The New Family Podcast: Recent Episodes
Respected parenting editor Brandie Weikle of thenewfamily.com and the 1,000 Families Project talks to compelling people whose stories represent the changing face of family.
The New Family Podcast is the show that explores what families really look like today and the issues that matter to us most. Twice a week we interview some of the most compelling people whose stories represent the many forms can family can take today. And we chat with top parenting experts with great insights on the challenges of raising kids in these interesting times. This podcast comes from the creators of the popular website, thenewfamily.com, which explores and celebrates modern family life. Our series, the 1,000 Families Project, tells the first-person stories of people with families of every shape and size. In this show we interview some of the most interesting people who contribute to the #1000families series, as well as authors, family therapists, parent educators and other experts with practical advice to share that's relevant to families of every kind.
For this 250th episode of the podcast we’re taking a look at the state of modern fatherhood. First we’re talking to stand-up comedian, writer and political activist Charlie Demers. He’s one of dozens of notable Canadians who, through interviews, have contributed to a great new book of essays called 40 Fathers: Men Talk About Parenting. The book was written by family counsellor and writer Tessa Lloyd, who joins us in the second part of this episode to talk about what compelled her to gather the points of view of dads at this particular time.
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Today we welcome Vanessa Vakharia back to the show. Vanessa is the founder of a unique tutoring facility called The Math Guru here in Toronto. She’s a teacher with a Bachelor of Commerce, a Masters in Mathematics Education and the author of a great math workbook for kids called Math Hacks: Cool Tips + Less Stress = Better Marks. She’s been on before to discuss topics like encouraging girls to pursue STEM careers, but this time she’s here to talk “Math Therapy,” her new podcast where she works through a guest’s math trauma every week so that they can start living their best lives. I reveal a little of my own math-related mindset issues, and she talks to us about how we can ensure our kids don’t inherit a legacy of struggles with math.
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For this episode we speak to child psychologist Dr. Vanessa LaPointe. Vanessa is the author of two books, including her latest Parenting Right From the Start: Laying a Healthy Foundation in the Baby and Toddler Years.
But this episode is not about the baby and toddler years. It’s about the investigation into ourselves that Dr. LaPointe argues is so necessary in order to parent the way we want to. She explains how we can work through issues from the past that inevitably have an effect on how we respond to the challenges and demands of raising our own kids.
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With this episode we’re continuing our exploration into the lives of families affected by incarceration. I’m joined by Andrea Page, the founder of FitMom, one of the first providers of pre- and post-natal fitness classes in the Greater Toronto Area, and an outspoken advocate on issues like postpartum depression and mental health in general. Andrea’s eldest child has struggled for years with his mental health and unfortunately found himself on the wrong side of the law, and is currently serving a six-year prison sentence. Andrea and I are going to talk about the connections between poor mental health, trauma and incarceration, and what it’ll take to break the cycle that connects trauma to crime.
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This week begins our foray into the lives of families affected by incarceration. It’s not an easy subject, but it’s one that affects many Canadian families and an even more in the United States, where one in 28 children has a parent who is incarcerated. My first guest on this topic is Rachel Mascarenas Ford. Rachel lives in North Carolina with her son, daughter and husband, Mark, who returned in April 2018 from five years in a minimum-security federal prison known as a camp. She shares about how her husband came to be in trouble with the law and the night that turned their lives upside down. We also talk about how they managed as a family while he was away, how little resources there are to support families of the incarcerated, and what it’s been like adjusting to his return.
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We’re joined this week by Dr. Marika Lindholm, a sociologist and advocate for the diverse group of women raising kids solo. She’s the co-editor of a new anthology about solo moms. It’s called We Got This: Solo Mom Stories of Grit, Heart and Humor. She and I talk a little bit about her own journey to single motherhood, how it led her to found a social platform called Empowering Solo Moms Everywhere (ESME), and what it’ll take to make the path a little easier for moms raising kids on their own today and in the future.
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This week we welcome Jeffrey Marsh to the show. Jeffrey is one of the world's foremost commentators on non-binary identity and activism. They rose to prominence with inspirational viral videos, first shared on Vine and now on Twitter and Instagram. Jeffrey is both the first non-binary activist and spokesperson to appear on national television in the U.S., and also the author of a book called How to Be You. CBS once called them “the internet’s most beloved anti-bully.” They’ve also got a wonderful TedX Talk called “I'm a genderfluid activist. Here's how I fight back.” Jeffrey shares about growing up queer in a conservative, rural environment and how that shaped the work they do speaking to schools and drawing attention to the mental health crisis faced by trans, non-binary and genderfluid youth.
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We’re back to exploring family in its many with this episode, where we’re joined by Emily McGranachan, who tells us about growing up with two moms. Emily’s professional life has also been shaped by her upbringing. She’s director of family engagement for the Family Equality Council, the national organization in the U.S. dedicated to the equality of LGBTQ people and their families, as well as those who wish to form families. And she’s the host of the Council’s great podcast, Outspoken Voices.
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We’re continuing our exploration of what it’ll take to make parenting more sustainable, this week with a focus on how critical it is to cultivate community and share our stories. I’m delighted to welcome Kerrie Lee Brown back to the show. Kerrie first came on the podcast way back on episode 108, when she shared the story of how it took having a heart attack to get her to slow down. That was also the subject of her book, My Heart, My Self: A heartfelt guide for women who do too much. Kerrie has launched a storytelling platform called Red Lily to bring women together to lift each other up. Kerrie and I are going to talk about some of the isolation parents go through at different stages of parenting and why it’s so vital we come together to share the good, bad and seriously ugly.
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Start asking around groups of parents, perhaps especially moms, and increasingly it seems we’re hanging on by a thread. With competing demands of work and family, we’re often hovering on the edge of burnout, if not totally fried all ready. Today I chat with Natalie Ruskin, a journalist-turned-professional-coach who has a business called The MoMentum helping high-achieving moms, many of whom find themselves in periods of struggle while trying to keep up. Natalie joins me for a deep dive into burnout, why it happens and how we can use it as a catalyst for change.
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We kick off the fall with one of several episodes coming up that explores what it will take to make modern-day parenthood more sustainable and less overwhelming. We’ll be looking at the social and economic factors that make caring for a family feel like such a herculean effort. Caitlyn Collins says the work-life conflict experienced by parents — especially moms — should be considered a national crisis. An assistant professor at Washington University, Dr. Collins has done some groundbreaking research on this topic, interviewing working middle class mothers in Sweden, Germany, Italy and the United States over five years. She’s compiled this in a compelling book called Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving. In it she makes the case that nothing short of a revolution in both public policy and — critically — cultural believes, with bring about the changes that families need both in the United States and in Canada.
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I’m joined for this episode by Tammy Sharrow, a long-time neonatal nurse and associate professor of nursing at Mount Royal University in Calgary. Along with her co-author Karen Lasby, she’s written a new book on life with a premature baby. It’s called Preemie Care: A Guide to Navigating the First year with Your Premature Baby. Tammy joins me to discuss the landscape of premature birth in Canada and some of what parents need to know about caring for a newborn infant and raising them up from there. We also talk about what parents of premature babies wish other people would know.
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It’s an absolute thrill for me to welcome celebrated, four-time Canadian Olympian Silken Laumann to the show. Many of you will remember Silken’s remarkable story as one of Canada’s most beloved and accomplished Olympic rowers. In 1992 she was warming up for the World Cup Regatta in Germany when another boat collided with hers at full speed. Her lower right leg received devastating injuries to bone and muscle and she was told she’d never compete at the Olympics again. But 10 weeks later she won an Olympic Bronze medal. Overcoming that difficulty is part of what’s made Silken a role model for others to overcome difficult circumstances. It’s part of what inspired her to write her book, Unsinkable, and now to host a storytelling website by the same name, with a mission to empower Canadians to achieve better mental, physical and spiritual health. With four kids in her blended family, Silken works hard to cultivate an atmosphere that’s honest and truthful about the tough stuff we go through, including mental illness. Silken speaks frankly about being raised by mother who has never accepted the help she needed for her mood disorder, as well as about Silken’s own bouts with depression. She and I delve into what it takes to cultivate a culture of openness about mental health and comfort with vulnerability in our families.
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The departure for college or university represents a huge shift in our relationship with our nearly adult children. But, wow, can seem that they still have a lot of independence to achieve before they’ll be ready to make do without us. How do we achieve a sweet spot between supporting teens as they enter their post-secondary years, without helicoptering the heck out of them? Psychologist and best-selling parenting author Sara Dimerman marries her personal experience with two university-age daughters, as well as her expertise as a therapist, in her newest book called Don’t Leave, Please Go: What You and Your Teen Need to Know Before Heading to University or College.
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I’m joined for this episode by a mother and her adult son. Elaine and Jake Uskoski are here to share their experience with Jake’s video game addiction. They’ve started to share their story to help other families learn to identify where enthusiasm for digital play crosses into unhealthy territory and what it takes to come out of it when video games have taken over a young person’s life. Elaine has also written about this candidly in her book, Seeing Through the Cracks.
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It’s my delight to be able to bring you a remarkable and important story today. I’m joined by author Stephanie Land, who has become known for her unflinching writing on poverty and motherhood. Stephanie writes about her years seeking out an existence for herself and her daughter through her work as a housekeeper. She writes about her struggle to make ends meet, her reluctance use of food stamps and the bigotry she encountered for needing to access social services. But she also chronicles her efforts to keep alive her dream of going to university and becoming a writer something she nurtured in blog posts about her life with her daughter and getting by in those years. Since then her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, Salon and elsewhere. Her book Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother’s Will to Survive is already a New York Times bestsller that’s been met with all kinds of critical acclaim. Although her circumstances have now changed, Stephanie remains active in fighting to change the stigma surrounding people in poverty, especially single mothers. Stephanie lives in Montana but while in Toronto to give in a talk she visited me in my small home studio.
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For this episode, we welcome Leisse Wilcox back on the show. Leisse is a writer, coach, speaker and mom of three. She writes a very inspiring blog about personal growth, self-love and more at leissewilcox.ca and uplifts so many others through her community on Instagram. Leisse last joined us to talk about how divorce can be a springboard for personal growth. Since then she’s had some pretty major stuff going on, which she seems to have handled with a whole lot of grace and strength, but also with a lot of support from her community. Today Leisse and I talk about just how critical it is to gather community around you in times of need, as well as how she talked to her three daughters about the health challenge she faced.
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Cooking for a group, sending lunch to school, is a different business these days. Something like 40 per cent of children are affected by life-threatening food allergens, and as my guest for today’s episode has found, many people don’t grow out of them. However, Amanda Orlando hasn’t let her food allergens stop her from making food a treasured part of her life. She’s just released her second cookbook, Everyone’s Welcome: The Art of Living and Eating Allergen-Free. While preparing lunch together at her condo in Toronto, Amanda and I chat about her experiences with anaphylactic reactions and how they’ve affected her. We also talk about Amanda’s quest to make it easier for people with serious food allergies have safe and delicious times around the table with family and friends.
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There are times when the dynamics between our kids and their friends are sort of baffling. When things are going smoothly, everything is great. But when there’s friendship drama and hurt feelings, when friendships break down or there’s routine exclusion, it’s so hard to try to navigate these things. It’s also hard to know when we should intervene and when we should just leave things alone. To discuss these tricky issues I’m joined this episode by child development and parenting expert Caron Irwin, a mom of three and the founder of Roo Parenting, where she provides parents of kids zero to 12 with support to navigate the adventures and challenges of parenting. Caron shares some really great wisdom on where our roles lie in this arena and how we can support our kids to find their way to healthy friendships.
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Parents do a lot of hand wringing about the amount of time our kids spend on devices. And there are some good reasons for that. Naturally we want to make sure our kids aren’t leading sedentary lives and that they’re not just playing Fortnite or Minecraft, but getting a reasonably healthy amount of time outdoors. On top of this we have a tendency to worry that all these video games are turning our kids into antisocial automatons who won’t be able to interact well in the quote-unquote real world. But my guest for this episode has a very reassuring message about the digital lives of our children, and points out that, well, the digital world is in fact part of today’s real world. Jordan Shapiro is writer and psychologist who explores the intersections of digital play and family life. He’s the author of an absolutely fascinating new book called The New Childhood: Raising Kids to Thrive in a Connected World. Jordan contextualizes the anxiety parents have about this new form of play and storytelling by placing it in the fascinating history of how grown-ups have always responded to new steps in the evolution of child’s play.
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This is the second of a two-part series Money Matters, which takes a look at some of the financial implications of raising kids today. In this episode I’ve again got two very insightful guests. You may have caught my guest Shannon Lee Simmons’ on CBC’s Metro Morning, the Marilyn Dennis Show or seen her column in the Toronto Star. Shannon is a certified financial planner and founder of The New School of Finance, as well as the author of two best-selling books, Worry-Free Money and Living Debt-Free. I also get to chat with Doretta Thompson, who’s the head of financial literacy for the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada. Doretta has a lot of great insights into how Canadians stack up in financial literacy, where we can improve, where we can access free resources and how to get started with turning around a difficult financial situation. This episode is full of straight talk on family finances, as is the first in this series, episode 229.
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This is the first of a two-part series that explores how money matters affect families. I’ve got two amazing guests for this episode. The first is celebrated parenting author Ann Douglas. She has written 30 books, including her latest, Happy Parents, Happy Kids. Ann and I dive deep into one of the important issues she raises in this book — the implications of financial anxiety for parents. We talk about just how much has changed with the cost of living, precarious work and more, and what those mean for the daily lives of parents, so many of whom are struggling to maintain a hold on a middle class lifestyle. In the second part of this episode, I speak to British-American labour economist and Dartmouth professor David Blanchflower on his research that found it's the cost of raising kids, not parenthood itself, that accounts for the decline in happiness associated with parenthood. These insightful conversations shed so much light on how financial anxiety is weighing on families.
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Long before we learn to speak, we communicate through laughter and tears. That’s because these non-verbal expressions come factory-installed. They’re instinctive, social and key to bonding us with one another, from our earliest days and through our whole adult lives. In this collaboration with documentary filmmakers Mike Downie and David Wells, we take a look at some of the fascinating science between why we laugh and cry. As Mike puts it, laughter and crying are an incredible expression of our humanity, and highlight a life well lived.
I also chat with one of the scientists featured on the Laughing and Crying documentary, Dr. David Haley, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
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At least here at home, we see girls picking up academic awards on assembly days at schools and we know that for years, women have been out-graduating men from university. Yet, conversely, there’s still a wide wage gap and under representation of women in executive and other leadership roles. It turns out that something critical happens to the confidence of girls and women as they pass through their teens and into early adulthood. My guest for this episode is Caroline Riseboro, president and CEO of Plan International Canada, a non-profit organization whose work on behalf of children’s rights and equality for girls is well known to many of us. Plan International Canada recently did a survey on confidence in girls in women and the results are startling. We talk about what societal shifts need to happen to address gender equality and how parents can help prepare their daughters for some of what they will encounter in the world.
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This episode we’re joined by esteemed parenting writer Teresa Pitman. Teresa has been writing about raising kids for more than 30 years, and she’s the co-author of several books, including Dr. Jack Newman’s Guide to Breastfeeding and Sweet Sleep. As a La Leche League leader she has helped countless new parents with nursing their babies and is such an important advocate for and resource on breastfeeding and many other aspects of baby care. But today we’re going to talk about how the early days of feeding a baby can set the foundation for a healthy relationship with food down the line. Teresa touches on this in her latest book called Baby-Led Weaning, The Not-So Revolutionary Way to Start Solids and Make a Happy Eater.
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Most of us know that our kids could be more self-sufficient and helpful around the house than they are today. We look back on our own childhoods and see that we developed life skills much earlier than our own kids, but for various reasons — including our tendency to pack our schedules with activities that are focussed on the kids, we haven’t made this a priority with our own children. So how do we go about raising our kids in a way that both nurtures them and helps them develop abilities to care for themselves and to contribute to their households and communities? If you’re heard anything about Montessori education, you likely know that it puts a lot of importance on practical life. I’m joined today by Simone Davies, a Montessori teacher and the author of The Montessori Toddler: A Parents Guide to Raising a Curious and Responsible Human Being. While the book focuses on the toddler years, it’s guidance on the Montessori philosophy is relevant to all ages. Simone and I talk about how our kids are capable of far more than we may currently be expecting of them, and how to cultivate the self-sufficiency and life skills they’ll need to thrive when they eventually leave the nest.
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I’ve talked a lot on this show about positive co-parenting, but sadly, there are still a lot of acrimonious divorces where positive co-parenting is just not possible. My guest for this episode, family lawyer, Marlene Kazman, is here to speak to us about what can happen in some of the most destructive cases where parental alienation is a factor. As a member of the family law team at Garfin ZIdenberg LLP, Marlene handles a full spectrum of family law matters including divorce proceedings and negotiation of separation agreements, and she’s recently done what’s known as “make law” here in Ontario, by winning a decision that’s created an easier pathway to something called reunification therapy. Marlene and I talk about the problem of parental alienation, the help families can get from reunification therapy and the one thing Marlene wishes all separating parents could know.
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You’ve heard this before — obesity rates among children and youth have nearly tripled over the past three decades. We know kids today are, on average, more sedentary then we were, and there are a lot of reasons for that. But what do you do if your child is one among the countless kids who aren’t active enough and who perhaps don’t have a healthy body weight or the best eating habits? How do you address that with them without being body shaming at all? We want to take care of our kids’ health, but we really don’t want them to be insecure about their shape. I’m joined by Dr. Amy McPherson, a senior scientist at senior scientist at the Bloorview Research Institute and the author of a booklet called Fostering Positive Weight-related Conversations. This episode is jam-packed with concrete advise for navigating these tricky waters, and for laying the foundation for good conversations about healthy eating and body diversity from the start.
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We’ve heard a lot about toxic masculinity in the last year or so. But are we doing enough to provide men and boys with newer, more evolved, more positive and accepting ideas about what it means to be a man? My guest on this episode has a lot to say about this subject. John Kim, also known as “The Angry Therapist,” has helped thousands of men find more happiness in their relationships and more purpose in their lives. A pioneer in the online life coaching world, John has said that too often boys are left without adequate role models or coping skills to deal with the stuff that life throws at them. And even though he’s a pro at this stuff, John is candid about the fact he’s had his own struggles, hence the title of his new book, I Used to Be a Miserable F*. John shares concrete advice on how we can guide our boys to healthy ideas about being a man in this episode that’s a must listen for anyone raising, teaching or guiding boys and young men, as well as men interested in their own self-discovery.
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Today I am so delighted to have friend and colleague Ann Douglas back on the show. Ann is Canada’s most trusted and prolific parenting writer, though her work is known in many other countries as well. She’s the author of the bestselling Mother of All series of parenting books. My dog-eared copies of her books The Mother of All Pregnancy Books and The Mother of All Baby Books got me through my early days of parenting, as they did — and continue to — for so many other parents. Ann’s work is informed by her experiences in the parenting trenches as a mother of four. She has written 30 books, including her latest, Happy Parents, Happy Kids, which just hit bookstore shelves. It tackles how to parent without anxiety, guilt or feeling overwhelmed. In it she offers important context and concrete advice about boosting your enjoyment of parenting, which includes prioritizing your own mental and physical health alongside that of your other family members. This must read is also a call for broader change in the way society supports parents.
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My guest on today’s show has an interesting personal story to tell about differentiating her own parenting experience from the fundamentalist religion she was schooled in growing up. In fact, Cindy Wang Brandt has written a book on how to treat children with justice as well as how to encourage them to develop their own sense of what’s right and wrong. It’s called Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy and Kindness.
Cindy also hosts a podcast called Parenting Forward. She’s here to talk about her upbringing, her work and her mission to spread the word about raising children with racial justice, gender equality, gender affirmation and their own sense of what’s worth fighting for.
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At just 15 years old, Campbell Baron has run a successful social media video production company and rubbed shoulders with A-list entrepreneurs for his new podcast and video series, The Ones Who Succeed. He’s also cold emailed, called and pitched his way to a full sponsorship for his show, a coup for an independent content producer at any age. We wanted to know what motivates a young person to start their own entrepreneurial ventures, so for this episode, we talk to both Campbell and his parents about his earliest experiences in the world of business, how his mom and dad have nurtured this in their son and how Campbell has managed to pull off his latest endeavour while juggling school work. Don’t miss the story of Campbell’s very first business at the age of nine!
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For this episode it’s my pleasure to have a very wise woman back on the show. Amy Morin is a psychotherapist, social worker, therapeutic foster parent and the world’s leading voice on the topic of mental strength. She’s the author of the international bestselling book 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, which was born from her own remarkable personal story of mental strength, as well as a viral article by that name that has since gone on to be read 50 million times. We had Amy on the show back on episode 166 when her follow up book 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Do, which was the most popular episode of 2018. Amy has expanded on her very tangible advice about mental strength in the third installment of her books on the topic, 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don’t Do. While there’s advice in the book that applies to everyone, woman, man or child, we dive into some of the female- specific experiences that can hold us back, and the reasons why it’s particularly important to have a discussion about women’s mental strength in the era of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. These are great qualities to develop in ourselves and model for our children.
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For this episode I had the enormous pleasure of chatting with Catherine Reitman, creator and star of the hit CBC show Working Moms, now underway with its third season. Working Moms manages to be hilariously funny while offering an unvarnished version of modern-day motherhood. Catherine and I dig into topics like why no one asks if dads can “have it all,” why we carry so much guilt for pursuing our own dreams and the importance of finding a community of other parents to share the journey.
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As you know, it’s so critical that we address the fact that kids are far too sedentary these days. Today I’m joined by Amy Tepperman, founder of Moving EDGEucation. Moving EDGEucation works with teachers across Canada to integrate movement and social-emotional learning methods into daily curriculum, such as math and literacy, in order to improve student well-being and academic engagement. They provide resource and tools for teachers to keep students physically active, creative, expressive and interactive while learning. Not only does this keep kids in better physical health, it makes the process of learning more effective and enjoyable.
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We try our best to prepare for parenthood while we await the arrival of our first-born babies, but there’s really only so much we can know until we’re in the trenches with our wee ones. Until then we plan as best we can for our baby’s birth, endeavouring to exert some control over a process that can’t really be controlled. When baby arrives we become laser focussed on baby’s care and feeding. But what about the care of the ones doing all that feeding, comforting and changing? My guest on today’s episode is Maria Lianos-Carbone, the woman behind a highly successful lifestyle blog for moms, A Mother World. Maria is now also the author of Oh Baby, A Mom’s Self-Care Survival Guide for the First Year, which invites readers to pay a little more attention to their own care and feeding — and critically, to their mental health as well. Maria and I talk about the factors that make a difference for new moms, as well as the policy and cultural changes we’d like to see to better support new parents.
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I don’t think I’ve met a parent who doesn’t feel — at least some of the time — that the 24 hours in a day are insufficient. With the year coming to a close the day this episode goes live on New Year’s Eve day, it seemed like a perfect time to examine how we spend our time and how we can get more fulfillment out of our days as our families enter the new year. That’s why I’m so delighted to have snagged an interview with New York Times bestselling author Julie Morgenstern for this episode. Julie is a time management expert whose holistic approach to how we spend our days has been shared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Rachael Ray Show, Today and more. She’s the author of a new book called Time To Parent: Organizing Your Life to Bring Out the Best in Your Child and You. This book is far, far more than a set of instructions for turning you into a whiz with the calendar. Instead, it’s a holistic approach that helps parents find a healthy balance between raising a human and being a human.
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For this special episode, we look back on some of the best parenting advice shared on the show in 2018. It is definitely hard to choose from among all the wisdom shared here over the 50 or so episodes we did this year, but we think this round-up of 10 gives us a lot of good stuff to think about. For links to the full episodes from which these audio clips come from, be sure to visit our show notes! If you’ve enjoyed listening in 2018, we’d dearly appreciate it if you’d consider supporting our Patreon campaign. That’s a platform where people can support their favourite independent content creators for as little as a dollar a month, helping us to keep this show entirely free to you. Happy Holiday to all!
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For this special holiday episode of The New Family Podcast, I asked listeners to send me voice messages about their favourite holiday traditions, old and new. Tune in for a fun and inspiring round up of fun and poignant holiday traditions that you may want to make your own.
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Women talk a lot about emotional labour — carrying the mental load of things that need to be arranged for their families and the weight of worry about how everyone’s needs are being met. We’re joined today by marriage and family therapist Jeremy Schneider for a conversation on what it takes to be an emotionally available dad and a partner who shares that emotional labour. Jeremy has written about parenting topics for a number of publications around the world and now in his book Fatherhood in 40-Minutes Snapshots. This is an insightful chat about the complex business of sharing the work of raising kids, the shifting expectations and perceptions of and about dads, and the beauty and opportunity that lies in forging meaningful connection between father and child.
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Those of you who are regular listeners will know that I’m a big advocate for positive co-parenting. It’s becoming less and less unusual to see coparents working happily together to raise their kids, easily able to cohost their kids’ birthday parties, divide and conquer on busy extra-curricular days and sit comfortably together on the sidelines at the arena or soccer field. But alas, there’s still a lot of very difficult relationships between former spouses. Naturally there can be a lot of hurt and anger when a marriage comes apart, but in some cases there’s a negative, even bullying dynamic that emerges. My guest for this episode has some really important insights on how to handle a situation like this. Jeff Rechtshaffen has been practising family law for 21 years. He’s a partner in Rechtshaffen, Breitman Family Law and Mediation. He’s an expert in all aspects of family law including collaborative family law and, when necessary, litigation.
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For years my guest for this episode and his former wife lived in a mixed-orientation marriage. Matt Nightingale had shared with his wife, Luanne, that he was gay, but — for various reasons, including that he was a pastor at a fundamentalist church — they stayed together for 15 years. During this time Matt undertook all kinds of efforts to turn himself straight, including conversion therapy. Matt has since done some writing about his experience, and he and Luanne have given a powerful TedEx talk on the journey they’ve taken together and it’s complicated emotional terrain.
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A big part of being able to take care of a family is also looking after your relationship with your partner. My guest for this episode, New York City psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr. Grant Brenner, has some interesting insights about how the experiences we hold on to from the past and can stand in the way of having truly great, well-connected intimate relationships. But this isn’t just a matter of old-fashioned onion peeling of therapist sessions past. It’s about the concrete steps you can take to address old patterns so your relationship can be its best. Dr. Brenner specializes in helping adults who are experiencing relationship difficulties and he’s co-author of a book called Relationship Sanity: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Relationships. It’s a follow to their popular book Irrelationship, and it builds on those findings about how the past affects the present in relationships and offers tangible advice on improving connections going forward.
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Everyone asks kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” But what if that’s the wrong question? My guest for this episode, Dr. Rumeet Billan — an award-winning entrepreneur, learning architect and humanitarian — has an insightful way of looking at this topic. Given career anxiety is on the rise — and that anxiety disorders are now the most common illness to affect children and youth — she says we should instead be asking kids not whether they plan to be a doctor or millionaire athlete, but who they wish to become. In fact, Who Do I want to Become is the title of Rumeet’s new picture book for both kids and adults. She offers some great guidance for parents on how we can emphasize the values and life skills that will serve our kids well in a future where jobs may look different than they do today.
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Part of my reason for starting the website, and later, this podcast, was because I didn’t see families like my own — an usually amicable post-divorce family with co-parents living next door for years — reflected in mainstream media. When she was growing up, my guest for this episode, Paulina Lagudi, had a similar experience comparing her own family to the ones she saw on TV and in movies. Well, today she’s able to do something about that. Paulina is a filmmaker who has created a movie called “Mail Order Monster” or “M.O.M.” for short. The film tackles grief, blended family and step-parenting in a way that puts a modern and perfectly imperfect family in a positive light.
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At dining room tables and homework desks all over the place, math can be the source of a lot of drama and frustration. Approaches to math curriculum have shifted since we were in school, complicating our efforts to help our kids when they get stuck. The new math? The new new math? I’m not sure which we’re on now, but it does seem as though kids are may be missing some of the basic building blocks that help them tackle some of the trickier concepts and equations. To help us sort this all out, I’m delighted to welcome my guest Vanessa Vakharia back to the show today. Vanessa is the founder of a unique tutoring facility called The Math Guru here in Toronto. She’s a teacher with a Bachelor of Commerce and a Masters in Mathematics Education, and she’s a leading expert on engaging kids with STEM topics. She’s also now the author of a wonderful new math workbook for kids Math Hacks: Cool Tips + Less Stress = Better Marks.
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There are few among us who are aren’t plagued by a feeling — at least some of the time — that the pace of life is a little out of hand. You probably experience this to some degree whether you’re raising kids or not. But if you’re parenting you’re doing so during a period where raising kids is done in a more time-intensive way than ever before. Between 1975 and today, mothers have nearly tripled the quality time they spend with their kids (while dads have more than doubled theirs). And this is happening at a time when — more than ever before — both parents engage in paid work. My guest for this episode has made major shifts in her life to address the harried nature of life with her husband and two kids. Brooke McAlary is an Australian writer and the woman behind the popular Slow Your Home blog. Between her blog and her great podcast The Slow Home Podcast, McAlary has become a leader in the slow living movement. She’s the author of two books, the latest of which is called SLOW: Simple Living for a Frantic World.
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It’s said that something like one in five people will be affected by some level of mental illness at at least one point in their lifetime. There have been times when I’ve wondered if that figure might not be a little low. In many cases, family history plays a part, and that was certainly the case in the family of my guest for today’s episode, Lindsay Wong. Lindsay is a writer with a distinguished academic career including an MFA in literary non-fiction from Columbia University. But as you’ll learn in our discussion, the road that got her there was am extremely bumpy one, complicated by her elder’s unorthodox approach to the mental illness that ran in their family, and their deep distrust of Western medicine. Lindsay writes about this in an at once page-turning and darkly comedic new memoir called The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons and My Crazy Chinese Family, which is out this month.
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For a lot of us, there are some tricky dynamics around schoolwork, with parents often in an unfortunate role of homework police. Many of us can relate to frustration that our kids are capable of much more if they’d only get organized and apply themselves a little. My guest for this is episode has an insider’s track on what makes the difference between kids who do well in schools and others who don’t manage to achieve to their full potential. (Hint: It’s not that the kids with great grades are geniuses; they’ve just mastered some habits that get results.) Ryan Thompson is an educator and entrepreneur with an expertise in science and math. He’s been a high school physics and math teacher 15 years, and has in-depth knowledge of the challenges teens face in order to become academically successful. He runs a virtual program for teens and their parents on how to develop the study skills needed to do well in school.
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As you know, I love telling you the stories of people who are defining family in interesting ways. My guest for this episode has found a wonderful way to meet one of the challenges that’s reshaping the way we live. The cost of housing, especially in major cities — but increasingly in medium-sized ones as well — is making it incredibly difficult for people to put decent roofs over there heads. Austin Graff, who works for the Washington Post, where he contributes to On Parenting, is raising a toddler in a house with his wife and two roommates. We’ll hear about how that arrangement came about and how it’s working for them.
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For this very special milestone episode of the podcast, we’re getting a little personal. For the first time, the whole family joins in as we share the first week of school in our house. Join host Brandie, the boys’ dad, Derek, stepmom, Amy, 15-year-old basketball enthusiast Cameron, skateboarding fiend Alister, 11, and some other very important people in our lives as we share the everyday experience of the return to school, the juggle between work and family, the quest to get the right mix of extra-curricular activities and the never-ending mystery of the unmatched sock.
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As you know, this show and the website are on a mission to explore family in all its many, many shapes and forms, as well as the issues shaping family life and society in 2018 and beyond. So when I heard about the project my guest for this episode has undertaken, I knew she was a kindred spirit in celebrating family diversity. Elisa Binda and her partner Mattia Perrego have created Unconventional Fairytales for Unconventional Families, a book of children’s stories that organically weave diverse characters and family configurations into the adventures depicted on the beautifully illustrated pages.
If a children’s book is going to handle an issue pertaining to family structure, it’s often in a bit of self-help form, geared at explaining to kids why they have two homes, or two dads, or something along those lines. Importantly, Unconventional Fairytales take a different approach altogether, simply telling great, imaginative stories that happen to have broader sets of characters, including a trans child — born a warlock but who identifies as a witch, a princess with divorced parents, a pair of pirate moms and more. Join to hear more about this awesome project and the real-life stories that inspired the book.
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This episode explores an uncomfortable truth, and that’s that alcoholism is on the rise among moms. One study found that problem drinking — the kind that adversely affects other areas of your life — rose a staggering 83.7 per cent among women between 2002 and 2013. My guest for this episode is writer and mom Dana Bowman, who has written frankly — and with humour — about her personal experiences with alcoholism and recovery, first in her acclaimed memoir Bottled, and now with How to Be Perfect Like Me. We talk about the a range of societal factors that are contributing to an increase in drinking among moms, and what will need to change in a world of over-parenting, perfectionism and memes about “Mom’s happy juice” to address and reverse this trend.
This episode tackles something many of us would like to have in more abundance: sleep. Most of us know we’re likely not getting enough, and we may feel guilty when our kids’ sleep falls short of the recommended amount, too. But it can be challenging to squeeze all of life into more reasonable hours, especially when we’re juggling commutes home from work, pick-ups, extra-curriculars and homework. My guest, Alanna McGinn, is a respected sleep consultant and founder of Good Night Sleep Site. She and her team have helped countless parents overcome the sleep challenges they’re having with their kids. Alanna has also recently launched a great new podcast called This Girl Loves Sleep, where she’s dropping all kinds of sleep-related truth bombs to help kids of all ages and their parents to get better sleep. We talk about the factors in modern family life that encroach on our sleep and how to take concrete steps to bring back bedtime.
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If you’re listening to this around the time the episode goes live on August 20th, it won’t have escaped you that it’s back-to-school shopping season. So while the wisdom here applies any time of year, I thought it would be a great time to have Rebecca Saha on the show to talk about how to approach all of this in a more sustainable way. Rebecca is a mom of three, a teacher-librarian, the co-owner of an online kids’ resale shop called iSpy Clothing. She’s passionate about educating other families about the human and environmental costs of fast fashion, and the advantages of living — and shopping — more sustainably. Rebecca shares her tips on how you can more mindfully cloth your family and have fun doing so.
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Too often the everyday experience of being a parent feels like a race against a clock you didn’t set. We frantically hurl ourselves through morning routine, drop-off, work, pick-ups, kids’ activities, grocery shopping, dinner, housework and homework duty. My guest on this episode of the podcast asked herself what it would take for this whole thing to suck a little less so we can get more joy out of the life we’ve chosen with the children we love. I’m joined by esteemed parenting writer and editor, KJ Dell’Antonia, whose work you may know from the likes of Slate and the New York Times Motherlode blog. She’s got a great new book out called How to Be a Happier Parent, realistically subtitled Raising a Family, Having a Life and Loving (Almost) Every Minute of It.
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For this episode we’re joined by Jana Girdauskas. Jana is a mother of two, a special education teacher and the founder of an amazing charity called The Period Purse, which provides menstrual hygiene to people who are experiencing homelessness. Learn about the ah-ha moment in her car that led to Jana learning about the issue of menstrual equity, plus the incredible way her two young sons have become educated about menstruation by helping package supplies for The Period Purse.
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Surrogacy is a topic we’ve explored in a few ways on The New Family, and it continues to be more and more important as a method for forming families. My guest for this episode, Stephanie Plante, took some of the tough stuff that was going on around her — the breakdown of her marriage, difficult events in the news — and found a way to create something magical by being a surrogate. Hear how helping a couple become parents brought her joy and purpose, and continues to expand her own family through the lasting connection she’s made with the baby’s parents.
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I’m delighted to welcome my guest for this episode, Olivia Fogel, programs manager and camp director at The Ten Oaks Project. Ten Oaks is a charitable, volunteer-driven organization that engages and connects children and youth from LGBTQ+ families, identities, and communities. Although it has a number of initiatives, Ten Oaks is perhaps best known for the summer camps it offers, which make kids and youth at home, whether they’ve got LGBTQ+ parents at home or identity as part of one of those groups themselves. Olivia explains why she believes the programs not only provide a welcome, inclusive summer camp environment, but in some cases actually save lives.
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My guests for this episode, Molly Murphy and Clare Kenny, are members of an organization called The Mudgirls Natural Building Collective based in British Columbia on Canada’s west coast. This all-woman group builds eco-friendly housing called Cobb Houses, for customers and for each other. They work in a patriarchy-busting, non-hierarchical manner, and get this — childcare is included in all their projects so that women can find employment opportunities that don’t come with the usual strain of finding good, affordable care for their kids. The Mudgirls have put together a beautiful book about their work and way of life. It’s called The Mudgirls Manifesto: Handbuilt Homes, Handcrafted Lives. Clare and Molly challenge us to think differently about how work — and life — can look.
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I’m really excited to welcome my guests for this episode, Nikita Stanley and Aleksandra Jassem. Aleks and Nikita are the women behind the popular blog The Rebel Mama, which has been described as “everyone’s favourite anti-mommy blog.” Of course they’re not really anti-moms, but they are pro real talk about the tough stuff that comes with new motherhood. And they’re speaking to a cohort of young urban moms who appreciate their relatable, raw and often funny writing. And Nikita and Aleks have just come out with their book, The Rebel Mama’s Handbook for ‘Cool’ Moms.
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Given this episode is coming out right around Father’s Day, it’s fitting that I’ve got an awesome dad on the podcast with me today. Frank Lowe is the funny guy behind the wildly popular Twitter feed Gay at Home Dad. He has developed a massive following there speaking candidly and humorously about being a gay stay-at-home father, and now about being a single gay dad, too. Frank’s also got a great YouTube Channel by the same name, as well as a brand new book called Raised by Unicorns, already an Amazon #1 new release. Frank and I talk about his interesting journey to parenthood through adoption with his former husband. And we also unpack some of the complicated feelings that surround separation and divorce among the cohort of same-sex couples who only relatively recently won the right to marry.
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I’m delighted to introduce my guest for this episode, father of two Matthew Rippeyoung. Matthew wrote a very compelling 1,000 Families post for The New Family recently. In that post, and in this episode, Matthew shares about his transition into single parenthood, and also a little about entering into a same-sex partnership later on. As it happens, Matthew is a therapist, but he’s with us on the podcast to chat mostly about his own lived experience, including those evolutions in his family. Matthew also talks to us about raising boys with the feminist values he’s always shared with his former wife, and about how he got into one of his favourite hobbies — knitting!
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In this episode we welcome back guests Sadie Epstein-Fine and Makeda Zook. We first heard a little from these two a year ago in a Pride-month episode called Growing Up with Same-Sex Parents, a special collaboration with TVO and the documentary Gayby Baby. But there is so much more I want to share with you from those conversations. And now these two friends have co-edited a book called Spawning Generations: Rants and Reflections on Growing up with LGBTQ+ Parents. We get into the complicated phenomenon of the “Poster Child Syndrome” experienced by some of the kids who grew up with the first generation of out and proud same-sex parents. And we talk about why it’s so important to centre the stories of so-called Queerspawn, the children of LGBTQ+ parents whose perspectives we haven’t heard enough.
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I’m joined on this episode by John Allcock. He’s the founder of a prep school called Sea Change Academy and the author of a great little book called Forty Things I Wish I’d Told My Kids. Mindfulness is the underlying theme here, and John’s book presents it in practical, simple principles for living that you can communicate to your kids on the stuff that really matters.
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In a world of entrenched positions and prescribed roles, expanding our definitions of gender requires the courage to dive deep into understanding and acceptance. On this episode, we meet the subjects of Christina Willings’ new documentary Beauty, which explores the lives of five gender-creative kids, each uniquely engaged in shaping their ideas of what it means to be fully human. For these kids, claiming their own sense of gender when everything around them insists that they comply and conform can be challenging — even scary. We also hear from Christina about what compelled her to the make the film, and what grown-ups can do to ensure a safer and more accepting world for these young people.
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In our culture, we don't like talking about death. Most of us will do almost anything to avoid broaching the subject, and when we do we use a lot of euphemisms to avoid words like dead or dying, preferring terms like “passed away” or “gone” instead. But my guest on today's show really wants to help us get over our qualms about discussing this important aspect of the human experience. Dr. Kathy Kortes Miller has devoted her professional life to death and dying. She's a leading expert on end of life care, a TEDx speaker, a professor, a mom, and now author of a new book called, Talking About Death Won't Kill You, The Essential Guide to End of Life Conversations. Our jobs as parents entail us to prepare our kids to face and understand various aspects of life, and sooner or later, that's gonna include the death of a loved one. Kathy gives us some guidance on how we can explain death to our children in age appropriate ways.
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You know my guest, acclaimed comedian and actor Jessica Holmes, from her work on The Royal Canadian Air Farce or CTV’s The Holmes Show. She’s even opened for Jerry Seinfeld and for Ellen DeGeneres. But Jessica is here to day to talk about something that isn’t much fun to go through, but from which she still manages to find some good material. You see, as Jessica’s career was really taking off, she was privately wrestling with depression. She’s now chronicled that experience in a great new book called Depression the Comedy: A Tale of Perseverance. A mom of two, Jessica’s first experience with mental health challenges began with postpartum depression, and she and I talk candidly about how she got through that and her subsequent bout of depression.
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There’s a reckoning underway that’s calling attention to ages old pattern of systemic sexual abuse and harassment. The #MeToo movement is simply bringing it to light. While a lot of the conversation we’re having about this centres on the organizations — the companies, the industries — that have either turned a blind eye or simply not done enough to address the issue, we haven’t talked a lot about the role of families in all of this. My guest for this episode has some very clear ideas about how we can begin conversations about consent when our kids are very young. Emilia Symington Fredy is the creator of a genre-defying audio book that’s really a radio-play/memoir. It’s called Trying To Be Good, and in it she tackles with radical candour some complex aspects of girlhood and womanhood, including sexual experiences she had as a teen. She and I talk about how she’s raising her boys with feminist values, strong female role models and a clear understanding of consent.
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Could you go a year buying only consumables? You know, just the food, medicine and toiletries your family needed, replacing items like, say, outgrown snow pants, but otherwise opting out of those routine purchases many of us make without really thinking? Here’s another question: Could you give away 70 per cent of your belongings, and if you could, how would it make you feel? My guest for this episode can answer those questions with a resounding yes. Cait Flanders is a freelance writer and personal finance blogger who has written a really compelling memoir called The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store. This ended up being a profound exercise for Cait that dramatically changed the way she lives. She shares advice on how we can shift our relationship with consuming in this compelling chat.
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Today’s episode is fun one because I get to speak with a dynamic husband-and-wife team who are not only award-winning journalists but smart and funny people. Sue Allen is a journalist, yoga teacher and hockey mom who now works for a non-profit. Her husband Scott Feschuk is the author of three previous books, including How Not to Completely Suck as a New Parent and has written for publications like Maclean’s, Sportsnet and The Globe and Mail. Scott and Sue have two kids, but they’re latest collaboration is a parody board book called Baby’s First Hashtag, which introduces babies to the hip world of hashtags, memes, manbuns, quinoa and organically sourced plaid into which they have arrived. Scott and Sue join me to have a little fun with the painfully self-conscious world of hipster parenting, as well as to talk about the role that humour can play in how we raise our kids.
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My guest for this episode shares my mission to promote positive co-parenting. Karen Kristjanson is the author of a new book called Co-Parenting From the Inside Out: Voices of Moms and Dads. In addition to being a writer, Karen is a life coach who has more than 30 years experience supporting adults while they tackle change. She writes candidly about her own co-parenting experience and the personal growth it inspired. She’s here to talk to us about how families can not only survive a separation, but persevere and find new possibilities for themselves and their children.
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While we know that we are living in a time with more opportunity for women than ever before, we can’t pretend that the playing field has entirely leveled. Women still earn an average of about 80 cents for every dollar earned by men, and are still woefully underrepresented among high-ranking executives. A significant part of that picture, of course, is motherhood. As my guest on this episode points out, about 43 percent of highly qualified mothers off-ramp or leave their careers for a period of time, limiting both the available talent in the workplace and opportunities for themselves. Lisa Durante is a passionate advocate for empowering women to create a life that works — at home and in their careers. Lisa consults both with moms to help them optimize career satisfaction and with companies to help retain female talent. We talk about how the steps companies can take to keep their female talent, and how women can negotiate a more balanced partnership at home.
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For this episode we welcome child and adolescent psychotherapist, Katie Hurley, back to the show. We first heard from Katie way back on episode 31 when we discussed her insightful book, The Happy Kid Handbook: How to Raise Joyful Children in a Stressful World. Her new book is called No More Mean Girls: The Secret to Raising Strong, Confident and Compassionate Girls. Katie explains that she’s seeing a pattern of Mean-Girl behaviour we typically associate with high school or middle school cropping up more often in the elementary years. We talk about why when girls are flourishing academically are they engaged in toxic competition with one another, and critically, what we can do about it.
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Today’s episode is a unique one, recorded on site at Lillian H. Smith public library in Toronto where a book club called A Room of Your Own has gathered to talk with bestselling young adult fiction author Jennifer Niven, who is in town from Los Angeles. This book club, founded by Tanya Marie Lee, is just for teen girls from under-privileged communities. At each event members get in a room with the authors of the books they read, which are supplied ahead of the time by the authors and their publishers. Here they’re talking about Niven’s book All the Bright Places, which is being made into a film starring Elle Fanning. The book is the story of two Indiana teenagers who become companions after finding themselves at the same spot contemplating suicide. The book club is also joined by Dr. Karen Wang, a child and youth psychologist, who we talk to for some advice for parents on how to handle the difficult topics of teen suicide and mental illness. We also capture the stories of some of the students who share their own struggles in brave and inspiring ways.
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It takes a lot of bravery to defy the expectations of the people around us in our families and places of origin. My guest for this episode has a beautiful story to tell about grappling with her small-town upbringing, busting away to explore the world and finding love in a very unexpected way. Natalie Appleton first shared her story with The New York Times’s popular Modern Love column. It was such a hit that readers began asking where to find her book. She’s now written a gorgeous literary memoir called I Have Something To Tell You. She and I discuss the positive and negatives aspects of small-town living and how those shape the way she’s raising her own children today.
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Life is an unpredictable ride and sometimes we find ourselves — and our families — in really difficult times. You might be dealing with a death in the family, a job loss, a divorce, a natural disaster or a bankruptcy. Or maybe your family situation has not ever been a peaceful and happy one and you need to move all of you to a healthier place. As some of you know, one of my mandates is to help people find their way to a happy family life after going through a major transition related to separation and divorce. But there are lots of different shapes that these challenges can take, and in fact, sometimes life hands you a couple of real doozies at once. My guest on today’s episode is Carrie Anne Killeen, a parenting coach, former teacher and single mom of three girls. Her work as The Nourished Mama takes a whole being approach to family wellness. She has also been through some very challenging times herself as a survivor of an abusive relationship. Carrie Anne talks with us about healing her own family from difficult circumstances and how you can do the same.
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All around us there are signs of a city bursting at the seams. Migration to major urban centres sees this playing out in metropolitan areas all over. Cranes dot the sky line, and everywhere you go there’s another billboard promoting a new development, promising a toe hold in a real estate market that’s become out of reach to most people. But where those developments are replacing rental housing, what happens to the families that call those places home? This is a special episode that explores the consequences of a city’s growth that most of us don’t consider carefully enough. Made in partnership with award-winning documentary filmmaker Charles Officer and TV Ontario, we meet some of the young people who called Toronto’s The Villaways housing community home.
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This podcast and The New Family website are all about the many forms that families take, which includes the way those families are created. We’ve discussed the surrogacy on a number of occasions. It’s a compelling topic, especially given that Canada has become what some call a medical tourism destination for surrogacy. Yet there are a lot of misconceptions about surrogacy and a lot of grey area that my guest on this episode wants to see change. Leia Swanberg is the founder and owner of Canadian Fertility Consulting, a prominent surrogacy consulting agency, and an outspoken advocate for decriminalizing surrogacy. She shares her own experience with surrogacy, personally and professionally, including a news-making run-in with the law.
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My guest for this episode is one of the most popular we’ve ever hosted on the show. Sexuality expert Amy Lang helps parents talk to their kids about sex, love and relationships. She first joined us on to tell us how to talk to our kids about where babies comes from. Amy has a great website called Birds and Bees and Kids, and I invited her back to answer a question that crosses a lot of people’s minds: Is there sex after kids? She and I take a look at what’s involved in having a sex life through some of the different seasons of our own lives, including rough patches in our relationships, times of overwhelm between work and home and also through single parenthood. Amy shares some pragmatic advice for making space for intimacy in a busy family life and for reconnecting romantically after a period of disconnection.
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Like many parents of boys, I’m sure, I’ve noticed that — while globally there’s a long way to go to level the playing field for girls — here at home boys are more likely to be medicated for attention deficit disorder and more likely to drop out of school, while the girls are the more likely to be the ones standing at the front of the assembly collecting most of the academic awards. And young women are now out-graduating men from university at considerable rates and have been for some time. It seems that, as a whole, boys may be needing some clearer direction and better messages about what it means to be a boy. I’m joined today by Janet Allison of Boys Alive. Janet is an educator and parent coach with a specialty in helping parents and teachers to nurture boys. She’s also the author of Boys Alive: Bring Out Their Best.
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My guest on this episode shares my passion for expanding narratives around what a happy family can look like, especially in co-parenting and blended-family situations. Colleen LeMaire is a writer, author and stepmom. She writes kid-friendly books on grown-up topics in her I Have Series, starting with I Have Two Homes, I Have a Stepmom and I Have a Stepdad.
Colleen and I talk about how stepmoms are portrayed in everything from fairy tales to pop culture, and why those sorely need an update. Colleen shares her own experience adjusting to being a step-parent and why she was inspired to create resources to help kids adjust to changes in the family.
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I’m so delighted to have my friend and colleague Rick Clemons back on the show this episode. He was first with us way back on Episode 91 for an episode about his process of coming out later in life. Rick is a father of two and the author of a book called Frankly My Dear, I’m Gay: A Late-bloomers Guide to Coming Out. He’s also the host of a great podcast called The Coming Out Lounge and he’s a life coach. One of his specialties is helping people through their coming out journeys. Today Rick is back to help us learn how best to support friends and family members as they come out. We’re going to talk about what to say, what not to say, and what people really need from us when they’re revealing this important information about themselves.
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For this episode I speak to a couple of women with a remarkable personal story to tell. You see, Lindsey Phillips and Jesse Enander are best friends who many people would assume couldn’t be friends at all.
Indeed, they were once married to each other’s husbands, a complicated love story that started out with the four of them as couple friends. Lindsey and Jesse are here to tell me about how this unique situation has come to be, and about how they managed to make what could have been a difficult and acrimonious situation into something great. In fact, Jesse and Lindsey have now created a YouTube channel called TeamMom Official to share their stories and inspire others to find a path to great co-parenting and even friendship.
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I’m really delighted to open the year a discussion that's insightful in setting intentions for what we want to accomplish during the year as parents. And I’m not talking about tidy mudrooms or perfect photo albums. I’m talking about the approaches we take to cultivating the traits in our kids that are going to help them steer themselves well in a changing world.
My guest for this episode is Amy Morin, a therapeutic foster parent, a social worker, a psychotherapist with a specialty in family and teen therapy. She has given one of the most popular TedX talks of all time. Her first book 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do was an international bestseller and she’s now expanded on those ideas with a special focus on raising kids in her new book, 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Do.
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If you listen to the show regularly, you’ll know that almost every episode ends with the question, “What is the best piece of parenting advice you’ve ever received.” As you can imagine, over the course of a year we gather a lot of sage words from parents just like you and me. My team and I have gone through all those pearls of wisdom and put together this round up of some of the best parenting advice we heard in 2017. We thought that would be a good way to look back on the year we’ve had while highlighting some good things to keep in mind as we go forward with our families into a new year. Thank you everyone for listening over the course of this year. I wish you a wonderful holiday season and a very happy new year.
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I’m joined today by a woman who has a very personal story to share about her daughter’s journey with the school system. Leslie Gavel’s daughter began to disengage from the school system when she was in Grade 7, and eventually dropped out. She and I talk about the school system’s role in this and about how Leslie's daughter eventually found her way again. Leslie writes about this in a new book called Dropout: How School Is Failing Our Kids (and What We Can Do about It).
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This is a special episode exploring some concrete ideas for simplifying the holiday season. I asked a bunch of different people to tell me what they’ve done to adapt their holidays to be less stressful and more meaningful. We hope you’ll find something here that you can adapt to your own holiday routines. Sometimes it’s just about giving ourselves permission to take something off our plate or make some aspect of the holidays less elaborate. So let’s all give ourselves permission to keep the calendar a little clearer, the bank account a little fuller and most importantly, ourselves a little happier this time of year.
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This is the second in a two-part series that’s taking a look at what feminism means for families in 2017. We’re taking a look at where feminism stands today and what it means for raising great kids. In this episode we explore a bit of a perplexing issue related to raising girls. My guest, writer Devorah Blachor, is a committed feminist who was surprised to find herself the mother of a princess-obsessed toddler. Deborah wrote about this experience in an article for the New York Times that went viral, called “Turn Your Princess-Obsessed Toddler into a Feminist in Eight Easy Steps.” That was the jumping off point for her new book, The Feminist Guide to Raising a Little Princess: How to Raise a Girl who’s Authentic, Joyful and Fearless — Even if She Refuses to Wear Anything But a Pink Tutu. Devorah shares how she’s been able to find some good feminist messages from among the princess stories and how you can do the same.
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For this week and next, we’re taking a look at what feminism means for families in 2017 in a two part series called the Modern Family’s Guide to Feminism. We look at where feminism stands today and what it means for raising great kids. For this episode, part one, I’m joined by accomplished business person and mom of two Paulina Cameron, author of Canada 150 Women: Conversations with Leaders, Champions and Luminaries. Although Paulina has done so much for the advancement of women through her advocacy and now this book, today we’re actually going to talk, among other things, about what it takes to raise boys with strong feminist values. Paulina shares her thoughts on the crucial elements of bringing up boys with a strong sense of equality, and why this is an invitation for all of us to bring forth our best selves.
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This episode talks about taking a difficult life event that affects many families and using it as a catalyst for positive change. I’m joined by mom of three and blogger Leisse Wilcox, who first shared the story of her family in The New Family’s 1,000 Families Project. But since then things have changed. She and the father of her girls are now living separately and co-parenting together. Leisse writes in honest and inspiring ways about turning around a difficult situation and, in fact, using it as a springboard for personal growth.
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Ever noticed that the characters in kids’ books aren’t the most ethnically diverse lot? My guest for this episode certainly has, both growing up in Quebec as the daughter of immigrant parents, and when she became a mom herself. Alisia Dale is lawyer, linguist, and author of the Sela Blue children’s book series. A mom of three, Alisia is on an important mission to broaden narratives about children of colour and to promote diversity in the characters of children’s books.
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In a rapidly changing world, our kids will need different skills to thrive than the ones that we learned in school, and our education systems are going to have to adapt. My guest on this episode is Dr. Kelly Gallagher-MacKay, an education activist, lawyer, researcher and Wilfred Laurier University professor at Wilfred Laurier University. She’s the co-author of Pushing the Limits: How Schools Can Prepare Our Children for the Challenges of Tomorrow, which she wrote with respected educator Nancy Steinhauer. She explains why kids need to learn the “4Cs” in addition to the traditional “3Rs,” and why creativity is such a prized quality in the workplaces of today and tomorrow.
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For this episode I’m joined by my colleague and friend, Emma Johnson, who is the author of a brand new book called The Kickass Single Mom: Be Financially Independent, Discover Your Sexiest You, and Raise Fabulous, Happy Children. We first heard from Emma way back in Episode 21 when she came on to share the ideas behind her wildly popular website wealthysinglemommy.com. That’s when she and I began our conversation about the ideas around single motherhood that hold so many people back. Her blog and book are focussed on changing assumptions about what single moms can achieve, and about living a fulfilling and abundant life as an unmarried mother.
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For this very special episode, we’re delighted to be joined by author Gretchen Rubin, whose book The Happiness Project was a runaway hit and number one New York Times Bestseller. She’s also the woman behind the wildly popular blog of the same name as well as a number of other books on habits and human nature, and the podcast Happier, which she co-hosts with her sister, Elizabeth Craft. Gretchen’s latest book, The Four Tendencies, puts forth a new personality framework based on how individuals respond to expectations. It offers us some really important clues for figuring out what motivates our kids, and how that jives with how we meet expectations ourselves. This knowledge helps us be more tolerant of and get on better with others, as well as how to be more effective in encouraging our kids to complete their homework, pick up their toys or practice an instrument.
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Today school-age kids use social media likes and followers to gauge their self worth. This isn’t easy on anyone but it seems that girls face the most online scrutiny of all. For this episode of the podcast, I’m joined by author and educator Lindsay Sealey. Lindsay has recently released her book Growing Strong Girls: Practical Tools to Cultivate Connection in the Preteen Years. She helps us not only better understand what it’s like to be a girl today, but also to equip us as parents, teachers, aunts, uncles and mentors to girls to help them through this tumultuous but also very rich time in their development.
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This episode addresses the question of whether we’re paying too much attention to our kids! I’m joined by Dr. Catherine Pearlman, a family coach and assistant professor of social work at Brandman University in California. She is author of a new book called Ignore It! How Selectively Looking the Other Way Can Decrease Behavioral Problems and Increase Parenting Satisfaction. Her syndicated “Dear Family Coach” column has appeared in The Wall Street Journal and many regional parenting magazines as well. Dr. Pearlman explains how parents are overdisciplining behaviours that they should ignore and underdisciplining behaviours that they should address, and how selectively ignoring can improve not only our effectiveness but our parental satisfaction.
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On this episode we hear why it’s so vitally important that we give sober second thought to the way we have explained body changes and menstruation to girls. My guest, psychologist Dr. Robyn Stein DeLuca, has written The Hormone Myth: How Junk Science, Gender Politics and Lies about PMS Keep Women Down. In it she unpacks the commonly held assumption that all girls and women are emotionally erratic because of hormone fluctuations that accompany our menstrual cycles. She says that researchers have known since the early 1990s that, over time, men and women experience very similar emotional stability. In fact, the majority of studies used to establish the existence of premenstrual syndrome were quote “deeply flawed and unreliable.” We’re talk about how this should impact the way we speak to girls about starting their periods and about their emotions throughout the month.
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Almost every kid who heads back to school time of year — into a new classroom, or perhaps even to a whole new school — does so with some mix of anxiety and optimism about fitting in. Will any of my friends be in my class? Will the big kids on the playground be mean? Who will I sit with at lunch? But less talked about, perhaps, are the other dynamics on the school yard. The ones between the parents.
If you're new to having a kid in school, you're also likely new to the strange world of grown-up cliques in the playground. It can be a bit of a bizarre thing for those seeking a place in their school community, or even just trying to figure out what being a parent of a school-aged child entails. Canadian writer and broadcaster Laurie Gelman is our guest for this episode. Laurie is the former host of The Mom Show on Slice, but she’s now turned her hand to writing fiction. Her hilarious new novel, Class Mom, is about a year in the life of a kindergarten class mom — a send-up of the petty and surprisingly cutthroat terrain of parent politics. We’re getting all up in this cliquey business on today’s show.
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For this episode, we’re joined by my friend, Ceri Marsh, part of the dynamic duo behind the popular food blog The Sweet Potato Chronicles. She and her foodie partner in crime Laura Keogh are the authors of the bestselling cookbook How to Feed a Family. And they have just released their highly anticipated second cookbook, which couldn’t be coming at a better time. It’s called The School Year Survival Cookbook: Healthy Recipes and Sanity-Saving Strategies for Every Family and Every Meal. Ceri and I talk about how to make good food happen in your household, despite a calendar jam packed with school, work and extra-curricular activities. Plus Ceri shares some of her best tactics for getting meals onto the table and into lunch boxes.
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