We won’t lie to you- we probably spend more time than we should thinking about what we weigh. Which is, admittedly, variable. But while we think about what we weigh plenty when we’re unhappy with what the scale says, we spend even more of our bandwidth on it in order to get to the number we have decided is arbitrarily acceptable (and then fight a losing battle to stay there).

 Something’s not right about that. But we suspect we aren’t alone— especially among mothers, who have seen our bodies change forever with pregnancy and childbirth, and then never quite change back. 

 What if we didn’t care? Okay: what if we cared just a little bit less? In this episode we talk about feeling good, and looking good, and how to maybe put a little bit of daylight between the two. 

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Per the Cambridge Dictionary, to bicker is “to argue about things that are not important.” Bickering is therefore unproductive by design- and as any parent can tell you the more trivial the thing their kids are arguing about, the more frustrating it is for a parent to listen to.

 So why do our kids bicker so incessantly? Are they actually intending to drive us batty, or is there more at work? And if parents are supposed to “just ignore it” until three seconds before the face-scratching starts, how can we sense the perfect moment to intervene?

 Professor Laurie Kramer, director of the Family Resiliency Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says siblings bicker because they can:

“These are very safe relationships for children, so they feel they can argue and express their feelings without significant repercussions.”

Margaret says it’s important to remember: we are the mediator, not the judge.

Margaret’s father, who *is* a judge, would recite “Children Should Not Disagree,” a poem written by one Isaac Watts in 1715 , whenever his own children bickered. It reportedly served as a somewhat effective deterrent, so you might want to give it a shot.

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We’ve all done things as parents that, looking back, we can’t believe. Sometimes they are supermom-type accomplishments that defy easy explanation: did I really have three kids in diapers at the same time? Did I really get through airport security with those same three children, and unassisted? 

 Then there are the decisions that in retrospect seem foolish at best: did I really wake a sleeping infant every three hours? Did I also make a tiny sign to hang from the car seat, reminding strangers to wash their hands, as if it were a cartoon speech bubble coming directly from my baby’s mouth? 

 We asked our listeners for their “did I really do that?” moments and got plenty of each version. In this episode we put them all on the table– and also interview two women who may or may not have done a few silly things themselves: Amy’s mom and Margaret’s Aunt Terry.

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It’s the battle of the calendars! Margaret swears by her hardcover Book of Meg, but tends to forget a birthday party once in a while. Amy swears by her online systems, until her phone takes the initiative of entering an event in Greenwich Mean Time. Neither system is perfect, but which is better? In this episode, we talk strategies for managing our families’ busy lives- and for handing at least some of that responsibility back to our kids.

 For a personalized, hardcover Book of Meg with the exact kind of pages she wants inside, Margaret uses Erin Condren Life Planners.

For keeping the two hundred things she needs to remember later in a findable place, Amy uses two apps on her desktop and phone: Evernote and Workflowy. Kimberlee over at The Peaceful Mom has a great how-to post for Evernote newbies here, and Workflowy has an introductory video here.

Other takes on this topic we mention in this episode:

Michael Grothaus for Fast Company: What Happened When I Ditched My Smartphone for a Paper Planner

Ferris Jabr for Scientific American: The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens

for handing some organizational responsibilities back to older kids: Smart But Scattered: Teens, by Richard Guare and Peg Dawson

Today’s episode is brought to you by Evernote, the app Amy swears by for keeping soccer schedules, flight confirmations, blood types, and what-was-that-place-again at her fingertips and searchable wherever she goes. Evernote Premium lets you search PDF text, so even if you are more of a dumper than a file-er, you’ll always be able to find what you need within seconds. Get a free month of Evernote Premium with our affiliate code: bit.ly/evernotefresh.

Have a product or brand you’d like to hear on the podcast? Email us at info (at) whatfreshhellpodcast.com and we’ll send you our (quite reasonable) rates!

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Getting our kids to talk to us is never easy (unless we’re standing with car keys in hand, front door ajar, 15 minutes late for an appointment). Based upon empirical evidence, “How was school today?” is the most annoying question a mom could ever ask. So why bother trying?

 Because Jennifer Kolari, author of Connected Parenting: How to Raise a Great Kid, says getting our kids to open up is part of our job description:

It’s our job as parents to help our kids sort through and process the things that happen to them during the day. “They don’t have the higher-order thinking to do it on their own yet.

In this episode we lay out what gets our kids to talk– at every age and stage.

Margaret says you have to “talk the talk that arrives.”

But Amy comes at it armed with research; if her ninth-grader wants to talk NBA draft, she’s ready to lean in.

Both of us plan to work on what Marie Roker Jones calls “listening with the intent to understand.”

Here’s links to some research and hilarious takes on this topic that we mention in this episode:

Alice Bradley for Lifehacker Offspring: Stop Asking Your Kid About Their Day

Marie Roker-Jones for Good Men Project: 10 Ways to Get Your Son to Open Up and Talk to You

Clare Gagne for Today’s Parent: Age-By-Age Guide To Getting Your Kid To Talk

from American Girl: Conversation Starters To Get Your Girl To Talk About Her Day (to our surprise, “What emoji best describes the day you had?” was a great question!)

Liz Evans for Huffington Post: 25 Ways to Ask Your Kids ‘So How Was School Today?’ Without Asking Them ‘So How Was School Today?’

The Ungame 

…and some perfect viewing for you and your teenager: Maddie Corman’s wonderful short film How Was Your Day?

How do you get your kids to open up? Tell us in the comments!

Here’s one way we get our kids chatting with us– cooking together. We’ve both been pleasantly surprised at how HelloFresh has turned dinnertime prep into something our kids love to participate in. We follow the easy (super-easy) directions, chop along together, and then we all sit down together as a family to try something new (and maybe even talk about it).

Get $30 off your first HelloFresh delivery by going to hellofresh.com and entering the code mother30.

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What’s the best mom advice you ever received? We asked our listeners and got a wide range of responses. Some aimed for the eternal perspective:

 The days are long, but the years are short.

 Some were more practically applicable:

 Don’t ever bring a vomiting child into your bed.

 (Truer words were never spoken, Stacy.)

 In this episode break down the best advice we ever received for parenting babies, toddlers, kids and teens. Here’s one essay we reference in the episode:

 Jenny Anderson for NYT’s Motherlode: Seeing Tantrums as Distress, Not Defiance

Thanks to everyone who contributed their mom words to live by!

Announcing our next live show! What Fresh Hell is coming to The Theater at North in Scranton, PA (Amy’s hometown) on Thursday, April 19th. The performance is a benefit in memory of Lindsay Doherty and will benefit the St. Joseph’s Center Baby and Children Pantry (one of Lindsay’s favorite causes). Join us for a night of many laughs and a celebration of Lindsay’s life! Tickets are available here. 

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Musical instruments: must our children either be tied to a piano bench or forgo their dreams of the Ivy League? Must we battle with our children daily to make them practice, and then have to listen to fifteen minutes of what sounds like a dying moose?

 Experts say childhood exposure to musical instruments relieves stress (theirs), tones the brain for auditory fitness, even lowers kids’ risk of dementia seventy years hence.

While that’s certainly playing the long game, all of our kids play instruments, and we’re here to tell you why yours should at least give it a shot. At least the recorder. Sorry about that.

Here’s links to research and further reading we discuss in this episode:

a picture of a bass clarinet, which Margaret promised as a visual appendix to her story of Clarice, the clarinetrix

sports coach Bruce Brown’s terrific advice on the only thing you need to say after watching your kids perform: “I Love To Watch You Play”

the Tiger Mom article that started the backlash against making kids spend three hours a day practicing (not that we were ever going to do that anyhow)

Ten Reasons Why Everyone Should Learn to Play Musical Instruments

Angela Kwan for Parents: 6 Benefits of Music Lessons

Did you play an instrument as a kid? Are you glad you did? Tell us in the comments! 

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Are audio books cheating? Must every book our second-graders read feature Poopy Man and The Toilet King? Are reluctant readers doomed to fall behind their peers? Will Margaret or Amy ever read anything other than their Facebook feeds ever again?

 This episode is full of ideas to get everyone in your family reading– plus books your kids will drop everything to read.

 We love this “book traps” idea from our listener Nicole:

 Find books in the library that seem like they might be irresistible to your child and place them strategically around the house so that your child stumbles upon them and feel like reading them was their own idea.

 What about audiobooks? Is it counterproductive to let kids who struggle with decoding listen to their books instead? Jamie Martin, assistive technology consultant for understood.org, says no: 

Listening to audiobooks isn’t “cheating.” The main purpose of reading is to get information. It doesn’t matter what path that information takes to reach the brain.

Here’s some resources for parents that we recommend in this episode:

Common Sense Media’s lists of books for reluctant readers

Amy Mascott for PBS Parents: What To Do When Your Child Hates Reading

Susan Dominus, NYT, Motherhood Screened Off

Linda Flanagan for KQED: How Audiobooks Can Help Kids Who Struggle With Reading

Mary Ann Scheuer’s Great Kid Books, a blog which recommendis books for kids from 4-14.

Here’s books and authors that Amy recommends in this episode:

the Amulet series (graphic novels for grade-school readers)

anything by Raina Telgemaier (graphic novels with heroines for grade-school readers

You Wouldn’t Want to Be… series (real history with a dose of gross-out humor)

the American Girl collection (the best you’re-growing-up books out there)

What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (a perfect coffee table book. Irresistible for all ages)

and a few audiobook series recommended by Amy’s 10-year-old daughter:

A Series of Unfortunate Events

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place

The Mysterious Benedict Society

and of course, Harry Potter, with hundreds of characters all voiced by Jim Dale.

Here’s the books that have gotten our listeners’ kids reading. Thanks for everyone who joined in with ideas on our Facebook page!

Lauren: Pete the Cat, Wayside Stories from Wayside School

Maureen: Mo Willems

Tracy: “Right now (8 years old) we are loving Super Rabbit Boy.”

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We’d all love a school morning where everyone gets out the door without Mom yelling or feeling stressed. And by “all” we mean all mothers. Our children seem blithely indifferent to all the hollering and pleading and bargaining we do each morning in order to make the bus– which means each day we have to do a little more of it. Good times.

 Leigh Anderson puts it this way, for Lifehacker Offspring:

“Getting kids out the door in the morning can go one of two ways: They wake up early and then dawdle, forcing a last-minute scramble, or they wake up late, forcing a last-minute scramble.”

In this episode we talk about what works to get the kids moving and in charge of their own schedules. We love Leigh’s idea of creating a morning playlist: if “Yellow Submarine” is on, it’s time to be tying your shoes.

Our other favorite tip– keep another set of toothbrushes in the downstairs bathroom!– is from Carolyn Dalgliesh’s book The Sensory Child Gets Organized.

Here’s other tricks and tips we discuss in this episode:

Amy uses these 5- and 30-minute hourglasses to make the dwindling time until the bus arrives more concrete. (Beware: the 30-minute one can sometimes have the paradoxical effect of making the time left seem endless, at least to an 8-year-old.)

The Time Timer is a less chic but equally effective visual reminder.

Margaret has her son use a smart speaker to set his own timer.

Margaret uses a dry erase board to remind her kids of what’s left on their morning checklists.

Amy’s friend Susan uses this gradual sunlight alarm clock for her exhausted high-schooler.

And if all else fails: put them to bed in their school clothes.

Here’s how to handle the dinnertime madness: HelloFresh, which delivers weekly recipes and fresh ingredients straight to your doorstep. What’s for dinner? Open fridge, pull out bag, get to it. No planning, no shopping, no complaining. Your kids might even *HELP* because the directions are so snazzy. We are huge fans!

Get $30 off your first HelloFresh delivery by going to hellofresh.com and entering the code mother30.

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Are your child’s most annoying traits disconcertingly familiar, because they are also your own? And are those qualities- anxiety, competitiveness, impatience, even hatred of loud chewing- baked in the cake? Or have our children learned how to be impossible simply by living with us?

 Ellie Grossman says when our kids are driving us nuts, it’s always best to look within for answers:

The trick is to find our child’s greatest strength hidden inside his or her worst quality. The first step is to look at ourselves in the mirror. Where do you think our child’s mishegas comes from in the first place?

Keeping this in mind, we also love Wendy Mogel’s writing about the “yetser hara,” that part of all children’s personalities that is both the source of all parental exasperation and the essential spark of our children’s greatness. Read more here:

Emily Bazelon for The New York Times: So The Torah is a Parenting Guide?

Wendy Mogel, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Timeless Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children

Special thanks to our listener Michelle for suggesting this topic! Do you have an idea for an upcoming episode? Leave us a comment below, send us an email, or click the Speakpipe on the right-hand edge of our website to leave us a voice message.

This week’s episode is brought to you by Barkbox. Barkbox is a monthly surprise of dog toys, treats and goodies. Amy’s kids absolutely loved helping Marshmallow choose among the many delights in her “Knights of the Hound Table” themed shipment. What Fresh Hell listeners can get a free Barkbox when signing up for a 6 or 12-month plan (and support our podcast!) by using our special code: barkbox.com/laughing.

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