours to expect from a child dealing with great change
• How to work out the various roles of the biological parent, the step-parent, the grandparent and the ex-partner.
• How to communicate effectively with your partner to work out expectations of the children's behaviour and together make this clear to the children. (See our 6 week Positive Parenting course Module 5 or our online course Module 4 on Family values and Rules)
• About Alison's 4 mantras for guiding successful step-families
  • Begin with the end in mind
  • Work in anticipation
  • Let the system carry the load
  • Accept the things you cannot change, have the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Click here for Alison's blog outlining the 4 mantras

• How to have systems to share time between the adult partners and the children

In our celebration of vulnerability and perfect imperfection Alison shares with us a Low Parenting Moment of her own, this time with adult children, which just proves that even after lots of experience we can still make mistakes! I can vouch for that…

And Alison also shares her top tip for raising children, within a biological or a blended family, to be confident, happy and successful.

Links

https://bestepwise.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/bestepwise/

twitter - @bestepwise

Instagram - be_stepwise

Do you worry about your children's education? You probably want them to thrive and do well and we're sure you'll want to ensure a future for them where they will get well paid and satisfying jobs. But you may also be worried about the pressure and anxiety which seem to be so much a part of education nowadays.

Do you have a child who is sitting exams or going for school interviews at the moment or will be in the near future? You may wonder how best to support them through that period and help them to do their best.

Henry Faber and Walter Kerr, are the founders of Oppidan education, a one to one mentoring business for children set up to tackle just these concerns. But they are not just interested in exam preparation -their core objectives are the development of self-worth, confidence and motivation. Their programmes help children change the capabilities, attitudes and beliefs that they have about themselves and about their education.

Henry and Walter believe that talent is not inherent, but something that is born out of direction and guidance and support, very much echoing Parent Practice philosophy.

Listen to this episode with Henry and Walter if you want to learn:

• What are the seven barriers to high performance and how to get around these
• How having a wise, impartial mentor can benefit your child
• The best way to keep exam anxieties at bay and defuse pressure about interviews and exams
• How to engage your child in learning, to inspire them and tap into their passions (For more on this topic see our workshop Maximising your Child's Potential at School)
• How to develop a child's awareness of their strengths and interests and ability to communicate that while keeping them innocent and uncontrived
• How to prepare children for school interviews, but not too much
• About practical differences between self-worth, which is essential, and confidence, which is not (to really build self-worth TPP teaches parents how to use descriptive praise on our positive parenting programmes.)

You'll want to hear Henry's low mentoring moment –it may surprise you! And Walter's LMM is a lovely example of vulnerability and perfect imperfection leading to collaboration and growth in the child.

You may not be surprised by Henry's tip for parents to raise happy, confident and successful children but Walter's tip, while less expected, is really lovely.

If you want to be in touch with Henry and Walter at Oppidan Education:

https://www.oppidaneducation.com/

Oppidan on Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/oppidaneducation/

Oppidan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/OppidanEd

Oppidan on Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/oppidaneducation/

Do you sometimes find yourself arguing and negotiating, explaining or rationalising with your child? Does it sometimes seem as if your child is running the show? Or have you found yourself unintentionally saying harsh things to your children or punishing, bribing or threatening them? Would you like to be lovingly, competently in charge at home?

Listen to this episode with Susan Stiffelman if you want to learn:

• How to make shifts away from being the controller to the guide in your family – the captain of the ship, rather than the lawyer or dictator. (See Susan demonstrate the different roles she describes here in this clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0_o5xvuRDE)
• How to have authentic power as a parent
• What are the four words not to use when you ask your child to do something
• How not to take things personally when your child behaves in ways you don't like. Susan talks about our interpretation of our child's behaviour causing us to get upset and get into power struggles. At The Parent Practice we know that it is our thoughts and assumptions about our child's behaviour that causes us to see red. In our workshop How to be a calmer parent we look at how to reframe our assumptions about our children's behaviour to help us stay calm and be effective.
• Why anxiety is on the increase in children today and several top tips to help children cope with anxiety. Susan talks about how to find the balance between allowing a child to express their worries and not fanning the flames of their anxiety.

In our celebration of vulnerability and perfect imperfection Susan shares with us ideas about learning, healing and self-acceptance arising out of Low Parenting Moments.

And you'll enjoy her final tip for raising children to be confident, happy and successful: reflect on what you love about your child, what excites you and delights you about your child. Let them know. This is what Descriptive Praise is all about. Learn more in our positive parenting courses.

How to thrive in a fast world by slowing down

Do you feel that the world is moving too fast? Do you worry that the busyness of modern life is detracting from connection in families? Are you your child's entertainment director or project manager, micro-managing your child's life? Has parenting become a cross between a competitive sport and product development for you? Do you sometimes feel burnt out, overwhelmed, dissatisfied and worried about your child's future?

Listen to this episode with Carl Honoré if you want to learn:

• How we are enthralled to the cult of speed. But there is a more mindful revolution going on.
• How busyness has become a badge of honour –if you're not busy you're not important. But busyness can be a way of running away from some very important questions like 'Who am I?', 'What is my purpose?', 'Am I living the right life?' Those questions require physical and cognitive space.
• How to do slow. Because racing through your life is not really living it.
• Awareness of beliefs that affect our choices such as that there are winners and losers in the game of life and our children need to get the edge on others to succeed; that there is only one path to success and if we deviate from the path our children will be ruined for life.
• How to transform your family life through a detox experience which will give you greater connection with each other and renewed vigour.
• About the 4 slow parenting commandments:

• For journeys of less than 2 miles ditch the car and walk and talk with your children
• Children drop all Extra Curricular Activities bar one.
• Families eat at least one meal together each day
• Parents have a relaxing ritual each day

Carl talks about how there is increased awareness in schools of children's happiness but there still much panic amongst parents about getting children ready for the workplace. At TPP we are very aware of this and so created our workshop series Maximising Your Child's Potential at School to help parents develop the 'soft' skills they'll need to succeed, the ones which are not on the curriculum. Carl also identifies social media as adding considerably to the pressure to be perfect that both children and adults experience. Learn how to manage a child's use of social media in our workshop Parenting in a Digital World.

In our celebration of vulnerability and perfect imperfection Carl shares with us a Low Parenting Moment of his own.

And his top tip for raising children to be confident, happy and successful.

Are you interested in peaceful parenting? Do you want to ditch the shouting and connect with your child in a more loving way?

Listen to this episode with Dr Laura Markham if you want to learn:

• Why relationship is everything; how anything you do to encourage your child or discipline them or get them into good habits for life will be for nought if you don't have a positive connection with them.
• About what role a child's maturing brain plays in cooperation and self-discipline
• How to shift a child's agenda from what they want to do to what you need them to do. Learn about how a child can give up something they want in the moment for something they want more –to connect with you.
• About Dr Laura's 3 big ideas to shift from less drama to more love
• How to keep calm, to stop being hijacked by emotions. This involves rewiring our brains. Anger is the human response to fear. When parents get afraid or worried about our child we react from anxiety and it touches off an anger response. Dr Laura advises how to avoid it

Finally, in our celebration of vulnerability and perfect imperfection Dr Laura shares with us a Low Parenting Moment of her own and her top tip for raising children to be confident, happy and successful.

Join your hosts, Melissa Hood and Elaine Halliigan on The Parent Practice Podcast - the practical parenting toolkit for happy, confident children.