The Peaceful Parenting Podcast
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Über den Podcast
Welcome to the Peaceful Parenting Podcast, the podcast where Sarah Rosensweet covers the tools, strategies and support you need to end the yelling and power struggles and encourage your kids to listen and cooperate so that you can enjoy your family time. Each week, Sarah will bring you the insight and information you need to make your parenting journey a little more peaceful. Whether it's a guest interview with an expert in the parenting world, insight from Sarah's own experiences and knowledge, or live coaching with parents just like you who want help with their challenges, we'll learn and grow and laugh and cry together! Be sure to hit the subscribe button and leave a rating and review!
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Raising Body Confident Kids with Dr. Whitney Casares: Episode 231
In this episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I’m joined by pediatrician and author Dr. Whitney Casares to talk about raising body confident kids—and why the work often starts with us.We explore how our …
Shownotes
In this episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I’m joined by pediatrician and author Dr. Whitney Casares to talk about raising body confident kids—and why the work often starts with us.
We explore how our own experiences with body image influence our parenting, the difference between body positivity and body neutrality, and how to help kids develop a healthy relationship with food and movement without shame, pressure, or excessive control.
Whitney also shares practical advice for navigating conversations about weight with pediatricians, responding to comments from grandparents and extended family, and recognizing when a child’s body dissatisfaction might be something more concerning.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out:1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app
2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️
3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
2:22 Why raising body confident kids starts with examining our own relationship with our bodies
10:20 Body positivity, toxic positivity, and body neutrality
12:00 How to teach kids body literacy and encourage joyful movement
14:30 Finding the middle ground between controlling what kids eat and letting them have a complete free-for-all
21:00 How to recognize potential warning signs of disordered eating
24:44 Helping kids navigate changing beauty standards and social media
27:30 How to advocate for your child at the pediatrician’s office
30:30 What to do when grandparents or relatives make comments about bodies or food
33:30 Why repair matters when we say something we wish we hadn’t
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Raising Body Confident Kids by Dr. Whitney Casares
* My One-of-a-Kind Body by Dr. Whitney Casares
* Fat Talk by Virginia Sole-Smith
* RaisingBodyConfidentKids.com — including free resources and Whitney’s guide to navigating pediatrician conversations
* Modern Mommy Doc on Instagram
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the fall for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Dr. Whitney Casares, a pediatrician, mom of two kids, and the author of the new book, Raising Body Confident Kids: A Balanced Approach to Breaking the Cycle of Body Shame and Diet Culture.
Whitney and I discussed where to start when we want to raise body confident kids, and hint, it’s not with them. We also talked about a balanced approach to the ways we take care of our bodies, like what we eat and exercise. Whitney shared so much more as well. She explained some things to watch out for as parents, as well as how to deal with medical professionals or relatives who might be stuck in diet culture.
If you like this episode, please share it with a friend so more parents can learn about peaceful parenting. If you’re a fan of the podcast, you can help us out not only by sharing it, but by leaving a review and a five-star rating in your podcast player app. While you’re there, don’t forget to follow the show so you don’t miss an episode.
If you’d like to support us even more, you can become a supporter on Substack to help us offset the cost of making the show. We’ll put a link in the show notes. Finally, if you want to learn more about me and the parenting support I can offer, check out my website, reimaginepeacefulparenting.com, for tons of free resources, coaching, my Peaceful Parenting Membership, and more.
Okay, let’s meet Whitney!
Sarah: Hi, Whitney. Welcome to the podcast.
Whitney: Thank you so much for having me.
Sarah: I’m so glad we’re getting to talk about this topic of raising body confident kids. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Whitney: I’ve been a pediatrician for, let’s see, 16 years now, and I’ve always cared a ton about kids’ mental health and physical health. I’ve cared also about the family dynamics in which a kid sits and what happens with their parents.
When my kids got a little older—they’re 10 and 13 now—but when my first one started going through puberty around age 10, I really started diving into the body confidence stuff because she was going through it and she was asking me lots of questions. I realized, oh my goodness, there are a lot of demons that I still need to address in my own life.
Also, your medical training really does set you up to be very diet culture focused. They don’t mean to do that, but it definitely happens.
I was talking with kids directly and saying, “Hey, these are all the things that you should know about loving your body and feeling confident in your body,” and kids were telling me, “I wish you would talk to my mom. She’s the one that needs the help,” or, “My grandma, she’s the one that needs the help.”
I had already written a book called My One-of-a-Kind Body that was directed specifically towards kids seven to 12. But I turned around and wrote another book that was for moms called Raising Body Confident Kids. It really is about how we break that cycle of diet culture and body shame in a more authentic way, and in a way that’s more rooted in reality. Because there’s a lot of “Just love your body” out there, but it feels like it’s not enough. We need some practical resources and tips.
Sarah: I love that. The whole first part of your book is all about, as you say, dealing with our own demons and our own feelings about our bodies. Can you talk about that a little bit and why you chose to start with that?
Whitney: For sure. I grew up in what I think was a very representative house of what was happening in the ‘80s, ‘90s, and even 2000s. I remember that my parents would do the grapefruit diet all the time, that they had all kinds of exercise equipment in the house. My mom had pictures from Shape magazine that she had cut out and put on the refrigerator as inspiration. She did not mean it to be shaming us. She thought it was very helpful. She thought it was great to talk about body image. It was inspirational.
And she talked about her own body, talked about it as being fat constantly. So when I got into adulthood, it wasn’t until then that I realized, whoa, this was so toxic. It really impacted me in ways that I didn’t realize. I didn’t realize how deeply entrenched I actually was in diet culture, or just how influenced I was by it.
I felt, gosh, we have to start there for moms. We can’t just tell them, “Don’t say this. Don’t say that.” An understanding of what are the messages that you’ve internalized, what are the things that you really believe, and what are your values around your own body will influence your kids. Because they’re watching what you don’t say. They’re watching the looks that you give. They’re watching the comments that you make about other people. So I felt it was very important to start with our own journeys and where we are if we want to change things.
Sarah: I feel grateful. My mother—and unusual for a…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeFeeding Kids with Ease, Health and Joy: Episode 230
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Jennifer Anderson, registered dietitian and founder of Kids Eat in Color, shares how parents can help kids develop a healthy relationship with food and their …
Shownotes
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Jennifer Anderson, registered dietitian and founder of Kids Eat in Color, shares how parents can help kids develop a healthy relationship with food and their bodies—without shame, restriction, or diet culture. Plus, practical tips for school lunches and making family meals easier and more affordable.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out:1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app
2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️
3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
We talk about:
03:00 What does a healthy relationship with food and our bodies look like?
05:00 Protecting kids from body image and weight concerns
07:00 Boys, body image, and the pressure to look “ripped”
09:00 Talking to kids who are worried about being in a bigger body
12:00 Helping kids develop a healthy relationship with food
14:00 Treats, limits, and avoiding shame or moralizing around food
21:00 Can kids really regulate how much they eat?
24:00 Neurodivergence, interoception, and mindful eating
30:00 Emotional eating, comfort, and food as connection
32:00 Simple strategies for packing school lunches
37:00 Feeding a family when time, money, and energy are limited
39:00 Why simple dinners are good enough
42:00 Jennifer’s book and pre-order bonuses
44:00 The parenting advice Jennifer wishes she’d known earlier
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Jennifer’s Book Feed Them Well: A Guide to Raising Healthy, Confident Eaters
* Search “Kids Eat in Color” to find Jennifer on all social media platforms
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the fall for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Jennifer Anderson, nutritionist and founder of Kids Eat in Color. Jennifer has a new book coming out all about helping kids develop a good relationship with food and with their bodies. That’s what we’re talking about in today’s episode.
Along the way, we also touched on some great tips for packing school lunches and making meals easier and more affordable. There’s so much conflicting information out there about feeding kids, and with their physical and mental health at risk, knowing what to do can be very stressful for parents. I love Jennifer’s common-sense and relaxed approach to eating and feeding, and I hope you do as well.
If you like this episode, please share it with a friend so more parents can learn about peaceful parenting. If you’re a fan of the podcast, you can help us out not only by sharing it, but by leaving a review and a five-star rating in your podcast player app. While you’re there, don’t forget to follow the show so you don’t miss an episode. If you’d like to support us even more, you can become a supporter on Substack to help us offset the cost of making the show. We’ll put a link in the show notes.
Okay, let’s meet Jennifer.
Hey, Jennifer. Welcome back to the podcast. This is your second time with us.
Jennifer: Thank you so much for having me.
Sarah: Yeah, I’m so excited. You have a new book coming out, so maybe you could introduce yourself and then tell us about your new book, which is available for pre-order and coming out in September. We will link to that in the show notes, but tell us a little bit about who you are and about your new book.
Jennifer: Sure. I’m a registered dietitian. I have two kids who have not been easy to feed, and I’m the founder of Kids Eat in Color and the CEO of Better Bites. I’m so excited to have this book coming out. It’s called Feed Them Well: A Guide to Raising Healthy, Confident Eaters for Life. I just cannot wait for parents to have this resource.
Sarah: Amazing. You were telling me before we started that the focus of your book is having kids have a healthy relationship not only with food, but with their bodies. Maybe we could start out by talking about—obviously, this could be a very long conversation—but some of the top things you’ve found that are really helpful, sort of dos and don’ts, in terms of having kids have that healthy relationship with food.
And also, what do you mean when you talk about a healthy relationship with their bodies? Maybe that’s a two-part question.
Jennifer: Yeah. I love that you framed it as a two-part question, because it is kind of a two-part question, but I feel like that’s only because in English we don’t have a way to describe the fact that these things are deeply connected in us.
When I think about a healthy relationship with food, I want to make sure kids know how to take care of their bodies. They know what a balanced diet looks like. They’re able to enjoy food, whatever kind of food it is. And also, we want kids to be able to really appreciate and live in their bodies, experience life through their bodies, and not have this deep what’s called internalized weight bias, where thin is the ideal. Thin is what everybody is shooting for. You should either be worried about how thin you are or trying to get thinner. That is a soul-sucking way of living when we’re so focused on weight and diet culture.
So we want to give kids another option. We want to give kids the ability to really appreciate their bodies, and yet we also want to do so in a way that they’re still able to care about the health of their bodies in a way that’s healthy, as opposed to just diet culture.
What I call this is embodied independence, where kids are independent. They know all the things they need to do, and they’re also embodied. They’re living in and experiencing their bodies.
When we think about what we want to do and what we want to not do, we want to model what we want kids to do, ideally, and this is in every single area of parenting, including eating. That’s where the independence comes from. We’re modeling, and we’re also providing the boundaries and opportunities for them.
I always tell parents, “You are in charge of your restaurant at home. You’re the head chef. You’re going to set when your restaurant hours are, you’re going to set what’s on the menu, you’re going to set all these things.” As you’re doing that, you are teaching your child what is part of a healthy lifestyle.
On the other side, we’re thinking about their relationship with their body. We want to minimize internalized weight bias, and that means we’re not discussing body sizes or body shapes. We’re not weighing ourselves in front of our kids. One of the most powerful things you can do as a parent is to not discuss your body size or shape and not discuss any weight-loss attempts at any point, if that’s something you ever engage in. Those two things are huge risk factors for disordered eating and eating disorders. If we could just not do that, that would actually be huge.
Sarah: I feel like that’s actually a real gift my mother gave me. She never talked about her weight or diets o…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribe🎉 Celebrating 7 Years (+ A Special Anniversary Offer) 🎂
Seven years ago, I started the Peaceful Parenting Membership to create a place where parents could keep learning and growing together. In this special episode, I reflect on what I've learned after supporting …
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Seven years ago, I started the Peaceful Parenting Membership to create a place where parents could keep learning and growing together.
In this special episode, I reflect on what I've learned after supporting thousands of families and why peaceful parenting isn't about perfection—it's about practice.
If you've ever thought, "I know what to do, I just can't seem to do it in the moment," this episode is for you.
I also share a special anniversary offer to celebrate seven years of this incredible community.
Learn more here: https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/sevenyears
Offer ends Saturday Aug 1.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeEmotionally Immature Parents with Morgan Pommells: Episode 229
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, my guest is therapist Morgan Pommells. We explore the lasting impact of having an emotionally immature parent (EIP), including how to begin healing and how we …
Shownotes
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, my guest is therapist Morgan Pommells. We explore the lasting impact of having an emotionally immature parent (EIP), including how to begin healing and how we can break the cycle with our own kids. We also talk about boundaries with our EIP parent, why children's big emotions aren't personal attacks, and what every child truly needs to thrive.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out:1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app
2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️
3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
We talk about:
00:00 – Introduction to Morgan Pommells
02:30 – What is an emotionally immature parent?
07:15 – Emotional immaturity vs. narcissism: What’s the difference?
09:00 – Why emotionally immature parents are often critical
10:30 – The biggest impact on children: Growing up without a strong sense of self
12:00 – How childhood with an EIP affects adult relationships and self-worth, and our own parenting
15:30 – Healing from emotionally immature parenting
18:30 – Why your child’s big emotions are actually a sign of safety
19:00 – Navigating relationships with emotionally immature parents as an adult
27:00 – Teaching children that feelings aren’t dangerous
27:45 – Emotionally immature grandparents: Do the patterns continue?
29:15 – The power of delighting in your child
32:45 – What if your parenting partner is emotionally immature?
35:00 – The parenting mistake we all make: Taking children’s emotions personally
36:00 – Morgan’s advice for every parent: Heal your own wounds before they parent your children
38:00 – Where to find Morgan and closing thoughts
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Morgan’s Masterclass Protect Your Peace
* Morgan’s IG @morganpommells
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the fall for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast.
Today’s guest is Morgan Pommells. Morgan is a therapist and coach who helps the adult children of emotionally immature parents stop seeing themselves through their parents’ eyes and finally come home to who they really are.
Morgan and I discuss what an emotionally immature parent is, how that is—and isn’t—different from narcissism, and how people grow up to parent this way. Morgan also shares how having an emotionally immature parent affects us as children, how it continues to affect us once we’ve grown up, and how we can heal from having been raised by an emotionally immature parent.
We also talk about the opposite of emotionally immature parenting and what our kids need in order to grow up whole and healthy.
Morgan has so much wisdom, and so much of our work overlaps. I think you’re going to learn a lot from this conversation, and I think you’re really going to enjoy it.
If you like this episode, please share it with a friend so more parents can learn about peaceful parenting. If you’re a fan of the podcast, you can also help us out by leaving a five-star rating and review in your podcast app. While you’re there, don’t forget to follow the show so you don’t miss an episode.
Let’s meet Morgan.
Sarah: Hi, Morgan. Welcome to the podcast.
Morgan: Hi! Thank you for having me.
Sarah: I’m so glad to have you on. We’ve been trying to schedule this for a while, and I think this is such an important topic for parents. I’m so glad we finally got to sit down and have this conversation.
Morgan: Me too. It’s a super important topic for parents.
Sarah: Tell us a little about who you are and what you do.
Morgan: I’m a therapist and coach in Ontario, Canada, and I specialize exclusively in working with the adult children of emotionally immature parents. Whether that’s through workshops or one-to-one work, everything I do revolves around helping people heal from having emotionally immature parents.
Sarah: So tell us: what is an emotionally immature parent?
Morgan: Great question.
An emotionally immature parent is someone who really struggles to manage their own painful internal emotions. Those emotions tend to spill out onto everyone around them instead of being worked through internally. These are parents who might struggle with shame, rage, or fear of abandonment, and instead of taking responsibility for those feelings and working through them themselves, they become everyone else’s problem.
They take those emotions out on their children. They may recruit their children into never leaving them because they’re terrified of being abandoned. The child becomes responsible for soothing and managing the parent’s anxiety, which is really the opposite of what a healthy parent-child relationship is meant to be.
Sarah: Yeah.
What causes somebody... I guess you don’t become emotionally immature—you just never emotionally mature. What causes that lack of emotional maturation? How does somebody become an emotionally immature parent?
Morgan: There are a couple of different pathways.
A lot of emotionally immature parents have their own relational trauma. If we experience something deeply overwhelming at a young age and don’t have the capacity to metabolize it at the time, we can become emotionally stuck there. Our biological age keeps moving forward, but our emotional development doesn’t necessarily come with us. Our emotional defenses stay frozen at that younger age.
In other cases, someone may have had the capacity to become emotionally mature, but emotional immaturity was all that was ever modeled for them. They don’t have another template. They don’t know a different kind of parenting exists because they’re simply working from the script they inherited.
Sarah: So far we’ve been talking about this in psychological terms, but what does that actually look like in real life?
Let’s focus on an adult child. What would a familiar interaction look like between an emotionally immature parent and their grown child?
Morgan: One of the biggest dynamics is fear of abandonment.
When their child grows up, goes away to university, finds a partner, or simply starts building their own life, emotionally immature parents can become very controlling. They can become very mean. They can use shame to pull their child back toward them and keep them emotionally close because they’re so afraid of being abandoned.
When children are younger, it usually looks like a lot of control. That parent has a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety, but instead of working through it themselves, they try to control their child. As a result, the parent feels safer, but the child feels controlled and suffocated.
Sarah: So they’re almost externalizing their own feelings?
They feel scared, so they make their child feel scared? Or is that too simplified?
Morgan: No, in some cases that’s exactly what’s happening.
If you have a parent who’s very anxious or very fearful, it can actually feel safer if everyon…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeDopamine Kids with Michaeleen Doucleff: Episode 228
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Michaeleen Doucleff and I …
Shownotes
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Michaeleen Doucleff and I talk about her new book Dopamine Kids: A Science-Based Plan to Rewire Your Child’s Brain and Take You’re your Family in the Age of Screens and Ultraprocessed Foods. Michaeleen’s position is not that screens and ultra-processed food are “bad.” Rather, Michaeleen explains how they can take the place of things that truly bring us joy and pleasure, leaving us with an empty feeling of "what's next?" and an endless cycle of wanting. We focus on how dopamine has been misunderstood and how it actually works, how magnets like screens and ultraprocessed foods keep us stuck, and small changes you can make to start shifting things in your home.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out:1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app
2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️
3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!
We talk about:
* 00:00 Introduction to Dopamine Kids and why our understanding of dopamine is outdated
* 02:15 Michaeleen’s journey from NPR science journalist to parenting author
* 05:00 Dopamine isn’t pleasure—it’s wanting: the neuroscience that changes everything
* 07:20 Why kids say they’d rather play with friends than be on screens
* 08:00 The difference between dopamine, serotonin, and real satisfaction
* 13:30 How apps and ultra-processed foods hijack the brain’s reward system
* 16:45 Why endless scrolling never feels satisfying
* 18:30 “Bottomlessness”—one of the biggest design tricks keeping us hooked
* 20:30 Why we want activities for our kids with a clear purpose and a clear endpoint
* 22:00 The veggie straw experiment that changed Michaeleen’s thinking about food
* 26:50 Magnets and cues: how screens become automatic habits
* 32:00 Why removing screens isn’t enough—you have to replace them
* 33:30 Helping kids meet their real need for adventure and autonomy
* 36:00 Small, permanent changes vs. temporary screen detoxes
* 37:30 Why the car is a great place to start reducing screens
* 38:00 Is reducing screens really more work?
* 40:15 Why laws and regulations haven’t caught up with technology
* 43:00 Why this isn’t a willpower problem
* 46:30 Can kids ever use screens in moderation?
* 49:00 Paid video games vs. free games
* 51:30 This isn’t about screens being “bad”
* 53:00 Helping kids gradually learn to use technology well
* 54:00 School Chromebooks and why parents have more influence than they realize
* 58:00 Advice Michaeleen would give her younger parenting self
* 1:00:00 Why kids have to experience offline joy before they’ll want it
* 1:01:00 Sarah’s client who removed the TV—and what happened next
* 1:02:30 Final thoughts and where to find Michaeleen
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Dopamine Kids: A Science-Based Plan to Rewire Your Child’s Brain and Take You’re your Family in the Age of Screens and Ultraprocessed Foods
* How to Stop Fighting About Video Games with Scott Novis
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the fall for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast.
Today’s guest is journalist Michaeleen Doucleff. She is the author of the book Hunt, Gather, Parent and now has a new book out called Dopamine Kids: A Science-Based Plan to Rewire Your Child’s Brain and Take Back Your Family in the Age of Screens and Ultra-Processed Food.
Michaeleen’s first book is one of our favorite parenting books, and now we can add this one to the list. She walks us through how screens and ultra-processed food hook us and keep our brains stuck in a hijacked wanting cycle without giving us actual rewards and pleasure.
We eventually get around to discussing this, but I want to stress right here at the beginning that Michaeleen isn’t saying that screens and ultra-processed food are evil or that they have no place in our lives. Rather, they can take the place of things that truly bring us joy and pleasure, leaving us with an empty feeling of “what’s next?” and an endless cycle of wanting.
I learned so much from this book. I’d been wanting to make some changes in my own life with my relationship with my phone, and this book helped me understand why it was so hard and what I could do. A hint: as it turns out, we don’t understand dopamine correctly at all. Our cultural shorthand about what dopamine is and what role it plays in the motivation and pleasure cycle is totally outdated.
If you’re interested in making some positive shifts in your child’s life, in your family, and in your own life, you’re going to love this interview and Michaeleen’s book.
If you like this episode, please share it with a friend so more parents can learn about peaceful parenting. If you’re a fan of the podcast, you can help us out not only by sharing it, but by leaving a review and a five-star rating in your podcast player app. While you’re there, don’t forget to follow the show so you don’t miss an episode.
If you’d like to support us even more, you can become a supporter on Substack to help us offset the cost of making the show. We’ll put a link in the show notes.
Let’s meet Michaeleen. I hope you enjoy this conversation and get as much out of her insights as I did.
Sarah: Hi, Michaeleen. Welcome back to the podcast.
Michaeleen: Thank you so much for having me.
Sarah: When we had you on a few years ago to talk about your first parenting book, Hunt, Gather, Parent—we’ll link to it in the show notes—it ended up being one of our favorite podcasts out of the 200-some episodes we’ve done. I’m so excited to have you back to talk about your new book.
Michaeleen: Thank you so much. That’s so nice. It’s an honor to come back.
Sarah: I’m so happy to have you. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Michaeleen: I was—or I still am—a science journalist. I’ve been one now for about 16 years, and I spent 13 or 14 years as a radio correspondent at NPR. I’m still there covering children’s health, global health, neuroscience, and psychology.
Before that, I was trained as a chemist. I have a PhD in chemistry.
Five years ago, I wrote the parenting book Hunt, Gather, Parent, and I had no idea I’d ever become a parenting expert. That definitely wasn’t on my life bingo card.
When I had my daughter Rosie almost 11 years ago, I had no clue what I was doing. It just seemed like an impossible task. Then I started studying parenting around the world, and I realized there was an easier way to do things. That’s what Hunt, Gather, Parent is about.
More recently, about six years ago, I was really trying to fix my own screen problem—my own addiction to my phone. I was so obsessed with it. As I investigated neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral psychology, I started to realize, “Oh gosh, we’re really getting a lot of things wrong when it comes to screens and our kids.”
That led me to write this next book, D…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeFREE Peaceful Parenting Reset
Between end-of-school-year chaos, summer transitions, and the general heaviness of life right now, it can be easy to drift away from the peaceful parenting practices that help us feel grounded and connected …
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Between end-of-school-year chaos, summer transitions, and the general heaviness of life right now, it can be easy to drift away from the peaceful parenting practices that help us feel grounded and connected with our kids.
In this short bonus episode, Corey and I talk about the *free* Peaceful Parenting Reset — a free 5-day experience designed to help you get back to basics with simple, manageable tools that can make a real difference in your home. Plus, this time we’re including a special Summer Planning Workshop to help you head into summer feeling intentional and prepared.
It’s free, it starts Monday June 15, and I’d love for you to join us.
Sign up here:Reimagine Peaceful Parenting Reset
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeAll About Meltdowns: Episode 227
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I interviewed Hayden …
Shownotes
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I interviewed Hayden Ahlbrandt, a certified Synergetic Play Therapist. Hayden shares some really helpful thoughts and strategies on both how we can prevent meltdowns and how best to support our child—and ourselves—once we find ourselves with a meltdown on our hands. We focus on connection, co-regulation, mindfulness, and creating safety.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out:1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app
2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️
3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!
We talk about:
* 00:00 – Sarah introduces Hayden Ahlbrandt, certified Synergetic Play Therapist. Overview of meltdowns, regulation, and co-regulation
* 05:25 – Viewing behavior through a nervous system lens
* 10:30 – Understanding Meltdowns Through the “Pop Bottle” Analogy
* 12:00 – Why some days kids can handle more than others
* 1:00 – “Regulation Is Connection to Self” - Helping kids discover what naturally regulates them
* 20:00 – Why Regulation Tools Need to be Practiced Outside Meltdowns
* 22:00 – Preventing Meltdowns
* 24:00 – The Three Rs: Regulate, Relate, Reason
* 30:00 – Mindfulness and Co-Regulation
* 32:30 – The Parent’s Nervous System
* 36:00 – Aggression During Meltdowns
* 38:30 – Making the Environment Feel Safer
* 42:00 – Parenting Advice Hayden Wishes He’d Known Earlier
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Hayden’s IG @lowtideplaytherapist
* Synergetic Play Therapy Institute
* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the fall for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Evelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERE
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast.
Today’s guest is Hayden Ahlbrandt. Hayden is a certified Synergetic Play Therapist who lights up at any opportunity to teach, educate, and support adults in how they can best support the children in their lives.
He specializes in meltdowns, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. Hayden shares some really helpful thoughts and strategies on both how we can prevent meltdowns and how best to support our child—and ourselves—once we find ourselves with a meltdown on our hands.
I think you’re going to find this episode really useful, no matter how old your child is. One thing I really appreciate is that Hayden sees meltdowns through the lens of the nervous system and in terms of regulation, dysregulation, and co-regulation.
I’m definitely going to be thinking about a phrase he shared: “Regulation is connection to self.”
If you like this episode, please share it with a friend. Word of mouth is the best way to get more eyes and ears on the podcast.
If you’re a fan of the podcast, you can help us out not only by sharing it, but by leaving a review and a five-star rating in your podcast player app. While you’re there, don’t forget to follow the show so you don’t miss an episode.
If you’d like to support us even more, you can become a supporter on Substack to help us offset the cost of making the show.
You can also check out our sponsors: Yoto Audio Players for Kids, a screen-free alternative that makes listening, learning, and entertainment easy with no screens, and Evelyn & Bobbie Bras, the most comfortable and flattering bra I’ve ever worn.
Links are in the show notes.
Okay, let’s meet Hayden.
Sarah: Hi, Hayden. Welcome to the podcast.
Hayden: Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here.
Sarah: Yeah, I’m excited to have you. I found you on Instagram, and I love all the reels that you make. I love your energy and how you show up for parents so they can show up for their kids. So I’m really glad to have you on the podcast.
Hayden: I appreciate that.
Sarah: Tell us about who you are and what you do.
Hayden: Yeah. Well, obviously, my name’s Hayden.
I’m a certified Synergetic Play Therapist, and I have my own play therapy practice. Like you mentioned, my Instagram has become something I’ve had a lot of fun doing. It’s really given me an avenue to work with adults and support them in how we support kids.
So I kind of have a two-pronged approach right now. I work with kids in my play therapy practice, but I also do a lot of speaking, presenting, workshops, and that kind of thing—giving parents the tools from the training I have so they can better support kids.
My specialization has really become focused on big behaviors and meltdowns. I also work with a lot of anxiety.
So that’s the quick elevator speech.
Sarah: Yeah, it makes sense because you have the kids for maybe an hour a week—or whatever your typical amount is—but then they’re off with their parents for all of the rest of the days and hours of the week.
If parents don’t know how to support them during that time, it probably makes your job not work as well, right?
Hayden: Yeah, definitely.
I always explain it as wraparound support. I think we can do so much in our time together and in our work during sessions, but things are just going to move so much quicker when parents are involved.
Ultimately, that’s how I view my work as a play therapist. We’re not trying to make drastic changes or fix things. We’re trying to help the child feel better because, typically, when they’re coming in, it’s because something in their world feels really big, really hard, or really challenging, and that’s coming out as behaviors.
Sarah: Right.
Hayden: I kind of view it that way. We’re trying to help the child feel better, which is going to help the whole family system feel better.
Typically, with the kinds of things I mentioned—if a child is having really big, intense meltdowns that are above and beyond what’s developmentally appropriate—it can be really hard on the entire family system: siblings, parents, whoever it might be.
I talk about it as creating as much wraparound support as possible because it’s going to help the child work through whatever feels clogged for them in that moment.
Sarah: What’s a Synergetic Play Therapist?
Hayden: Yeah. Synergetic Play Therapy is a modality, an approach—a specific type of play therapy.
The way I typically explain it is that we’re really worki…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeThe Psychology of Peaceful Parenting with Dr. Justin Coulson: Episode 226
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, my guest is Dr. Justin …
Shownotes
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, my guest is Dr. Justin Coulson, an Australian parenting expert and father of 6 who has his PhD in psychology and is the author of 10 books on parenting and the co-host of the Happy Families podcast with his wife, Kylie. We discuss the psychology behind peaceful parenting, including how self-determination theory explains kids’ challenging behavior. Dr. Justin also shared his three E’s of discipline.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out:1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app
2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️
3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!
We talk about:
* 1:45 – Introduction to Dr. Justin Coulson and his personal parenting turning point
How struggles with anger and discipline led him to rethink everything and study psychology.
* 08:20 – Learning to regulate ourselves, practicing repair, and growing over time.
* 15:50 – Why peaceful parenting starts with the parent’s self-awareness and regulation.
* 19:50 – Understanding behavior through compassion and curiosity.
* 20:50 – The HALTS framework
How hunger, anger, loneliness, tiredness, and stress impact children’s behavior.
* 23:00 – Self-determination theory and parenting
* 33:00 – The 3 E’s of Effective Discipline
* 41:50 – How to use the 3 E’s in everyday parenting moments.
Real-life examples: screens, sibling conflict & collaboration
* 49:00 – Building trust and the “goodwill bank” with kids
Why collaborative parenting pays off when tough limits are needed.
* 53:30 – Advice to his younger parenting self: “soft eyes”
A powerful reflection on kindness, connection, and showing up with compassion.
* 56:30 – Where to find Dr. Justin Coulson
His podcast, books, and upcoming work on boys and healthy masculinity.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Dr. Justin’s website and podcast
* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the summer for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Evelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERE
Sarah: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Dr. Justin Coulson. He’s an Australian parenting expert with a PhD in psychology, the author of 10 books on parenting, the co-host of the Happy Families podcast with his wife, Kylie, the father of six children, and, last but not least, grandfather of one.
We discuss the psychology behind peaceful parenting, including how self-determination theory explains kids’ challenging behavior. Dr. Justin also shared his three E’s of discipline, which I just loved.
If you like this episode, please share it with a friend so more parents can learn about peaceful parenting. If you’re a fan of the podcast, you can help us out not only by sharing it, but by leaving a review and a five-star rating in your podcast player app. While you’re there, don’t forget to follow the show so you don’t miss an episode.
If you’d like to support us even more, you can become a supporter on Substack to help us offset the cost of making the show. We’ll put a link in the show notes.
Let’s meet Dr. Justin. I hope you enjoy this conversation and get as much out of his insights as I did.
Sarah: Hello, Dr. Justin, and welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Justin: Sarah, I’m so glad to be with you. Thanks for having me on.
Sarah: Yeah, and it’s morning for you, evening for me—nice—and I’m just glad that we could make this time to talk to each other. I really appreciate it. Thank you. So, could you just tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Dr. Justin: Sure. I grew up on the east coast of Australia, about an hour north of Sydney. Geographically, that kind of locates where I was. I was the teenage boy that every parent hopes they will not have. I don’t think I was a particularly bad kid, but I certainly wasn’t a good kid.
My parents were spending a small fortune—I’m a 1975 baby, I turned 50 last year—but this was in the late ’80s and early ’90s. My parents were spending so much money to send me to a private school. Because we were on the coast—a very quintessentially Australian thing—I was wagging school.
Do you say “wagging school” in Canada? Is that a term Canadians use?
Sarah: No, but I think we get the context. I think it means not going to school.
Dr. Justin: Yeah, I was truant. They thought I was there, but I wasn’t.
Sarah: We say skipping.
Dr. Justin: I was skipping school. Okay, yeah. We call it a school wag.
So I would go to school in the morning and get my name marked off in roll call. Then I would sneak out of the school. Across the road from the school, there were bushes—kind of a forest, or whatever you might call it in Canada and America. I would get changed out of my tie, long pants, and black school shoes, throw on some board shorts and a T-shirt.
My surfboard was stashed in the bush, and I’d grab it from the hiding place. Then I’d jump on a bus, go to the beach, and surf all day. Afterward, I’d get a bus back to school in the afternoon, change back into my uniform, and race into the school just in time to get my name marked off, looking like I’d been at school all day.
This was in the days before schools communicated with parents via email and text, because none of that existed. I was able to get away with it.
So I finished high school. I scored in the bottom 15%—
Sarah: Goodness.
Dr. Justin: Not just my class, but of the entire state of New South Wales. My parents were devastated.
I didn’t care. I wanted to have a media career. I wanted to be a radio announcer. So I got into radio. If you’ve ever listened to the radio—and no offense to radio people—you know you don’t have to do well at school to be good at radio. You just have to be able to sit on the microphone and say things that make sense.
I knew I could do that, so school didn’t matter to me. I didn’t care about it. That’s what I did.
But this is where it intersects with parenting.
About 10 years into my radio career, my wife and I were having some challenges, particularly around my parenting. We had a threenager and a newborn baby.
That three-year-old—I had always held the opinion that my children would do a…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeTeens, Tweens and Peaceful Parenting: Episode 225
👉 PSST- Are you currently parenting teens? Before we get into the podcast, I want to make sure you know that my Peaceful Parenting in the Teen Years group coaching course starts on Tuesday, May 5. Learn more …
Shownotes
👉 PSST- Are you currently parenting teens? Before we get into the podcast, I want to make sure you know that my Peaceful Parenting in the Teen Years group coaching course starts on Tuesday, May 5. Learn more and how to join us HERE.
Back to the podcast— You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Corey and I discuss peaceful parenting teens and tweens, including mindset shifts, connection strategies, sideways listening, and why the teen years can be joyful instead of scary.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out:1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!
We talk about:
* 00:00 — Introduction: Peaceful parenting teens and tweens
* 01:02 — Why the teen years don’t have to be scary
* 02:39 — The importance of parents
* 04:48 — Don’t take teen behavior personally
* 06:32 — Responding to the feeling under the attitude
* 08:42 — Remembering how hard the teen years can feel
* 12:39 — Connection matters: “at what cost to the relationship?”
* 14:12 — Tip: sideways listening
* 15:41 — Tip: being a “potted plant”
* 17:51 — Tip: connect on their terms and timeline
* 21:17 — Why the teen years can be something to look forward to
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Peaceful Parenting in the Teen Years Course starting Tuesday, May 5th
* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the summer for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Evelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERE
Sarah: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. I have Corey here with me today, and we are going to be talking about peaceful parenting teens and tweens. Welcome, Corey.
Corey: Thanks for having me.
Sarah: All right, Corey, we were just reminiscing about how long we’ve known each other, and you have known me for eight years now. So you’ve seen me through all of the teen and tween years. How are you feeling about when your kids are getting closer to those ages?
Corey: I actually feel really good about it, and I tell people this all the time. I think from watching you go through it and seeing how much you loved and enjoyed the teen years, I actually don’t feel nervous at all. I feel excited. I’m really enjoying watching my kids get older.
Sarah: That’s so great. Yeah. I guess Maxine was 10, Asa was 13, and Lee was 16 when we met each other. So you really have seen me through all of those years. And Maxine, I can’t believe it, she’s going to be 19 soon, so I’m almost done with the teen years.
And you know, it’s really interesting because when they were little, Jesse and I went, “Oh my gosh, we’re going to have three teenagers at the same time.” And teenagers get such a bad rap. Everyone’s always talking about, “Oh, just wait. Just wait until they’re teenagers.” And I thought teenagers were amazing. Those were some of our best years when they were teenagers, and really, it’s all because of peaceful parenting.
I don’t think my kids are unusual. I mean, I think they’re great, but I think they were pretty typical teenagers, and I just think it’s peaceful parenting.
Corey: Yeah. I can’t get over how often I hear that. All the time, everyone’s just being like, “What’s it going to be like when they’re teenagers?” It’s this fear. It’s this cultural thing where everyone’s terrified of them.
Sarah: Yeah, yeah. And teenagers can have a hard time. It’s interesting: I was looking at some of this research the other day, and there’s a study—actually, I think my dad sent this to me—about how the most protective factor for a teenager not getting into trouble or having issues when they’re teenagers is a warm relationship with parents. That’s the number one protective factor for how teenagers do.
So in peaceful parenting, it’s all about the relationship, right? It’s all about connection. Since we are talking about teens and tweens today, maybe we’ll talk about some of the mindset shifts that we need to make with teenagers and tweens, and then we’ll go over a couple of tips. How does that sound?
Corey: That sounds great.
Sarah: Great. And before we get too far into this, part of the reason we were talking about this is because I have a course coming up. It’s a small group coaching course. It’s part instruction, part coaching, about peaceful parenting teenagers. Because while the concepts are the same as peaceful parenting younger kids, there are some adjustments that we need to make for teenagers, and there are also special considerations for peaceful parenting teenagers.
So if anyone’s interested in that, it starts on Tuesday, on the first Tuesday in May—whatever the date is. And it will be recorded if you can’t make it live. If anyone’s interested in signing up, it’s for six weeks starting on this coming Tuesday. We’ll put a link in the show notes for more information and for signing up.
I only offer this once a year, and you really do need to have a teenager. Don’t sign up for this if your kid is 12 or 11. We’re really focusing on kids who are already teenagers. So check that out in the show notes if you’re interested in joining us.
Let’s talk about teens and tweens.
So, mindset. These are things that are really important to remember whether your kid is 4 or 14, but they’re especially important. I think peaceful parenting teenagers is like peaceful parenting on steroids.
Corey: That’s a really good way to describe it.
Sarah: Yeah. Everything that you need to do when your kid is younger, you need to do even more when they’re teenagers.
One of the things that I always remind clients and people—and reminded myself when my kids were teenagers—is: don’t take it personally. It can be so hard, I think, because they’re bigger and they look like adults in some ways, right? Even parents who find it easy not to take it personally if a four-year-old is like, “You’re the meanest mommy, and you’re not invited to my birthday party”—it’s easier for us not to take it personally when they’re little. But when your 14-year-old says, “I hate you,” or whatever, it can be really hard not to take it personally because they a…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeYou, Your Partner and Same Page Parenting with Martina Nova: Episode 224
👉 PSST- Dealing with anxiety in your family? Or want to know what to do so it doesn’t become an issue? Before we get into the podcast, I want to make sure you know about the workshop I’m teaching How to Become …
Shownotes
👉 PSST- Dealing with anxiety in your family? Or want to know what to do so it doesn’t become an issue? Before we get into the podcast, I want to make sure you know about the workshop I’m teaching How to Become an Anxiety-Resilient Family: What actually helps kids handle anxiety (and what unintentionally makes it worse) All the details are HERE
Back to the podcast— You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Martina Nova, author of Same Page Parenting, talks about co-parenting, postpartum mental health, conflict, invisible labor, gender roles, and how couples can stay connected while raising kids.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out:1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!
We talk about:
* 00:00 Introduction to Martina Nova and Same Page Parenting
* 02:00 Why parenting conversations are about more than logistics
* 04:00 Common issues couples do not realize they need to discuss
* 06:00 Postpartum mental health for both parents
* 08:00 How parenting brings up our own childhood patterns and trauma
* 13:00 Why little kids can be so hard on relationships
* 16:00 Feeling touched out, disconnected, and like roommates
* 18:00 How to start rebuilding connection with your partner
* 20:00 Conflict styles and how to handle conflict better
* 23:00 Gender roles, invisible labor, and what kids learn from us
* 29:00 Why involving kids in home life matters
* 32:00 The deeper goal of the book: connection between co-parents
* 34:00 Where to find Martina and her work
* 35:00 Advice Martina would give her younger parent self
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Martina’s Book Same Page Parenting
* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the summer for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Evelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERE
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Martina Nova. She’s a clinical therapist and author of the new book Same Page Parenting: Align with Your Partner to Raise Happy, Confident, and Resilient Kids.
Martina wrote this book because she realized, through her own experience as a parent and through her work with couples, that it can be really hard to find ways to talk about, and as she puts it, get on the same page with your partner about many of the issues that come up for us as we raise kids. We discussed some of these common issues, like how you connect after kids, how you handle conflict, and why relationships after kids can be so hard.
We also discussed how we teach kids about these issues and others, such as gender roles, whether we mean to be teaching them or not. If you find this episode helpful, please share it with a friend.
If you’re a fan of the podcast, please take a minute to rate and review us on your podcast player app. Remember, if you want the podcast ad-free, you can support us on Substack for less than $10 a month. Not only do you get the podcast ad-free, you get access to Q and As with me and discounts on workshops.
You also get the satisfaction of knowing that you’re helping to support us as we change the world through peaceful parenting. We’ll put the link to support us on Substack right here in the show notes, or you can just search up my name and Substack and you’ll find us. Let’s go ahead and meet Martina.
Hi Martina, welcome to the podcast.
Martina: Hi Sarah. Thanks so much for having me.
Sarah: Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do, and then tell us about your new book.
Martina: Of course. My name is Martina. I am a therapist in Vancouver, BC. I’m also a mom of two little ones, and I’m a co-parent as well.
So I recently wrote a book called Same Page Parenting, which I started thinking about toward the end of my last pregnancy, and it kind of developed when my youngest was really little. But it’s a book that I wrote in order to help a lot of people have conversations about parenting that we don’t realize we need to have.
It’s not just about how many diapers are we gonna go through, who’s gonna wake up for night feedings, what kind of onesies should we buy, but things about how do we understand how our upbringing influences so many different categories of parenting, how we show up emotionally for our children, how society shapes our views on certain things, how our own neurodiversity might come into play when we’re trying to regulate ourselves and be there for our kids, or even some views about gender roles or other assumed expectations that we don’t even know would be helpful to talk about before or during parenthood.
Sarah: I’ve always said that there should be some sort of test, or some way to know how your partner will be as a parent and the things that will come up, because you really can’t know. A lot of stuff comes up after you have kids that you wouldn’t even have known to talk about, or how having children was gonna affect you and affect your relationship. So this, as far as I know, no one’s developed a test yet, but this is a good substitute.
Probably everyone listening to this already has kids because it’s a parenting podcast. But this would be a great baby shower gift or something for someone, for them to talk with their partner about all of these things before, when they have maybe a little bit more leisure and time to sort of figure out how they’re gonna handle things.
One thing I do like about your book—the way it’s structured, I’ll just tell people, is you have a topic and then you have a sort of a brainstorm of questions for each age of parenting. Like, if you’re pregnant, these are some questions you might think about. If you have preschoolers, or if you have middle schoolers, or if you have adult children. And so you kind of go through all the ages and how each of the topics that you’re talking about, the kind of questions that might come up around that.
So it’s—and you said in your introduction you can skip around, go to the chapter that you need right now. It’s a very interesting and different parenting book. It’s not like any o…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeJust Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should: Episode 223
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Corey and I explore the …
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You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Corey and I explore the pressure of intensive parenting and the idea that “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” We discuss burnout, productivity culture, and how letting go of unrealistic or unnecessary expectations can help us be the parents we truly want to be.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out:1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app 2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️ 3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!
We talk about:
* 00:00 — Intensive parenting and unrealistic expectations: “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should”
* 03:00 — Cultural expectations and productivity mindset and the “perfect parent” standard
* 06:00 — How parents get overwhelmed: Sports, activities, food, and overscheduling
* 09:00 — Choosing what actually matters- “Does this spark joy?” and letting go of unnecessary tasks
* 13:00 — Doing less to feel better
* 15:00 — Productivity, burnout, and rest
* 17:00 — Letting go of control and accepting help and why independence isn’t everything
* 21:00 — Questioning parenting norms
* 25:00 — Why care and interdependence matter
* 30:00 — Corey’s injury story + the cost of overdoing it
* 34:00 — The importance of receiving care
* 36:00 — Rethinking what it means to be a “good parent”
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Ditch Special Time? Connecting with complex kids when connecting is hard: Episode 212
* Episode 60: Hunt, Gather, Parent with Michaeleen Doucleff
* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the summer for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Evelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERE
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today, Corey and I discuss an idea we’ve been thinking about a lot lately and talking to each other about: intensive parenting, the choices we make, and the impossibly high standards we’re up against, and how these things affect our mental and physical health as parents and as humans.
After I interviewed Jessica Slice, disability activist and author of the book Unfit Parent, who talks about these things and what she’s learned from disability culture and being disabled herself, Corey captured all of these complicated ideas about productivity, care, and how we can sometimes drive ourselves too hard as: just because you can.
I’m going to say that again: just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Listen in to our conversation about how this idea can inform the choices we make as parents and how we can make changes to make life feel easier and more connected and fun.
If you find this episode useful, please share it with a friend. That’s actually only one of the no-cost ways you can support the podcast. You can also take a minute to rate and review the Peaceful Parenting Podcast on your favorite podcast player app. Sharing with friends and rating and reviewing us helps us reach more parents, and we all know that parents need all the love and support they can get these days.
You can also support us by becoming a supporter on Substack. For the cost of a latte a month, you not only help us offset some of the costs of making this podcast, you can also get the podcast ad-free. Just search my name on Substack and you’ll find us.
As we near our five-year podcast anniversary, we really appreciate the support and the love of our listeners.
Here’s our conversation.
Sarah: Hey Corey, welcome back to the podcast.
Corey: Thanks for having me again.
Sarah: Do you remember last year when that report came out from the U.S. Surgeon General that said that parents are suffering from intensive parenting?
Corey: Yes.
Sarah: Yeah, and I think people consider peaceful parenting intensive parenting, right? And we do often say this kind of parenting is a lot of work. It requires a lot of us. But I wouldn’t say that it necessarily has to be intensive parenting in all aspects.
Corey: I agree so much. I had a lot of mixed feelings when that report came out.
Sarah: Yeah, me too. I felt like writing some sort of a defense of peaceful parenting after I heard that.
So let’s tease this apart a bit. We started talking about this after I interviewed Jessica Slice. If you all didn’t catch that, she is a disability activist, and she talked about disability culture and what it tells us about the impossible standards of parenting, and I guess the impossible standards of parenting in general, not just intensive parenting.
And you said it reminded you of one of your favorite quotes. So tell us your favorite quote, and that’s the anchor of our episode today.
Corey: One of my favorite quotes, though I’m not even sure if it’s technically a quote, is from one of my favorite movies, Jurassic Park. I recently actually read the book because I was talking so much about how I love the movie. The big theme is: just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Now, when you and I were talking about this, honestly, we could have a really long conversation about the way they were talking about it in the book, which was maybe questioning science and where we want to take that, but it actually applies really well to parenting.
Sarah: Yeah. And the idea that Jessica Slice brought in, and we’re going to play a quote about this, is that there were things that she couldn’t do as a disabled parent, and she felt a lot of guilt about that.
So let’s just take a second and listen to that quote.
Jessica: Yeah. I do sometimes feel self-conscious when I see the way my peers parent, when I see them making these perfect little lunches and these divided-up lunch boxes or doing Elf on the Shelf, these kinds of versions of parenting that I just don’t have the energy or capacity to have as part of our lives.
And I can feel like, are my kids missing out from this type of parenting? And maybe in some ways they are. Nothing is simple. But I know I would have done those things. The version of me in my twenties would have done thos…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeTeaching Kids Emotional Self-Regulation: Episode 222
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I interview Kahlila Robinson …
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You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I interview Kahlila Robinson and Sarah Gerstenzang about self-regulation, co-regulation, repair, and what realistic emotional expectations look like for children ages five to eight. We discuss why parent self-regulation matters so much, how to support kids through big feelings, and practical strategies families can use together.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out: 1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app 2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️ 3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!
We talk about:
* 00:00 — Meet Kahlila Robinson and Sarah Gerstenzang
* 03:00 — The book and self-regulation. What self-regulation is and why it starts with parents
* 06:00 — What’s realistic for kids (ages 5–8) and why big emotions are normal at this age
* 11:00 — Co-regulation: What it is and how parents support it
* 15:00 — Supporting kids through big feelings: Why feelings shouldn’t be rushed or shut down
* 20:00 — Revisiting hard moments and why conversations after the fact matter
* 23:00 — Repair: How and why to repair after conflict
* 29:00 — Practical tools and simple regulation strategies
* 35:00 — When strategies don’t work: Why practice and flexibility matter
* 38:00 — Where to find the guests
* 39:00 — Final reflections: Advice to their younger parenting selves
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* The Self-Regulation Workbook for Ages 5-8
* Kahlila’s website and IG @kahlilarobinson
* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the summer for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Evelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERE
Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guests are Kahlila Robinson and Sarah Gerstenzang, who wrote The Self-Regulation Handbook for Kids ages five through eight. Although their book is aimed at parents of kids these ages, the truth is that so much of what we discussed applies to parents of kids of all ages, toddlers to teens.
A lot of the themes we discuss today will be familiar to you as listeners because you’ve heard me talk a lot about self-regulation, co-regulation, and repair. Listen into our conversation to learn why these are important for us as parents and why they are so crucial for teaching kids self-regulation no matter what age they are.
Let’s meet Kahlila and Sarah.
Sarah R: Hi, Kahlila. Hi, Sarah. Welcome to the podcast.
Kahlila: Thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you for having us.
Sarah R: Yeah. We’re going to be talking about your book, The Self-Regulation Workbook for Children Ages Five to Eight. But before we dive in, maybe if you could each introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Kahlila: Sure. I’m Kahlila Robinson. I’m a licensed clinical psychologist based in New York City. I have a private practice where I see kids, families, and adults. I’m also a mom myself of two kids, and I’m very happy to be here talking about the book and sharing more about our process and some of the highlights from the book.
Sarah G.: Yeah. Thank you. So I’m Sarah Gerstenzang. I’m a licensed clinical social worker here in Brooklyn, New York. I also have a private practice, which focuses on adoptive families and complex developmental trauma. I’m also the board chair of the Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York, and the parent of three children, two by birth and one who we adopted through foster care.
Sarah R: Welcome. Yesterday, when I was doing my preparation for this podcast, I came across an online copy of your book, Another Mother: Co-Parenting with the Foster Care System, and I started reading it, and I kept having to go, stop, stop, go back to the—it seems to—I kept it open on my laptop. I’m really looking forward to getting back to it. It seems really interesting. I grew up with some foster kids in my house when I was really young.
Okay, so back to the book that we are here to talk about. Maybe just tell us a little bit about your book and, just while we’re all on the same page, what’s your definition of self-regulation?
Kahlila: Our book is written for parents of kids age five through eight. So it’s called The Self-Regulation Workbook for Children, but it’s a slight misnomer. It’s more directly written for parents and focuses on the importance of parents being able to self-regulate so that they can be calm on behalf of their kids, and really teaching parents strategies for how to do that through really stormy times with their kids.
Because what we’ve seen, time and time again, is when parents are able to remain calm, for the most part, it benefits the child. It provides a model for the child. It supports a child’s own self-regulation. So there’s a lot in there in terms of parent guidance on how to support themselves when their child is having a hard time or when they’re having a hard time. And then there’s also a lot of strategies in the book for kids and parents to use together to support self-regulation in both of them.
So that’s the overview of the book.
Sarah R: Yeah, it’s a really helpful book. I notice that just in my practice of coaching parents, parents always come with this idea of, in short, “fix my kid,” right? So we kind of talk about that as the inroad, but then after a session or two, parents always say to me, “This isn’t even about my kid. This is about me.” And I think that’s—yeah. Nobody, though, wants to come into it thinking that. They always want to come into it thinking, “Fix my kid.”
Kahlila: Yeah.
Sarah G.: It’s kind of confusing for them also, because most parents parent the way that they’ve been parented, and they can’t really take that bird’s-eye view and see, often, how they are impacting their own child’s sense of safety and calm and capacity to be in charge of their own emotions. So yeah, it’s confusing.
Sarah R: So self-regulation—just give us a definition, what you think of as self-regulation, so we’re all on the same page.
Kahlila: Yeah.
Sarah G.: Throwing yourself.
Kahlila: Yes. In short, yeah. It’s the ability to identify feelings that you…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeWhy Strong-Willed Kids Are So Hard to Parent (and Why They’re Amazing)
Strong-willed kids can be some of the most challenging — and the most incredible — kids to parent.In this bonus mini-episode, Sarah and Corey talk about what makes strong-willed kids unique, why they can feel …
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Strong-willed kids can be some of the most challenging — and the most incredible — kids to parent.
In this bonus mini-episode, Sarah and Corey talk about what makes strong-willed kids unique, why they can feel so hard to parent in everyday moments, and why their determination, honesty, and sense of justice are traits to be celebrated.
They also discuss how small shifts in how we communicate with strong-willed kids can dramatically reduce power struggles while preserving connection.
If you’re parenting a child who pushes back, refuses to be bossed around, and stands firmly in their beliefs, this conversation will help you see their strengths and learn how to work with their temperament instead of constantly fighting against it.
Sarah also shares details about her upcoming workshop on parenting strong-willed kids.
You can find the workshop at https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/workshop
00:00 — Strong-willed kids: a blessing and a challengeWhy Sarah and Corey both love working with strong-willed kids.
01:00 — What makes strong-willed kids specialTheir sense of justice, independence, and willingness to question authority.
02:00 — Why strong-willed kids can make everyday parenting harderWhen kids won’t “just put their coat on.”
03:00 — A real-life example of strong-willed determinationSarah’s story about her niece tying her shoes while holding a fidget spinner.
05:00 — The nervous system reaction to being told what to doWhy strong-willed people resist being bossed around.
06:00 — The surprising realization Sarah’s son had at age 13Why he thought one parent was “better.”
07:00 — Power struggles and how to avoid themWhy connection matters so much with strong-willed kids.
08:00 — Workshop announcementParenting Strong-Willed Kids: Tools to Reduce Power Struggles Without Crushing Their Spirit.
Sarah: Hi, Corey.
Corey: Hey, Sarah.
Sarah: Let’s talk about strong-willed kids. Are your kids strong-willed?
Corey: Absolutely.
Sarah: Yeah, both. What about you?
Corey: Both of them. And yes—the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I am extremely strong-willed.
Sarah: Me too. And my kids— all three of my kids are strong-willed. And me and my husband. You should see us play board games together.
It did make it harder to parent them. And I also love how I am, and I love how my kids were and are. What do you love about strong-willed kids?
Corey: I love so much about strong-willed kids. I actually think some of my favorite clients to work with are those who have strong-willed kids.
Sarah: For sure.
Corey: Because these kids are just… what I love about them is they’re going to change the world. They’re not going to just go along with the crowd. They’re not going to just do things because you said so. They’re going to really think deeply about things. They have this deep sense of right and wrong.
Sarah: Justice. Yeah.
Corey: Yes—justice guiding who they are and what they want to do in the world.
Sarah: Yeah. What I love about strong-willed kids is that they speak their truth. You know how they feel. They’re not afraid to speak their truth about what they like and what they don’t like.
Corey: Yeah. You always know where you stand with them. There’s no guesswork involved with a strong-willed kid.
Sarah: Yeah. And they’re so willing to stand up for what they believe in—even if it comes at a cost to them.
I love how they won’t be bossed around. Because they’re little and they’re still learning, sometimes they don’t realize it’s at their own expense.
Corey: Yes.
Sarah: I think it’s something to be admired. And also, as a parent, it makes it tough sometimes to work with them.
Corey: Absolutely. There have been so many times where I look at my kids, or I’m talking to clients, and we’re just like, “Why can’t they just go put their coat on now?”
We have these busy schedules we’re trying to get through, and sometimes when you have these little strong-willed kids, you feel like you can’t get through the schedule because they won’t just go do what you ask them to do.
Sarah: Yeah.
One time when I was teaching a workshop on strong-willed kids—and another one’s coming up; we’ll get to that—I looked up the dictionary definition of strong-willed. It was something like: tends to do what one wants, even if others advise against it.
And I love that.
It reminds me of something that happened recently. As you know, I was visiting my sister and my niece, who’s eight. I was helping get my niece ready for school. She was tying her shoes, and she had a fidget spinner in one hand while trying to tie them.
Of course, tying your shoes is already tricky when you’re still learning, and trying to do it with a fidget spinner makes it even harder.
I casually said, “Let me hold that.”
She said, “No.”
I started laughing, and she looked at me.
I said, “Have you ever heard the expression cut off your nose to spite your face?”
She said no.
I explained that it basically means making things harder for yourself just to prove a point. I told her, “I don’t care if you hold that fidget spinner while you tie your shoes, but it’s making life harder for you. I love that you don’t want to be bossed around, and I admit I kind of gave you an order to let me hold it. I love that you’re standing up for yourself and not letting anyone boss you around. But holding onto that fidget spinner while tying your shoes is making things harder for you.”
She didn’t say anything.
She finished tying her shoe with the fidget spinner still in her hand.
Then when she moved to the next shoe, she handed it to me and said, “Will you hold this?”
I said, “Sure.”
And she tied her shoe without the fidget spinner.
That’s such a good example of how strong-willed kids can be. If my husband tells me to do something I was already planning to do, I can feel my nervous system activate—like, He can’t tell me what to do.
But because I’m a grown-up with experience, I don’t shout “No!” when that happens.
So that little tweak can really make things easier for strong-willed kids—and for us.
Corey: Absolutely.
And we were saying off camera too—obviously you are also my boss, and you are the only person in my life who can tell me what to do, and I happily do it without that nervous system response.
So all those tweaks that you’ve taught me over the years—how you manage me—show that there really is a way to work with strong-willed people, whether it’s a little kid or a grown-up, to make them feel empowered when you’re working together.
Sarah: Totally.
My middle son is extremely strong-willed. He’s 21 now, but growing up he absolutely would cut off his nose to spite his face so he wouldn’t feel bossed around.
My husband tends to be a bit more traditional—still peaceful, but a little more direct and demanding.
One time when my son was about 13, he said, “Dad’s a better parent than you are.”
I said, “Really? Why do you say that?”
He said, “Because I always do what he tells me to do.”
I knew what he meant. My husband would say things like, “You have to do this,” and my son would comply.
So I asked him, “Have I ever asked you to do something that you didn’t do?”
He stopped and thought.
Then he said, “No.”
The difference was that he didn’t feel bossed around when I asked him to do something.
And he usually did follow my husband too because he felt connected to him—which is another really important thing with strong-willed kids: connection.
But it was funny watching his face as the realization landed. The ground shifted for him.
He realized, “I do what my mom asks too. I just don’t notice that she’s telling me what to do.”
I thought that was hilarious.
Corey: That shows you worked with him so effectively that he didn’t even notice directions were happening.
Sarah: Yeah, exactly.
Well, there are so many fun things to talk about with strong-willed kids. I love them so much.
But I also see parents every day—and I know you do too—who feel really stuck. They feel like they’re constantly battling and getting into power struggles.
That’s why I’m teaching a workshop on this.
It’s on Wednesday, March 18th at noon Eastern time. You can go to reimagin…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeWhy Kids Need More Freedom (and Less Supervision) — with Lenore Skenazy: Episode 221
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.I am so excited I was able to interview a parenting thought leader I greatly …
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You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
I am so excited I was able to interview a parenting thought leader I greatly admire. Lenore did not disappoint! So much wisdom, and so much fun! I think you’ll love this podcast episode.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I interview Lenore Skenazy, author of “Free-Range Kids,” which grew into the Free-Range Kids movement. Now she is president of Let Grow, the national nonprofit that is making it easy, normal, and legal to give kids back independence. We talk about screens, anxiety, free play, and why childhood independence matters more than ever.
👉 Also- just announced- I’m teaching a workshop next week: “Parenting Strong-Willed Kids: Tools to Reduce Power Struggles without Crushing Their Spirit.” All the details HERE.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out: 1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app 2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️ 3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!
We talk about:
* 00:00 — Introduction to Lenore Skenazy
* 03:00 — The disappearance of unstructured childhood and why kids need risk, boredom, and problem-solving
* 06:00 — How independence builds confidence
* 08:00 — The social pressure parents feel
* 09:00 — How communities can bring back free play
* 15:00 — What kids learn through unsupervised play
* 19:00 — Why kids prefer real-world play to screens
* 24:00 — How fear reshaped parenting
* 29:00 — The rise of tracking and constant surveillance
* 34:00 — Independence and mental health
* 37:00 — The Let Grow Experience
* 41:00 — Kids are not actually addicted to screens
* 42:00 — Bringing back the teenage babysitter
* 46:00 — How giving kids independence reduces the pressure of intensive parenting
* 49:00 — The value of “kid world”
* 50:00 — Lenore’s advice to her younger parent self
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Lenore’s Book Free Range Kids
* Two free independence-building programs for schools
* The free “Four Weeks to a Let Grow Kid” program
* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the summer for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Evelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERE
Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Lenore Skenazy. You might know her as the author of the book Free-Range Kids and the founder of the movement of the same name. Now she’s president of Let Grow, the national nonprofit she co-founded with Peter Gray, Daniel Shuchman, and Jonathan Haidt. Their mission: making it easy, normal, and legal to give kids back some old-fashioned independence.
Lenore says our kids are smarter, safer, and stronger than our culture gives them credit for. If you’re worried about the ubiquitousness of screens in your child’s life and/or about the rise of childhood anxiety, you’re going to want to have a listen to this episode. Lenore and I discussed the importance of unstructured, unsupervised time in childhood, why it disappeared, how to bring it back, and what happens when we do or don’t.
She was so much fun to speak with, and her message is one that all parents need to hear and that all kids want them to hear.
I just loved this conversation with Lenore, and I know you will too. Okay. Let’s meet Lenore.
Sarah: Hi, Lenore. Welcome to the podcast.
Lenore: Thank you, Sarah. I am happy to be here, wherever here is.
Sarah: Well, I’m so excited to talk to you. I’ve followed your work since you were called the Worst Mom in America, back in the beginning of your Free-Range Kids days. I’m so excited about your new project that you’ve been working on. So maybe, if you could just introduce yourself and tell us who you are and what you do.
Lenore: Sure. I am Lenore Skenazy. I live in New York City. I have two grown kids—growing, grown, whatever you want to say. When are they done? I don’t know. But I wrote the book Free-Range Kids, and I am now president of Let Grow, which is the nonprofit that’s promoting childhood independence.
Sarah: I love it. I was recently—this, I promise, is going to make sense when I get back to it—but I recently listened to the memoir of Patti Smith, the artist and musician, and she talked a lot about her childhood growing up in the fifties, and how unsupervised and unstructured it was, and all of that. She had really great memories of playing in the woods, and the games that she would make up with her brothers and all of the neighborhood kids and the things that they would do. And I really wondered: is that kind of childhood why she became such a creative person and, you know, a successful person in that way? And it made me feel sad for that kind of childhood that’s lost to kids today.
So why don’t kids have that sort of unstructured, unsupervised play, like maybe you and I even grew up with? Because I know I did, for sure.
Lenore: I did, for sure, too. And everybody did. Some people ended up being Patti Smith, and most of us didn’t. Nonetheless, I’m sorry to see it evaporating too.
One of my recent analogies is that the rainforest was sort of disappearing, but we didn’t notice until we looked at pictures from before and after, from 1970 till now, and it’s like, oh my God, that’s the earth’s lungs, and look how small they’ve gotten. And I feel that same way about unsupervised time in childhood. It’s this natural resource. It’s something that all kids thrive on having, and we just keep shrinking it and replacing it with organized and supervised activities that we think are better, that we think, oh, now they’re learning chess, or they’ve made it to the travel lacrosse team—that has to be good. You’re up in Canada: made it to the travel hockey team. That’s gotta be good. More time in the luge—that’s wonderful, right?
But in fact, what kids really need, and what their whole innards are programmed to expect, is all sorts of time when they’re making up their own games, when they’re dealing with some fears and some squabbles with their friends as they figure out, what are we gonna do today? And, you know, is that tree gonna be too hard to climb? Let me try.
Without those everyday experiences of a little bit of fear, a little bit…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeThe hardest part of parenting: Sarah and Corey on TRANSITIONS!
Transitions — mornings, bedtime, leaving the house, stopping play — are some of the toughest moments for kids and parents. If these daily shifts often turn into power struggles, this live workshop is for …
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Transitions — mornings, bedtime, leaving the house, stopping play — are some of the toughest moments for kids and parents. If these daily shifts often turn into power struggles, this live workshop is for you.
Our workshop Transitions Without Battles: Guiding Kids Through Mornings, Bedtime, and Everything In Between will help you understand why transitions are so hard (especially for sensitive, strong-willed, and neurodivergent kids) and give you practical, respectful tools you can use right away.
In this live training, you’ll learn:
* Why transition moments trigger resistance
* Simple & specific tools to make transitions smoother
* How to stay regulated when things get tense
* Reset and redo strategies when it falls apart
Date: Wednesday February 18Time: 12 PM EasternCost: $27Replay included if you can’t make it liveFree for Peaceful Parenting Members
Register here:reimaginedpeacefulparenting.com/workshop
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeRejecting Impossible Parenting Standards: What Disability Teaches Us About Care and Community with Jessica Slice: Episode 220
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I interview Jessica Slice, a …
Shownotes
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I interview Jessica Slice, a disability activist and the author of Unfit Parent, a Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World. We discuss the effect of Jessica’s disability on her life and parenting, and what non-disabled parents can learn from her about parenting.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
📣 And PSSST- New workshop next week- Transitions without Battles: Helping Your Child Move From One Thing to the Next without Meltdowns, Power Struggles, or Yelling- Get all the details here
We talk about:
* 00:00 — Intro + Jessica Slice and her book
* 00:02 — Jessica’s disability story and diagnoses
* 00:05 — Wheelchair, identity shift, and living as disabled
* 00:06 — The disability paradox explained
* 00:08 — Perfectionism, capitalism, and happiness
* 00:11 — Disability culture vs. hustle culture
* 00:13 — Becoming a parent unexpectedly (foster → newborn)
* 00:14 — Why early parenting can be easier for disabled parents
* 00:18 — Skill overlap: disability + parenting
* 00:20 — Myths about disabled parenting
* 00:26 — Fear of care, aging, and needing help
* 00:27 — Parenting and interdependence
* 00:29 — Community support and parenting
* 00:30 — Letting go of control and certainty
* 00:32 — Everyone needs help
* 00:34 — Advice to younger parent self
* 00:35 — Where to find Jessica
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
* Jessica on A Slight Change of Plans
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team-
click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the summer for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Evelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERE
Podcast Transcript:
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Jessica Slice. She is a mother, a writer, and a disability activist, and the author of Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World. I love this book and I’ve been telling everyone about it. I highly recommend you pick up a copy. We will link to it in the show notes. Until then, have a listen to my interview with Jessica, where we talk about disability and parenting and what non-disabled parents can learn from her about parenting. Whether you are interested in learning more about disability culture, or want some new and somewhat startling answers to the question, “Why is parenting so hard?” I think you’ll have a lot to think about after listening to this episode. Let’s meet Jessica.
Sarah: Hi Jessica. Welcome to the podcast.
Jessica: Thanks so much for having me.
Sarah: I’m so glad to have you here. If you wouldn’t mind just starting out by introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Jessica: Of course. My name’s Jessica Slice, and I’m really happy to be here. I am an author and a speaker and just write in general about disability and perfectionism and our shared fragility. I live in Toronto with my two kids and my husband, and we have a dog named Honey Puppy, and I’m, yeah, really happy to be here.
Sarah: It’s so good to have you here. So your book about parenthood and disability—I was so surprised that I know so little about disability. So maybe you could tell us about your disability and then your journey to becoming a parent.
Jessica: Yeah, of course. So I became disabled at 28. And so I have this real before-and-after story, and I also feel like because I don’t have a congenital disability—or I didn’t have a disability until 28—that I have a perspective from that specific position. You know, I grew up having a body that was generally accepted, generally welcomed, that I didn’t have accommodation or accessibility issues.
But when I was 28, I was on a hike. I developed heat exhaustion, and I just became extremely sick. So the day before the hike, I was active. I went for a seven-mile run. I was on vacation, and then the day after the hike, it was hard to even walk down the hallway. I just had this range of debilitating symptoms: extreme dizziness, nausea, this sense of kind of like floating above myself, unexplained fevers. My legs were going numb.
And I saw doctors and, well, I assumed I just needed to recover from the heat exhaustion. But then I didn’t. And so I just started seeing doctors and no one knew what was wrong. They said maybe I was just stressed. And this went on, and I ended up not recovering ever. Like I still have many of those symptoms now.
But about two years into that, I finally saw someone who diagnosed me with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, which—at that time, it was 2013 that I got diagnosed—it was not very well known. It’s better known now because it comes along with long COVID in a lot of patients, and so more people are talking about it.
But then two years after that—or one year after that—my little sister developed the same symptoms that I had, and it seemed rare that two people would have this exact same sudden onset. And so our doctor at Duke sent us to a geneticist at Duke, and that geneticist diagnosed us with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which is a genetic connective tissue disorder. And so that causes a lot of widespread pain, a lot of dislocations, some vascular issues—well, not as severe as certain types of EDS, but can cause POTS. And so I have, I sort of have two disabilities that are connected, and in a lot of people with EDS, they end up developing POTS.
And then in 2018—so for a long time, for those first seven years I was disabled—I just sort of shrunk my life to fit my body’s needs, which I, which was okay. But I, I just didn’t go anywhere where I would need to stand or walk or be upright.
And then seven years in, when my child—and I’ll, I’ll explain meeting her—but when she was one, I was like, I think I wanna go more places. And so then I got my first power wheelchair, and that made it so I could go on walks and go to stores and go to restaurants, or go to her ballet classes, or just be in the world a bit more.
And so, and it was around that time that I really started identifying as disabled and not just sick. Mm-hmm. And that was a real transformation for me. It was a switch from feeling like I had this body that worked and stopped …
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeBe the Person You Want Your Kids to Be: Episode 219
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Corey and I talk about …
Shownotes
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Corey and I talk about modeling the person you want your child to be—instead of trying to force them into having good character or good values. We discussed the difference between being a gardener or a carpenter parent, raising kind and helpful children, and how to trust the modeling process. We give lots of examples of what this has looked like for parents in our community as well as in our own homes.
**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
We talk about:
* 00:00 — Intro + main idea: be the person you want your child to be
* 00:02 — How kids naturally model what we do (funny real-life stories)
* 00:04 — When modeling goes wrong (rabbit poop + shovel story)
* 00:06 — Not everything kids do is learned from us (fight/flight/freeze)
* 00:08 — Gardener vs. carpenter parenting metaphor
* 00:10 — Why “don’t do anything for your child” is flawed advice
* 00:12 — Helping builds independence (adult example + kids stepping up)
* 00:17 — Hunt, Gather, Parent: let kids help when they’re little
* 00:19 — How to encourage helping without power struggles
* 00:23 — Family team vs. rigid chores
* 00:26 — Trust, faith, and “I’m sure you’ll do it next time”
* 00:29 — Respecting kids like people (adultism)
* 00:31 — Living values without preaching
* 00:36 — It’s the small moments that shape kids
* 00:38 — Don’t be a martyr: let some things go
* 00:40 — When this works (and when it doesn’t)
* 00:42 — Closing reflections on trust and nurturing
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
* Hunt, Gather, Parent podcast episode
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team-
click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the summer for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Evelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERE
Podcast Transcript:
Sarah: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. I have Corey with me today. Hi, Corey.
Corey: Hey, Sarah.
Sarah: I’m so happy to be talking about what we’re going to be talking about today because it’s something that comes up a lot—both with our coaching clients and in our membership.
Today we’re talking about modeling the person you want your child to be—being the person you want your child to be—instead of trying to force them into having good character or good values.
Corey: This is one of my favorite topics because people don’t really think about it. There’s that phrase that’s so rampant: “Do as I say, not as I do.” And we’re actually saying: do the exact opposite of that.
Sarah: Yeah. And I think if people did this, that phrase wouldn’t have to exist. Because if you’re being the person you want your child to be, then you really can just say, “Do as I do.”
I guess that “Do what I say, not what I do” comes up when you’re not being the person you want your child to be. And it shows how powerful it is that kids naturally follow what we do, right?
Corey: Yes.
Sarah: Yeah. We both have some funny stories about this in action—times we didn’t necessarily think about it until we remembered or saw it reflected back. Do you want to share yours first? It’s so cute.
Corey: Yeah. When I was a little girl, my favorite game to play was asking my mom if we could play “Mummy and her friend.” We did this all the time. My mom said she had to do it over and over and over with me.
We’d both get a little coffee cup. I’d fill mine with water, and we’d pretend we were drinking tea or coffee. Then we would just sit and have a conversation—like I heard her having with her friend.
And I’d always be like, “So, how are your kids?”—and ask the exact things I would hear my mom asking her friend.
Sarah: That’s so cute. So you were pretending to be her?
Corey: Yes.
Sarah: That is so cute.
I remember once when Lee was little—he was probably around three—he had a block, like a play block, a colored wooden block. And he had it pinched between his shoulder and his ear, and he was doing circles around the kitchen.
I said, “What are you doing?” And he said, “I’m talking on the phone.”
And I realized: oh my gosh. I walk around with the cordless phone pinched between my shoulder and my ear, and I walk around while I’m talking on the phone. So for him, that was like: this is how you talk on the phone.
Corey: That’s such a funny reference, too. Now our kids would never—my kids would never do that, right?
Sarah: No, because they never saw you with a phone like that.
Corey: Right.
Sarah: That is so funny. It’s definitely a dated reference.
You also have a funny story, too, that’s sort of the opposite—less harmless things our kids copy us doing. Do you want to share your… I think it’s a rabbit poop story.
Corey: It is. We’re just going to put it out there: it’s a rabbit poop story. This is how we accidentally model things we probably don’t want our kids doing.
So, if you were listening this time last year, I got a new dog. She’s a lab, and her favorite thing is to eat everything—especially things she’s not supposed to eat, which I’m sure a lot of people can relate to.
Our area is rampant with rabbits, so we have this problem with rabbit droppings. And my vet has informed me that despite the fact that dogs love it, you need to not let them eat it.
So I’m always in the backyard—if you’re hearing this, it’s really silly—having to try and shovel these up so the dog’s not eating them.
Listeners, we’re looking into a longer-term solution so rabbits aren’t getting into our backyard, but this is where we’re at right now.
Whenever I noticed I’d be shoveling them up and I’d see her trying to eat something else I hadn’t shoveled yet, I’d say, “Leave it,” and then give her a treat to reward her.
One day, my little guy—little C—who loves taking part in dog training and is so great with animals, he saw our dog eating something she shouldn’t. He ran and got his little sand shovel and went up to her holding it—kind of waving it at her—like, “Leave it.”
And I was like, why are you shaking a shovel at the dog? Totally confused ab…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeRaising Kids with Life Skills for Successful Independence with Katie Kimball: Ep 218
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Katie Kimball …
Shownotes
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Katie Kimball of Raising Healthy Families. We discussed getting kids in the kitchen and getting them to love cooking, raising teenagers and why they are wonderful, managing screens at different ages, and what kind of skills kids need to become independent, well-rounded and self-sufficient once they leave our homes.
Make sure to check out Katie’s course Teens Cook Real Food!
**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
We talk about:
* [00:00] Introduction to the episode and guest Katie Kimball; overview of topics (cooking, teens, life skills, screens)
* [00:01] Katie’s background: former teacher, mom of four, and how her work evolved into teaching kids and teens to cook
* [00:04] Why the teen years are actually great; what teens need developmentally (agency and autonomy)
* [00:08] Beneficial risk and safe failure; how building competence early reduces anxiety later
* [00:10] Getting kids into cooking: start small, build confidence, and let them cook food they enjoy
* [00:16] Cooking as a life skill: budgeting, independence, and preparing for adulthood
* [00:21] Screen time: focusing on quality (consumptive vs. creative vs. social) instead of just limits
* [00:25] Practical screen strategies used in Katie’s family
* [00:28] Motivating teens to cook: future-casting and real-life relevance (first apartment, food costs)
* [00:33] Teens Cook Real Food course: what it teaches and why Katie created it
* [00:37] Fun foods teens love making (pizza, tacos)
* [00:39] Where to find Katie and closing reflections
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Teens Cook Real Food Course https://raisinghealthyfamilies.com/PeacefulParenting
* Evelyn & Bobbie bras: https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/bra
* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/yoto
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/membership
* How to Stop Fighting About Video Games with Scott Novis: Episode 201 https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/how-to-stop-fighting-about-video-games-with-scott-novis-episode-201/
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahrosensweet/
* Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/peacefulparentingfreegroup
* YouTube: Peaceful Parenting with Sarah Rosensweet @peacefulparentingwithsarah4194
* Website: https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com
* Join us on Substack: https://substack.com/@sarahrosensweet
* Newsletter: https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/newsletter
* Book a short consult or coaching session call: https://book-with-sarah-rosensweet.as.me/schedule.php
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team-
click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the summer for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Evelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERE
Podcast Transcript:
Sarah: Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Katie Kimball of Raising Healthy Families. She has been helping parents feed their kids and, more recently—in the past few years—teach their kids to cook. We had a great conversation about getting kids in the kitchen and getting them to love cooking, and also about raising teenagers and what kind of skills kids need to become independent. We also talked about screens, because any parent of a teenager who also supports other parents—I want to hear about what they do with getting kids to be less screen-focused and screen-dependent.
Katie had some great tips in all of these areas, including cooking, feeding our families, and screens. In some ways, we’re just talking about how do we raise kids who are independent, well-rounded, and have the skills they need to live independently—and those things all come into play.
I hope that you really enjoy this conversation with Katie as much as I did. Let’s meet Katie.
Hi, Katie. Welcome to the podcast.
Katie: Thank you so much, Sarah. I’m honored to talk to your audience.
Sarah: I’m so excited to talk to you about teenagers, raising teenagers, life skills, screens—there are so many things to dive into. You seem like a very multifaceted person with all these different interests. Tell us about who you are and what you do.
Katie: I do have a little bit of a squirrel brain, so I’m constantly doing something new in business. That means I can talk about a lot of things. I’ve been at the parenting game for 20 years and in the online business world for 17. I’m a teacher by trade and a teacher by heart, but I only taught in the classroom for about two years before I had my kids. I thought, “I can’t do both really, really well,” so I chose the family, left the classroom, and came home.
But my brain was always in teacher mode. As I was navigating the path and the journey of, “How do I feed these tiny humans?”—where every bite counts so much—I was really walking that real-food journey and spending a lot of time at the cutting board. My brain was always going, “How can I help other moms make this path easier?” I made so many mistakes. I burned so much food. There’s so much tension around how you balance your budget with your time, with the nutrition, and with all the conflicting information that’s flying at us.
So I felt like I wanted to stand in the middle of that chaos and tell moms, “Listen, there’s some stuff you can do that does it all—things that are healthy, save time, and save money.” That’s kind of where I started teaching online.
Then I shifted to kids’ cooking. For the last 10 years, I’ve been sort of the kids’ cooking cheerleader of the world, trying to get all kids in the kitchen and building confidence. It’s really been a journey since then. My kids currently are 20, 17, 14, and 11, so I’m in the thick of it.
Sarah: We have a very similar origin story: former teacher, then mom, and a brain that doesn’t want to stop working. I went with parent coaching, and you went with helping parents with food and cooking, so that’s exciting.
I can tell from what I’ve learned about you offline that you love teenagers—and I love teenagers too. We have people in the audience who have teenagers and also people who have littler kids. I think the people with littler ki…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeYou’re On Fire, It’s Fine: Teens and Big Feelings: Episode 217
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Katie K. May, a …
Shownotes
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Katie K. May, a licensed therapist and author of the book You’re On Fire. It’s Fine: Effective Strategies for Parenting Teens With Self-Destructive Behaviors.
We discussed children/teens who are “fire feelers”, why intense emotions can lead to risky behaviours, how to respond to self-harm urges, how to stay connected or rebuild your connection with your teen, and what parents of younger children can do now to prevent challenges in their teen years.
**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
We talk about:
* 00:05 — What Is a Fire Feeler?
* 00:06 — What Emotional Dysregulation Really Means
* 00:07 — Fire Feelers Often Have Fire-Feeler Parents- Genetic and Environmental Components
* 00:10 — Why Teens Are So Easily Overwhelmed
* 00:12 — What Fire Feelers Do When Overwhelmed
* 00:20 — How Parents Should Respond to Self-Harm Urges
* 00:22 — When to Get Professional Help
* 00:24 — Why Depression Looks Different in Teens
* 00:25 — Teens Still Need Their Parents
* 00:26 — How to Stay Connected to Teens
* 00:28 — Judgment vs Validation
* 00:31 — How to Rebuild Connection When Things Are Broken- Katie’s Hierarchy of Connection
* 00:34 — Sensitivity & Impulsivity
* 00:35 — What Parents of Younger Kids Can Do Now
* 00:37 — Why Control Works When Kids Are Young — and Fails Later
* 00:38 — Why “Tough Love” Doesn’t Work
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
* Get a free chapter of Katie’s book
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the summer for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Evelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERE
Podcast Transcript:
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Katie May. She’s a therapist and the author of You’re On Fire. It’s Fine: Effective Strategies for Parenting Teens With Self-Destructive Behaviors. We talked about why some teens are what she calls “fire feelers,” and about how best to support them—and ourselves—when emotional dysregulation is common, troubling, and can be destructive.
If you don’t have a teen yet, but you have a kiddo with big feelings, have a listen, because Katie also talks about what she wishes parents of younger kids knew so they didn’t end up with these sorts of challenges down the road. Let’s meet Katie.
Sarah: Hi, Katie. Welcome to the podcast.
Katie: Hey, Sarah. I’m glad to be here. Excited to talk about teens and parenting today—stuff I’m jazzed to share.
Sarah: Me too. Yeah. And I loved your book. I’ll ask you about that in a second—or maybe you can tell us who you are and what you do.
Katie: Yeah. My name is Katie K. May. I’m a licensed therapist in Pennsylvania, and I lead a team of other therapists. We all specialize in working with high-risk teens and their parents. So every day, we’re in the trenches working with teenagers who are suicidal, self-harming, have eating disorders, are not going to school, and we’re helping them learn skills while also teaching their parents how to respond effectively—so the whole family is working together as a system in harmony.
Sarah: And your book’s called You’re On Fire. It’s Fine. I like it. My book—
Katie: Go ahead.
Sarah: No, it’s a great title.
Katie: Yeah. So I came to that title from this idea of biologically sensitive teens—or very sensitive teens—often feeling like they’re on fire with their own emotions. And I can dig into any part of that. But the idea is that parents who are well-meaning will many times say things like, “You’re fine. It’s okay. Go take a nap. Go get a snack.” And it feels like a little squirt gun trying to put out this big fire of emotion. So I thought that title captured those two points initially, to bring people into the framework that I teach.
Sarah: I love that. And it’s funny—I had a different interpretation of the title, and my interpretation, now that you said what you meant it to be, I can totally see that. But my interpretation was more like, “You’re on fire. You can handle these big feelings. It’s fine.” Like, this is just—let’s get used to feeling the feelings. So I guess it could be read either way.
Katie: I like both interpretations, and I think your interpretation speaks to probably how you support and parent. It’s nurturing and supportive of the process.
Sarah: Yeah. So tell us: what is a fire feeler?
Katie: A fire feeler is someone who is biologically sensitive. And what I mean by that is this is a kid who feels things very deeply. Their emotions are big and oftentimes overwhelming for them. And not just that—these are your zero-to-sixty-in-ten-seconds-flat kind of kids. They’re reactive, they’re easy to trigger, and when they’re triggered and they’re feeling their emotions in these very big ways, it also takes them a very long time to calm down or get back to their baseline.
And this is important because if you think about that slow return to feeling settled or centered again, oftentimes they’re being triggered again before they get back to that place of calm. And so they have a nervous system that’s constantly in a state of dysregulation—constantly triggered and upset. And it is very hard to access safety or calm or feeling okay because of that.
Sarah: And you mentioned emotional dysregulation, and in your book you have a very specific definition of emotional dysregulation. I thought it was a little more helpful and also a little bit more unusual. Can you give us your definition of emotional dysregulation?
Katie: So when someone is emotionally dysregulated, when they are triggered, it sets off this chain of emotions for them. Again, we go back to this idea that they feel on fire with their emotions. They’re often at this skills-breakdown point where it’s difficult to access skills or to calm down. And when you’re feeling on fire with your emotions, it makes sense that your brain comes up with escape strategies—thing…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeBig Feelings and Mindfulness with Hunter Clarke-Fields: Episode 216
👉 Before we get started- On Wednesday, I’m hosting a live workshop called When You Know Better, but Still Yell, where we focus on understanding what happens in those moments and how to interrupt yelling and …
Shownotes
👉 Before we get started- On Wednesday, I’m hosting a live workshop called When You Know Better, but Still Yell, where we focus on understanding what happens in those moments and how to interrupt yelling and repair without shame.
If that sounds supportive to you, you can find more information at reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/workshop.
Now the episode!! You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Hunter Clarke-Fields, the host of the Mindful Mama Podcast and author of the book Raising Good Humans.
We discussed taking care of difficult feelings including how blocking our feelings can backfire and the role mindfulness plays in accepting and working through our own and our children’s feelings.
**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.
Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!
We talk about:
* 00:00:35 — Guest intro: Hunter Clarke-Fields (Raising Good Humans, Mindful Mama Podcast)
* 00:01:00 — Big feelings as the root of so many parenting struggles + why willpower isn’t enough
* 00:04:00 — Hunter’s background: mindfulness, sensitivity, and parenting an intense child
* 00:10:00 — Two common coping patterns: blocking feelings vs flooding (and why both backfire)
* 00:21:00 — Mindful acceptance: what it is + how allowing feelings helps them move through
* 00:27:00 — Reflective listening + “name it to tame it” (why labeling feelings lowers intensity)
* 00:31:40 — Co-regulation in action: a real-life story of staying steady with a dysregulated teen
* 00:38:10 — Takeaways + where to find Hunter + workshop reminder + closing
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Workshop: When You Know Better but Still Yell Workshop
* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Evelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERE
Podcast transcript:
Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Hunter Clark Fields. She’s a mindfulness teacher and parenting expert, host of the Mindful Mama Podcast, and author of the book Raising Good Humans. We focused our conversation today around taking care of difficult feelings—both yours and your child’s.
So often, big feelings are the cause of parenting challenges and friction in our families. Hunter shared some great strategies for how to make these moments that happen every day more tolerable, and even how our lives get better when we learn to accept our own feelings and our child’s feelings.
And don’t worry if you’re like me and you sort of shut down when someone starts telling you that you should have a mindfulness practice. You can use Hunter’s suggestions even if you know that meditation isn’t necessarily in your future.
Interestingly, one thing Hunter and I spoke about is that you can’t stay calm or not yell in difficult situations just by willpower. It’s not just a choice we make—how to react in difficult situations. If you’re listening to this and recognizing yourself, especially that gap between knowing what you want to do and what actually happens when things get intense, I want you to know that you’re not alone.
On Wednesday, I’m teaching a live workshop called When You Know Better but Still Yell. We’ll focus on regulation and repair in real, everyday parenting moments—without shaming yourself or forcing calm. You can find the link in the show notes, or you can go to reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/workshop.
Okay, let’s meet Hunter.
Sarah: Hi, Hunter. Welcome to the podcast.
Hunter: Thanks for having me, Sarah. I’m glad to be here.
Sarah: It’s nice to connect. I loved your book, Raising Good Humans. I was going to hold up mine—yours is behind you there. There’s some really valuable stuff in it around being the peaceful parent that we want to be. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do before we get started?
Hunter: Sure. I’m a mom of two daughters and a podcaster. I’ve been podcasting the Mindful Mama Podcast for a long time. I guess I like to talk, and I’m fascinated by people. I’ve been a student of mindfulness for many, many years, and a student of parenting because it was something I was very much struggling with.
So that’s me in a nutshell. I’m also really passionate about Scottish country dance. We used to have paintings and galleries, and I was a passionate painter—so there are lots of different things happening.
Sarah: I love that. Are you Scottish?
Hunter: A little bit by heritage, yeah.
Sarah: Yeah.
Hunter: Hunter is actually a Scottish last name. My maternal grandfather’s maternal grandfather’s last name was Donald Hunter.
Sarah: Oh, that’s cool. What came first—the mindfulness? Were you already a student of mindfulness when you became a parent, or did you turn to mindfulness when you found parenting to be challenging?
Hunter: Both. I was already a student of mindfulness. I started reading about mindfulness when I was a teenager, because I’ve always been a highly sensitive person. So I would have big ups and downs, and corresponding pits that I would fall into. I started reading about mindfulness, and I kept reading and reading, and it did help to read.
Then, maybe about ten years into my reading journey, I started an actual sitting meditation practice, and lo and behold, that helped a lot more than just reading about it. It really changed things for me. I used to fall into these pits of feeling like the world was overwhelming and feeling like I couldn’t handle life. That stopped happening. I had difficult feelings, but I wasn’t floored by them, grounded by them, or left incapacitated by them. That was a big change for me.
That happened maybe two years before I got pregnant with my first child. I remember being pregnant with Maggie and sitting in a meditation group with my big pregnant belly, patting myself on the back and thinking, “Oh, this is going to be great. This child is going to be so calm. Everything …
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeHot take on yelling: an announcement from me and Corey
This week’s episode is a conversational invitation rather than a full podcast episode. We’re talking about why yelling happens even when you know better — and why willpower alone isn’t the answer.If you’ve ever …
Shownotes
This week’s episode is a conversational invitation rather than a full podcast episode. We’re talking about why yelling happens even when you know better — and why willpower alone isn’t the answer.
If you’ve ever felt ashamed, frustrated, or confused about why old patterns show up under stress, you’re not alone. We also share details about a live workshop, When You Know Better but Still Yell, for parents who want support with regulation and repair in real-life moments. Happening on Weds. Jan 21
Workshop details and registration are HERE
or go to https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/workshop
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeSarah's Kids, Materialism, Presents and the Peaceful Parenting Long View: Episode 215
In this episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I bring back one of my favourite holiday episodes, which is an interview with my kids, where we talk about ‘people, not stuff’.Every year around the holidays …
Shownotes
In this episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I bring back one of my favourite holiday episodes, which is an interview with my kids, where we talk about ‘people, not stuff’.
Every year around the holidays, I hear from parents who are worried their kids are too focused on presents, too greedy, or too materialistic — and they’re afraid they’re getting something wrong. I made this episode to offer a long-term perspective.
I interviewed my own kids (then 14, 17, and 20) about what holidays and gifts felt like when they were little — and what actually mattered as they got older.
Us last year at Christmas- on one of the Christmas Day walks we discussed on the podcast:
In the episode, we talk about why “wanting stuff” is normal in childhood, how values really develop over time, and why parents can relax a lot more than they think.
🎉🎂 Also- today is my birthday!
If this podcast, our posts, or our work has helped you and your family, and you want to give back to us, you can help cover the costs of our free content by supporting us on Substack for the cost of a fancy coffee a month.
Or you can support us- without spending- any money by doing any or all of the following:
* follow the podcast and leave a 5 star review and rating on your podcast player app
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* share a post or a podcast episode to your preferred content sharing spot :)
My gift to you is an ad free episode today, which is what you get for every episode if you support us on Substack!
Thank YOU for being here!!
xx Sarah (and Corey!)
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
We talk about:
* 2:00 — Intro: replay episode + why parents worry about “greedy/materialistic” kids
* 3:00 — Holiday schedule update + invitation to email podcast ideas/guest suggestions
* 3:34 — Why this episode: parents’ concerns about consumerism + interviewing Sarah’s kids
* 4:00 — Important context: privilege, money, and why this worry comes from a privileged place
* 5:00 — Two practical ways to handle privilege: Santa gifts + donating new presents
* 7:00 — Meet Maxine (14): how holiday meaning shifts with age (family time, traditions, coziness)
* 11:38 — “Ungrateful” little kids: why it’s normal + what parents shouldn’t panic about
* 13:23 — What helps long-term: building traditions + experiences as gifts
* 16:34 — Meet Asa (17): growing out of the “wanting stuff” stage + values changing over time
* 21:05 — Middle school + fitting in: when brand-name wanting peaks (and why)
* 22:30 — What parents should do: keep kids grounded + relax
* 23:01 — Meet Lee (20): consumerism awareness, “people not stuff,” and the post-holiday letdown
* 32:00 — Gratitude + privilege: why kids can’t fully grasp it yet, and how it comes with time
* 33:31 — Reassurance: if you’re worried about this, you’re probably already doing fine
* 34:34 — Wrap-up: “the parenting podcast paradox” + holiday wishes
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Here’s the polished transcript of the interview-
Today’s episode is a replay of an episode from four years ago.
So many parents get worried, especially at this time of year, that their kids are materialistic and greedy and will never have good values. I thought you could use a little window into the future, and it would be helpful for you to see where we are in my family and what it’s like as kids get older.
So I interviewed my kids about their experiences growing up with presents and holidays and stuff. So if your kid has a case of the greedy, you’ll see, if you listen to my kids, that it won’t last forever. At the time of the interviews, they were 14, 17, and 20. Today they’re 18, 21, and 24. Things really do shift as your kids get older.
My older two kids live on their own—and they have for a few years—and so far, all they’ve said they want for Christmas is socks. Things really do change.
If this holiday support episode is helpful and you aren’t on my email list, make sure you check out the other posts that we have on Substack. As I mentioned, just search up Substack and Sarah Rosensweet and you’ll find us.
My team and I are going to be taking a bit of time off for the holidays. We will be back in the new year with new episodes of this podcast. And if you have any ideas for the podcast, or any guests that you’d like to have on, or you would like to be coached on the podcast, shoot me an email: [email protected].
I’d love to hear from you about any ideas you have for the podcast—what you’d like to have coming up in the new year.
Here we go back to the podcast. Enjoy this replay, whether it’s your first time hearing it or if you’ve heard it before.
Sarah: Today’s episode is a response to some parents’ questions and concerns that I received when I did a call-out asking people what they were concerned about over the holidays. And some parents were really feeling stressed about materialism and consumerism of the holidays, and their kids getting too many presents or wanting too much stuff.
So I interviewed my kids about it—what their perspective was, having gone through the “I want more presents” stage, and now they’re teenagers. They’re 14, 17, and one of them’s not a teenager anymore—he’s 20. So I interviewed them because they’ve been through it, and I’ve been through it with them.
But before we dive into the interviews, I just want to acknowledge that this is a very privileged position—that we have the privilege of being able to be concerned that our kids have too much stuff, or they’re getting too many presents, or that they’re worried too much about getting things and being able to buy things.
For a number of years when our kids were little, my husband was a student and I was a stay-at-home mom, and we really didn’t have any money. We really had to watch every penny. But we still had privilege because we got government assistance—child tax benefit. We live in Canada where we have socialized medicine, so we didn’t need to worry about health insurance.
And we also had the family safety net privilege, which was that we knew if we ever were really in dire straits, our parents would help us out.
And our kids had privilege even though we didn’t have money in those years, because they got a lot of presents from their grandparents. I think we mention that in the interviews that are coming up.
So my husband and I—we didn’t have much money, but we didn’t need to worry about buying them gifts because they had five sets of grandparents. Hello, divorce and remarriage.
So I just really wanted to acknowledge that I am speaking from a place of privilege, my children are speaking from a place of privilege, and those parents who reached out to me concerned about too many presents and materialism and “What are we gonna do when our kids just want …
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeHow DBT Skills Can Help Your Family with Big Feelings with Shireen Rizvi and Jesse Finkelstein: Episode 214
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with …
Shownotes
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Shireen Rizvi, PhD and Jesse Finkelstein, PsyD, about their book Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships.
We discuss what Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is, how it can help both ourselves and our kids with big feelings, and get into some of the skills it teaches including distress tolerance, check the facts, and mindfulness.
**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.
Know someone who might appreciate this post? Share it with them!
We talk about:
* 6:00 What is DBT?
* 11:00 The importance of validation
* 13:00 How do parents manage their own big feelings?
* 16:00 How do you support a kid with big feelings, and where is the place for problem solving?
* 23:00 Managing the urge to fix things for our kids!
* 26:00 What is distress tolerance?
* 28:50 “Check the facts” is a foundational skill
* 34:00 Mindfulness is a foundation of DBT
* 36:45 How the skills taught through DBT are universal
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
* Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships by Shireen Rizvi and Jesse Finkelstein
* Jesse Finkelstein’s websites axiscbt and therahive
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Podcast transcript:
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today we have two guests who co-authored a book called Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships.
And you may be wondering why we’re talking about that on a parenting podcast. This was a really great conversation with Shireen Rizvi and Jesse Finkelstein, the co-authors of the book, about all of the skills of DBT, which is a modality of therapy. We talked about the skills they teach in DBT and how we can apply them to parenting.
They talk about how emotional dysregulation is the cause of so much of the pain and suffering in our lives. And I think as a parent, you will recognize that either your own emotional dysregulation or your child’s is often where a lot of issues and conflict come from.
So what they’ve really provided in this book—and given us a window into in this conversation—is how we can apply some of those skills toward helping ourselves and helping our children with big feelings, a.k.a. emotional dysregulation. It was a really wonderful conversation, and their book is wonderful too. We’ll put a link to it in the show notes and encourage you to check it out.
There are things you can listen to in this podcast today and then walk away and use right away. One note: you’ll notice that a lot of what they talk about really overlaps with the things we teach and practice inside of Peaceful Parenting.
If this episode is helpful for you, please share it with a friend. Screenshot it and send it to someone who could use some more skill-building around big emotions—whether they’re our own big emotions or our child’s. Sharing with a friend or word of mouth is a wonderful way for us to reach more people and more families and help them learn about peaceful parenting.
It is a slow process, but I really believe it is the way we change the world. Let’s meet Shireen and Jesse.
Hi, Jesse. Hi, Shireen. Welcome to the podcast.
Jesse: Thank you so much for having us.
Sarah: Yeah. I’m so excited about your book, which I understand is out now—Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships. First of all, I love the format of your book. It’s super easy to read and easy to use. I already thought about tearing out the pages with the flow charts, which are such great references—really helpful for anyone who has emotions. Basically anyone who has feelings.
Jesse: Oh, yes.
Sarah: Yeah. I thought they were great, and I think this is going to be a helpful conversation for parents. You’ve written from a DBT framework. Can you explain what DBT is and maybe how it’s different from CBT? A lot of people have heard more about cognitive behavior therapy than dialectical behavior therapy.
Shireen: Sure. I would first say that DBT—Dialectical Behavior Therapy—is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy. So they’re in the same category. Sometimes we hear therapists say, “I do DBT, but I don’t do CBT,” and from my perspective, that’s not really possible, because the essence of dialectical behavior therapy is CBT. CBT focuses on how our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions all go together, and how changing any one of those affects the others.
That’s really the core of DBT—the foundation of CBT. But what happened was the person who developed DBT, Marsha Linehan—she was actually my grad school advisor at the University of Washington—developed this treatment because she was finding that standard CBT was not working as well as she wanted it to for a particular population. The group she was working with were women, primarily, who had significant problems with emotion regulation and were chronically suicidal or self-injuring.
With that group, she found they needed a lot more validation—validation that things were really rough, that it was hard to change what was going on, that they needed support and comfort. But if she leaned too much on validation, patients got frustrated that there wasn’t enough change happening.
So what she added to standard CBT was first a focus on validation and acceptance, and then what she refers to as the dialectical piece: balancing between change and acceptance. The idea is: You’re doing the best you can—and you need to do better.
Jesse: Mm-hmm.
Shireen: And even though DBT was developed for that very severe group that needed a lot of treatment, one of the aspects of DBT is skills training—teaching people skills to manage their emotions, regulate distress, engage interpersonally in a more effective way.
Those skills became so popular that people started using them with everyone they were treating, not just people who engaged in chronic suicidal behavior.
Sarah: Very cool. And I think the population you’re referring to is people who might be diagnosed with borderline personality dis…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeDon't miss this Black Friday deal!
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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeHelp Kids to Understand their Brains and Assessments with Dr. Liz Angoff: Episode 213
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with …
Shownotes
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Educational Psychologist Liz Angoff.
We discuss when and why a child might need an assessment, what information you get from an assessment, how to help children understand their brains and diagnosis, and celebrating neurodiversity.
**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.
Know someone who might appreciate this post? Share it with them!
We talk about:
* 7:00 What are some signs that your child should get an assessment?
* 9:00 Getting to the “why” and the “so what”
* 10:00 What do you assess for?
* 14:00 Why it is important to get an assessment?
* 23:00 Should you tell your child about their diagnosis?
* 31:00 Scripts and metaphors for talking to your kids about diagnosis
* 39:00 Red and Green flags with clinicians
* 44:00 Celebrating neurodiversity
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today my guest is Dr. Liz Angoff, who is an educational psychologist. She does testing, looking at helping kids understand how their brain works and helping their adults understand how their children’s brains work. She has loads of wonderful resources, which we will link to in the show notes.
I love how Dr. Liz takes this approach. It’s about how our brains can work in different ways, and understanding that really can help our child understand themselves, and help us understand our child in a better way.
As you’ll hear in this conversation with Dr. Liz, she really talks about how, if your child is experiencing some challenges or struggles—or you’re experiencing struggles or challenges with them—it can be helpful to get an assessment and possibly a diagnosis to understand exactly what’s going on and how your child’s brain works. Whether it could be anxiety or depression or neurodivergence or learning challenges or any sorts of things that can be uncovered through psychological testing, you can really understand the differences in your child’s brain that could be making life feel more challenging for them and/or for you. And she has a beautifully neurodiversity-affirming lens, where she talks about—you’ll hear her talk about this in the episode—looking at a child’s brain in terms of both the strengths and the challenges.
As always, we would love if you would share this episode with anyone you think might find it useful, and leave us a five-star rating on your favorite podcast player app and leave us a review. It really helps us reach more families and therefore help more families.
Alright, let’s meet Dr. Liz.
Hello, Dr. Liz. Welcome to the podcast.
Liz: Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be here, Sarah.
Sarah: Me too. So tell us about who you are and what you do before we dive in.
Liz: Right. Well, I go by Dr. Liz, and I am a licensed educational psychologist. I’m in the Bay Area, California, and my focus—my passion—is working with kids to understand how their brains work. I am a testing psychologist, so I do assessment to understand, when things are challenging for kids, why things are challenging and what we’re going to do to really support them.
But one of the things that really caught my interest a number of years ago is that so often we bring kids through the assessment process and we don’t talk to them about what they did or what we learned about them. So I got really passionate about talking to kids directly about how they can understand their brains—what comes easily for them, how they can really use their strengths to help them thrive, and then what’s challenging and what they can do to advocate for themselves and support themselves. So all of my work has been really focused on that question: how do we help kids understand themselves?
Sarah: Which is perfect, because that’s exactly why I wanted to have you on. I’ve had so many parents ask me, “Well, how do I… I’ve got the assessment. How do I tell them? Do I tell them? How do I tell them?” We’re going to get into all of that.
But first I want to start with: what are some signs… I imagine some of the people listening are already going to have had assessments or are in the process of getting an assessment. But there also are some people who maybe—at least in our world—what we look at is: if you feel like you’re struggling way more than everybody else, that could be one sign. And if you’ve already made shifts and you’re trying to practice, in our case, peaceful parenting, and you’re still finding that things are really hard—that could be a sign that you might want to get an assessment.
But what are some signs that you look for that you might want to get your child assessed?
Liz: Yeah, I mean, you named a couple of them that I think are actually really important. All kids have times when they struggle. Growing up is hard. There are a lot of challenges, and they’re really important challenges that kids face. They need to know that it’s okay when things are hard. They need to know they can do hard things and come out the other side.
And there’s so much out there—what I think of as parenting 101—that helps us figure out: how do we help our children navigate these tough times? And then there’s kind of the next level where you might get a little extra support. So you read a book on parenting, or you find a different approach that matches the way your child shows up in the world a little bit better. You might meet with the school and get a little bit of extra help—sometimes called student study teams or SSTs—where you might meet with the teacher and the team.
For most kids, that little extra boost is enough to get them through those hard times. But for some kids, there are still questions. That next level, that extra support—it’s still not working. Things are still hard, and we don’t know why.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Liz: And when you have that question—“Why isn’t this working? It works for so many kids, but it’s not working for my child”—that’s when an assessment can be really helpful to get at the why. The so what.
So the why is: why are things harder for my child, and why are the traditional things that help most children not working? And then the so what is: so what do we do about it? How do we do things …
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeDitch Special Time? Connecting with complex kids when connecting is hard: Episode 212
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Corey and I …
Shownotes
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Corey and I discuss why “Special Time”- the gold standard for cultivating connection with our kids- might not work the best for complex kids.
We cover who complex kids are, what parenting them looks like, how to co-create interests and activities together, and being playful to connect deeply while getting through the daily routine.
**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.
Know someone who might appreciate this post? Share it with them!
We talk about:
* 6:43 What is Special Time?
* 7:51 What is a complex Kid?
* 10:08 What does it look like to parent a complex Kid?
* 19:30 What does daily life look like with complex Kids?
* 22:03 What to do for connection when special time doesn’t work?
* 23:05 Cultivating shared hobbies
* 27:00 Finding books you both love
* 30:00 Instead of only putting kids in organized sports, exercise together!
* 33:30 Sideways listening with our kids
* 37:00 Playful parenting as we move through the daily routine
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
* What you Can Do When Parenting Hard: Coaching with Joanna
* When Peaceful Parenting Doesn’t Look Like It’s “Supposed To” Look
* How To Take the Coach Approach to Parenting Complex Kids with Elaine Taylor- Klaus
* What Influencers are Getting Wrong About Peaceful Parenting
* Staying Close to Your Tweens and Teens
* How To Stop Fighting About Video Games with Scott Novis
* Playful Heart Parenting with Mia Wisinski
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s episode is about why you shouldn’t do special time, which is, I admit, a little bit of a provocative hook here. But it’s something that Corey brought to my attention that we have been talking about a lot. And then after last week’s podcast, we both agreed—after the podcast with Joanna and her complex kid—we both agreed we have to talk about this, because this is something that probably a lot of parents are feeling a lot of conflict, guilt, and shame around: not doing special time or not wanting to do special time or not being able to do special time.
Sarah: Hey Corey. Welcome back to the podcast. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Corey: Hi, I am Corey Everett, and I am a trained peaceful parenting coach, and I work for Sarah. I live in Ontario, but I work with clients all over the world doing one-on-one coaching. And I myself am complex and have a complex child. And I have two kids. I never can remember this, but I have a 7-year-old and a 10-year-old.
Sarah: I am glad you’re not the only one who can’t remember their kids’ ages. I have to stop and think. Okay. Well, I’m so excited to talk about this. And this is actually something that you and I have talked about over the years, because you have found it really difficult to do special time with your complex kid. Maybe just tell us a little bit about what happened when you tried to do special time and why you eventually sort of gave it up. And, you know, this is something that Joanna in the podcast last week—the coaching podcast—she was talking about how she didn’t want to do special time with her kid because she was so exhausted. So I think this is sort of like a two-part: why sometimes special time doesn’t work for the kids and why it doesn’t work for the parents. So let’s start by talking about what happened when you would try to do special time with Big C, who’s your 10-year-old.
Corey: Okay, so when I would try and do special time with Big C, I actually found—first of all—I didn’t really feel very present in it. I felt like I was trying to do it, but I felt like I didn’t have a lot of energy for it. I think he could feel that. So I just didn’t feel very engaged in it and I just felt exhausted, and it just felt like another thing on my to-do list. And so therefore he didn’t necessarily enjoy it as much either.
We did do a podcast—it’d be really great, I can put it in the show notes—where we talked about some things for peaceful parenting that aren’t working, and I did a really good description in that one of why special time didn’t work for him.
Sarah: Okay.
Corey: And so we can have them listen to that if they want more details on that part. Instead, I think I want to really focus on why it didn’t work for me and why I’m finding with my clients it’s not working for them either.
Sarah: You know what, sorry to interrupt you. I realize we should really just say what special time is, in case—like it’s such a gold standard of peaceful parenting—but there could be some parents listening to this, parents or caregivers who are newer to special time and might not know what it is.
Special time—and there are, I think, some other brands of parenting that might have other names for it—but basically the gold standard is 15 minutes a day of one-on-one time with you and your child, where you put aside the to-do list, put away your phone, and some people suggest that you set a timer and say, “I’m all yours for the next 15 minutes. What do you want to play?” It’s really immersing yourself in the child’s world. That’s one of the main ideas of special time: that we’re immersed in our child’s world of pretend play or some kind of play. It can be roughhousing or it can be playing Lego or dolls—something that is really child-centered and child-led.
So that is special time. And let’s take it from there. You had mentioned already that energetically it was really hard for you.
Corey: I think the best way that I can explain this is if I paint the picture for you of what it looks like to be a parent of a complex kid. And—
Sarah: Wait let’s give a definition of complex—we’ve got to make sure we’re covering the basics here. What’s a complex kid?
Corey: Okay, so a complex kid. This term, I first heard it from Elaine Taylor-Klaus—and we can also put in the show notes when you had her on the podcast. She is amazing. And basically, we’re really often talking about neurodivergent kids here. But it can be more than that. It’s just kids who need more.
Sarah: It’s that 20% of kids that we talk about—the 80% of kids who, you know, you say “Go put your shoes on and wait for me by the door,” and they go and do it and they don’t have the extra big feelings. So in my idea of it, …
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeWhat You Can Do When Parenting Is Hard: Coaching with Joanna: Episode 211
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I do a …
Shownotes
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I do a coaching call with Joanna who has a 2-year-old and a 7-year-old.
We cover how to make mindset shifts so you can better show up for your kids, as well as get into specifics around night weaning, bedtime battles, handling meltdowns, playful parenting and increasing our connection to our kids.
**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.
Know someone who might appreciate this post? Share it with them!
We talk about:
* 6:40 how to manage meltdowns
* 9:00 Night weaning and bedtime challenges
* 20:00 Emptying a full emotional backpack
* 26:00 Kids who always want more attention
* 28:00 Understanding blame and anger
* 38:00 Games to play when a child is looking for more power
* 44:00 How our mindset makes such a big difference when parenting
* 47:30 Two keys to peaceful parenting!
* 55:00 Playful approaches to bedtime
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
* How to Help Our Little Ones Sleep with Kim Hawley
* Episode 100: When Your Child Has a Preferred Parent (or Not) with Sarah and Corey
* Episode 103: Playful Parenting with Lawrence Cohen
* Playful Heart Parenting with Mia Wisinski: Episode 186
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Transcript:
Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s episode is a coaching episode. My guest is Joanna, mom of a 7-year-old and a 2-year-old. Joanna’s 7-year-old is an intense child, and she wanted to know how to handle her big feelings and find more connection with her.
She also had some specific challenges around bedtime, namely that her partner works shift work and is not home at bedtime. She still breastfeeds her 2-year-old to sleep, so is unavailable to her seven-year-old for a bit, and then has trouble getting her seven-year-old to bed without a fight. Joanna also shared how low she was on resources, and we had a great discussion about how that impacts her parenting and what she might do about it.
Also, meltdowns—we talked about those too and how to respond. I know Joanne is not alone. One note: after we did the follow-up call, I realized I forgot to ask her about a few things. So she kindly recorded a couple of P.S.’s that I’ll include. If you’re curious, like I am, you’ll be glad she gave us the latest updates.
If you would like to come on the podcast and be coached by me, I am looking for a few parents who are interested. You can email me at [email protected].
As always, please give us a five-star rating and a review on your favorite podcast app, and if you know another parent or caregiver that this would be helpful for, please screenshot it and send it to them. The best way to reach more families with peaceful parenting is through word of mouth, so we really appreciate any shares that you might be able to give us.
Okay. Let’s meet Joanna. Okay.
Sarah: Hi Joanna. Welcome to the podcast.
Joanna: Hi. Thanks for having me.
Sarah: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Joanna: Sure. I live up in Ottawa, Canada, with my husband and my two kids. I’m a music therapist, so right now I’m working with babies. I teach Yoga with Baby and, um, a class called Sing and Sign at a local wellness center.
Sarah: Nice. How old are—
Joanna: Yes, I have a 7-year-old girl who we’ll call Jay.
Sarah: Okay.
Joanna: And then a 2-year-old boy called JR.
Sarah: JJ. Okay, perfect. Okay, so how can I support you today?
Joanna: Yeah, so my daughter has always been, like, a bit of a tricky one. Um. She was born premature, so at 29 weeks. And no kind of lasting effects. But as she’s gotten older, we’ve noticed, like, she’s really struggled a lot with emotional regulation. Um, and she kind of gets stuck on certain behaviors. So I feel like we’ve done a lot to change our parenting, in part thanks to you and your podcast and all the material. Um, I did finally read, um, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids this past summer.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Joanna: And I feel like it also had a huge effect, just having, like, that bigger scope of understanding of, like, the peaceful parenting philosophy.
Sarah: Uh-huh.
Joanna: So I would say, like, even from where we were a few months ago, we’ve experienced tons of positive shifts with her.
Sarah: Sweet.
Joanna: Yeah, so we’re already kind of well on our way, but there are certain behaviors that she has that still I find really perplexing. So I wondered if maybe we could go over a couple of them.
Sarah: Sure. Yeah, no problem. For anyone—if, for anyone who doesn’t know, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids is the book written by my mentor, who I trained with, Dr. Laura Markham. Um, and just for my own curiosity, what do you think? Because, you know, I always worry that people are—that they don’t have the fully formed idea of peaceful parenting. And that—and I’m not saying you, because you’ve listened to the podcast so you probably have a deeper understanding—but some people are just getting their little snippets on Instagram reels, you know, and so it is hard to understand, like, the, the sort of the core reasons why we do the approach if you don’t have that deeper understanding. And also, I’m working on a book right now, so hopefully soon you’ll be able to say you read my book. But what did you—what do you feel like got fleshed out for you when you read that book?
Joanna: I think she really breaks a lot of things down step by step, such as, like, what to do when your child is going through a meltdown.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Joanna: And that has always been an area—like, when my daughter gets to that point where she’s, like, become really explosive and aggressive and she’s just, like, in it and she’s kind of unreachable at that moment—like, what to do step by step at that time. I think, like, that’s been the most helpful because I’ve been able to really settle into my own parenting and just, like, really trust myself and anchor in at that point, which is exactly really what she needs and what was missing.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.
Joanna: So—
Sarah: So I think, um—like I always say, focus on regulating yourself first. Like, when someone’s having a meltdown, empathize.
Joanna: Yeah.
Sarah: Um, you know, it—yeah, it’s—it can be hard because you often feel like you need to do something. And even though you’re saying step by step, it’s less about doing anything than just centerin…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeDealing with Aggressive Behaviour with Tosha Schore: Episode 210
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I am giving …
Shownotes
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I am giving you another sneak peek inside my Peaceful Parenting Membership!
Listen in as I interview Tosha Schore as part of our membership’s monthly theme of “Aggression”. We discuss why kids get aggressive, how to handle it no matter how many kids you have, and dealing with the aggressive behaviour from many angles.
**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.
Know someone who might appreciate this post? Share it with them!
We talk about:
* 6:35 Is a child’s aggression OUR fault as the parent?
* 13:00 Why are some kids aggressive?
* 15:00 How do you handle aggression when you have multiple kids?
* 22:00 A new sibling being born is often a trigger for aggression in the older child
* 29:00 When you feel like you are “walking on eggshells” around your child
* 35:00 How naming feelings can be a trigger for kids
* 37:00 When aggression is name calling between siblings
* 42:00 Friends- roughhousing play or aggression?
* 49:00 Coming from aggression at all angles
* 50:35 Using limits when there are safety issues
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
xx Sarah and Corey
Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session
Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!
>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.
In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.
Our sponsors:
YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERE
Transcript:
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Tosha Shore, a peaceful parenting expert on aggression. I invited her into the Peaceful Parenting Membership a few months ago to talk to us about aggression and to answer our members’ aggression-specific questions.
So many fantastic questions were asked. I know they’ll help you if you’re at all having any issues with aggression. And remember, aggression isn’t just hitting. It’s any expression of the fight, flight, or freeze response—including yelling, spitting, throwing things, and swearing.
Tosha is such a valuable resource on this issue. I really, really admire how she speaks about aggression and the compassion that she brings to both kids and parents who are experiencing aggression.
One note: one of the members was okay with her question being used in the podcast, but she didn’t want her voice used. So in the podcast today, I paraphrased her question and follow-up comments to preserve the flow of the conversation.
As I mentioned, this is a sneak peek inside the Peaceful Parenting Membership. If you would like to join us, we would love to have you. It is such a wonderful space filled with human touch and support. There are so many benefits, and it’s my favorite part of my work as a parenting coach.
We’ll put the link to join us in the show notes, or you can visit reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/membership. If you know anyone who could use this podcast, please share it with them. And as always, we would appreciate your five-star ratings and reviews on your favorite podcast app.
Let’s meet Tosha.
Hello, Tosha, welcome to the membership. I’m so excited that you’re going to be here talking to us about aggression today. So maybe you could start out by just giving a brief introduction of who you are and what you do.
Tosha: Absolutely. So my name is Tosha Shore and I am the founder of Parenting Boys Peacefully, where we are on a mission to create a more peaceful world, one sweet boy at a time.
I’m also the co-author of Listen: Five Simple Tools to Meet Your Everyday Parenting Challenges. And I work with a lot of families with young kids who are struggling with hard behaviors like aggression, and my goal is to give you all hope and inspiration—to keep on keeping on with peaceful parenting practices because they do absolutely work. Even, or maybe even especially, for really hard behaviors.
Sarah: I love that you added that—especially for hard behaviors—because I think there’s this fallacy out there that, yeah, peaceful parenting’s nice if you have easy kids, but, you know, my kid needs more “discipline” or whatever. So I love that you called that out, ’cause I think it’s absolutely true also.
So maybe—just—we have some questions from our members that people sent in, and I’m not sure, some people on the call might have questions as well. But maybe we could just get started by you sort of centering us in what causes aggression.
I was just on a call with some clients whose child was having some issues at school, which, if we have time, I might ask you about. The mom was saying, “Oh, you know, he’s being aggressive at school because I sometimes shout or lose my temper.” And I said to her, you know, of course that plays a part in it, but there are lots of kids whose parents never shout or lose their temper who still are aggressive.
So why is that? What causes aggression?
Tosha: I mean, I think there are a few things that can cause aggression. I often will say that aggression is fear in disguise, because I’ve found that a lot of kids who are getting in trouble at school—they’re yelling, they may be hurting siblings or hurting their parents—they are scared inside.
Sometimes it’s an obvious fear to us. Like maybe they’re playing with a peer and the peer does something that feels threatening—goes like that in their face or something—and instead of just, you know, play-fighting back, they clock the kid or whatever.
And sometimes the fears are a little bit more hidden and maybe could fall even into the category of lagging skills. I don’t even like to say “lagging skills,” but, like, skills that maybe they haven’t developed yet. School’s a perfect example. I think a lot of kids often will be acting out in school—even aggressively—because they’re being asked to do something that they don’t yet have the skills to do.
And that’s pretty frustrating, right? It’s frustrating to be asked, and then demanded, to perform in a certain way or accomplish something specific when you don’t either feel the confidence to do it, or you don’t yet have the skills. Which sort of spills into another reason that kids can get aggressive, and that’s shame.
We can feel really ashamed if everybody else in the class, for example, or a lot of kids, are able to just answer the questions straight out when the teacher asks—and maybe we get stage fright, or maybe we didn’t quite understand the example, or whatever it is.
So I definitely want to pull that parent away from blaming themselves. I think we always tend—we have a negative bias, right? Our brain has…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeInvite: Free 5-Day Peaceful Parenting Reset
Feeling a little off track lately?You’re not failing. You just need a reset. If you’ve been losing your patience more than you’d like, or wondering why peaceful parenting feels so hard right now? I get …
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Feeling a little off track lately?You’re not failing. You just need a reset.
If you’ve been losing your patience more than you’d like, or wondering why peaceful parenting feels so hard right now? I get it.
That’s why I created the 5-Day Peaceful Parenting Reset.
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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribeRelational Aggression aka “Mean Girls” with Rachel Simmons: Episode 209
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I am giving …
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You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I am giving you another sneak peek inside my Peaceful Parenting Membership!
Listen in as I interview Rachel Simmons as part of our membership’s monthly theme of “Friendship Troubles”. Rachel is an expert on relational aggression, AKA mean girls. We discuss how to intervene in this behaviour when kids are young, how to prevent our child from doing this, and how we can support our children when they’re experiencing it.
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We talk about:
* 6:27 What is relational aggression?
* 8:50 Both boys and girls engage in this type of aggression
* 10:45 How do we intervene with young kids
* 14:00 How do we teach our kids to communicate more effectively
* 22:30 How to help our children who are dealing with relational aggression
* 33:50 Can you reach out to the aggressive child’s parents?
* 38:00 How to reach out to the school
* 47:30 How to help our kids make new friends after relational aggression
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player
* The Peaceful Parenting Membership
xx Sarah and Corey
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Rachel interview transcript
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s episode is another sneak peek inside my membership, where I interviewed Rachel Simmons — an expert on relational aggression, AKA “mean girls.” She wrote a book called Odd Girl Out, which is all about the topic of relational aggression and how we can support our children when they’re experiencing it — and what to do if our child is actually doing that to other people.
If you don’t know what relational aggression is, don’t worry — listen up, because she goes into the definition of it. This was a great conversation. My members had questions, I had questions, and in the end, we all agreed it was a very helpful discussion. I think you’ll find it helpful as well — no matter how old your child is or whether or not they’ve experienced any relational aggression.
This is something we should all be aware of, and as parents, we actually have a lot of control over preventing our child from becoming someone who uses relational aggression.
As I said, this is a sneak peek inside my membership, where we have a theme every month. This month’s theme was “Friendship Troubles,” and it actually came as a request from one of our members. So we brought in Rachel to talk to us about relational aggression, which this member’s child had been struggling with.
Every month in the membership, we have a theme — I do some teaching about it, and we also bring in a guest expert for teaching and Q&A.
If you’d like to join us inside the membership, you can go to reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/membership to learn more and join us.
Another thing we do inside the membership is office hours. You may have heard a recent podcast that gave a sneak peek into what those are like. We do office hours twice a week where you’re welcome to drop in, ask a question, get support, or share a win — from me, Corey, and other members. It’s just a wonderful place.
Our membership is my favorite corner of the internet, and we’ve been doing it for six years. It really is a special place. I’d love for you to join us! Please let me know if you have any questions, or just head over to reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/membership to learn more.
And now — let’s hear from Rachel.
Hey Rachel, welcome to the podcast.
Rachel: Thank you.
Sarah: Can you just tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Rachel: Sure. Well, I’m based in Western Massachusetts, and I’m a researcher and author. Over the last eight years, I’ve also become an executive coach. I’ve always been fascinated by — and inspired by — the psychology of girls and women.
Over what’s now become a long career, I’ve worked with women and girls across the lifespan — beginning, I’d say, in elementary school, and more recently working with adult women.
I’ve always been animated by questions about how women and girls experience certain phenomena and spaces differently, and how paying attention to those experiences can contribute to their overall wellness and potential.
Sarah: Nice. And I just finished reading your book Odd Girl Out, and I could see how much research went into it. I think you mentioned you interviewed people for a few years to write that book.
Rachel: It was a long time, yeah. I was just actually reflecting on that. I came across a shoebox filled with cassette tapes — little cassette tapes of the interviews I did when I wrote that book, which came out 20 years ago.
I worked all over the United States and tried to speak to as many girls as I could.
Sarah: It’s a great book — highly recommended. We’ll put a link to it in the show notes. Thank you for writing it.
So today we invited you here because we want to talk about relational aggression. Can you give us a definition of what relational aggression is?
Rachel: Yes. Relational aggression is a psychological form of aggression — a way that people express themselves when they’re trying to get a need met or are upset about something. It usually starts as early as two or three years old, when kids become verbal, and it’s the use of relationship as a weapon.
It can start off as something like the silent treatment — “I’m going to turn away from you because I’m upset with you” — cutting someone off as a way of communicating unhappiness. That silence becomes the message.
I remember once interviewing a seventh-grade girl who told me she gave people the silent treatment — that she’d stop talking to them as a way to get what she wanted. That was really unusual, because most girls won’t come up and be like, “Yeah, here are all the ways I’m mean.”
In fact, it’s often the secrecy that makes this stuff hard to talk about. So I was like, wow, here’s a unicorn telling me she’s doing it. And I asked, “Why do you do it?” And she said, “Because with my silence, I let my friends know what’s going to happen if they don’t do what I want.”
A very powerful description of relational aggression.
So that’s the silent treatment, but it can also take more verbal forms. Like, “If you don’t give me that toy, I won’t be your friend anymore.” Or, “If you don’t play with me at recess today, th…
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