Very Good Enough

Layne and Jess deep dive into what 1-year-olds are thinking and how they can learn to play independently so you can get a moment to yourself. We lay out strategies to make your home a “Yes Environment” for them to freely explore so your toddlers can become confident decision makers and creative thinkers. And we talk about the best way to praise and encourage kids to give them a growth mindset and NOT turn them into people pleasers.

Lovevery is the toy company Jess mentions with age-specific toys.

CDC 1-Year-Old-Milestones is a great resource if you want to know what kinds of activities your child is capable of at this age.

Join Very Good Mothers Club to be a part of our community and join our live monthly calls (4th Tuesday of every month)!

Find Jess at Jessica Hover on Youtube and @jess_hover on Instagram

Find Layne @enquiryco on Instagram

Moms (maybe all women?) treat each other very badly and Jessica Hover hates it. She hates the "us vs. them" camps parents sort themselves into. She hates behind-the-back gossip and mom-shaming. She hates that mothers define themselves by what they are against. She hates it when parents steal each others' joy by saying, "Just you wait..." AND she has some ideas about how we can do better. This week, we get deep in the weeds about what a community of moms could really look like, how we could take care of each other and what we could to do to make each others' lives easier. We talk about why moms are so quick to judge each other, the impact of social media on parenting anxiety and how to create a culture of empathy among parents.

Join Very Good Mothers Club to be a part of our community and join our live monthly calls (4th Tuesday of every month)!

Find Jess at Jessica Hover on Youtube and @jess_hover on Instagram

Find Layne @enquiryco on Instagram

Jess and Layne reveal their personal histories with depression (and some bonus mental health issues). Layne shares about how a life crisis led to healing from life-long pain, how nutrition healed her anxiety and how to talk to kids about the hard things you are going through. Jess walks us through the life transition and isolation in early motherhood that found her needing treatment at a mental facility and her journey with medication. She talks about the importance of having a community who knows how low you can get and how to make sure you get the help you need (also the importance of movement and SLEEP!). Finally, we take a question about wether or not it is ethical to have a child if you have a history of mental illness (SPOILER: we think you should go ahead and live your life <3).

Jess recommends the book "How To Be Sad" by Helen Russell.

Join Very Good Mothers Club to be a part of our community and join our live monthly calls (4th Tuesday of every month)!

Find Jess at Jessica Hover on Youtube and @jess_hover on Instagram

Find Layne @enquiryco on Instagram

Happy Valentines Day, podcast loves! We are back with season 2 and jumping right in with an episode all about RELATIONSHIPS. Inspired by a question about how to talk to your kids about divorce, Layne and Jess share about our own marriages, with their ups and downs. We tell the stories of how we met our husbands. We talk about the importance of flexibility in romantic relationships, how couples can hold space for each other to change and practical tips for keeping love alive in the day-to-day. We get into the nitty gritty of how to know if it's time to end a marriage, how to care for your kids during a divorce and how to trust yourself to know what you need.

HERE is the link to register for the Calm & Confident Parenting workshop we can't wait to be a part of! 

Join Very Good Mothers Club to be a part of our community and get your questions answered on a future episode!

Find Jess at Jessica Hover on Youtube and @jess_hover on Instagram

Find Layne @enquiryco on Instagram

*Tiny note: our website is STILL under construction so sit tight on that one - we promise it's on its way :)

To spread the Christmas cheer as far as possible, we filled this episode to brim with ALL listener questions! And they were good:

We will be back with season two in the new year! Until then, we love you all so much and hope you have wonderful holidays 

Brands we mentioned: Proof Panties and Foria (CBD sex oil)

Join Very Good Mothers Club to be a part of our community and get your questions answered on a future episode!

Find Jess at Jessica Hover on Youtube and @jess_hover on Instagram

Find Layne @enquiryco on Instagram

Yesterday was sweet babyhood and today is "the terrible twos." It literally happens overnight - and it just happened to Jess' daughter. We share stories about mucus and peas, compare the silliest things we've seen trigger huge tantrums and talk about why we actually deeply love two-year-olds. Layne lays out strategies for staying out of power struggles with your toddler while still holding good boundaries and teaching them how to wield their incredible will power.

Join Very Good Mothers Club to be a part of our community and get your questions answered on a future episode!

Find Jess at Jessica Hover on Youtube and @jess_hover on Instagram

Find Layne @enquiryco on Instagram

How To Handle Toddler Tantrums - If you want more of a foundational look at what toddlers are (brain development, social/emotional growth, etc.) and how to parent one, this video on Jess' channel basically covers Layne's entire philosophy (it's also the first thing we ever made together so...cute). 

Introducing our JUICIEST (and longest) episode yet! We had neat and tidy plan for this topic which flew out the window the second we hit record. This conversation is nothing short of confessional – two new friends really telling each other truth about how they feel about the bodies they live in. We share stories about trying to relate to our mothers as little girls, teenage eating disorders, contagious self-criticism, working out as an assault survivor, postpartum body shaming, botox + plastic surgery, social media comparison and seriously so much more. It got so good that the sun set on our conversation and we decided to let it be double-length. We would love to keep this conversation going!

If you have thoughts or questions about this topic (or any, really), DM us so we can do a follow up.

Join Very Good Mothers Club to be a part of our community and get your questions answered on a future episode!

Find Jess at Jessica Hover on Youtube and @jess_hover on Instagram

Find Layne @enquiryco on Instagram

Book excerpt: Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

‘Tis the season to mute social media accounts whose perfect photos cause too many feelings (just until January, maybe). This week we talk about how to tap into your own desires for the season and ask, “What do I want this Christmas to look like?” We explore how to successfully make memories with your family and experience some magic with maximum joy and minimum effort. Layne lays out a plan for collaborating with your kids to wrap a good narrative around expectations and Jess speaks to the pressure to make everything special in early motherhood while feeling so, so tired (Spoiler: if you’re keeping the baby alive and fed, well done! Enlist family and friends to help with the celebration part).

Once again, we talked to each other for too long and ran out of time for a listener question but we promise to get a handle on it in the future 🤞

Shop Very Good Mothers Club for all your Christmas gifts 🎁

Join Very Good Mothers Club to be a part of our community and get your questions answered on a future episode!

Find Jess at Jessica Hover on Youtube and @jess_hover on Instagram

Find Layne @enquiryco on Instagram

We're stopping by for just a few minutes this Thanksgiving to offer some love and solidarity to those for whom holidays don't feel very celebratory. We are not strangers to loss or dysfunction and we know that grief can be a close friend this time of year. Layne reads a blessing from John O'Donahue and Jess offers encouragement to open ourselves to divine love, however that looks for each of us. 

We will be thinking of you all as we celebrate in our own ways over the next few days and we'll be back with a full episode next week! 

Join Very Good Mother's Club to be a part of our community and get your questions answered on a future episode!

Find Jess at Jessica Hover on Youtube and @jess_hover on Instagram

Find Layne @enquiryco on Instagram

Holidays belong to all of us and we want to make them meaningful for ourselves and our individual families, even within the context of our larger families and communities. Looking toward holidays, we often feel overwhelmed/unsure/anxious/ALL the feelings. These feelings are a message from inside begging us to get clear around our healthy boundaries and hold them for ourselves. This week we have a seriously robust conversation about how to value our own experiences, find out what our edges are and express them as non-negotiable yet loving boundaries. We talk about what a boundary really is, why it's the most loving thing in the world, how to communicate it clearly in a way others can understand and how to HOLD it. 

We take on a listener question about what to do with unwanted feedback from your in-laws when it feels like a criticism of your parenting (Jess's answer is so masterful it leaves Layne speechless). 

Join Very Good Mother's Club to be a part of our community and get your questions answered on a future episode!

Find Jess at Jessica Hover on Youtube and @jess_hover on Instagram

Find Layne @enquiryco on Instagram