Art Creativity & Wellbeing

In today's Your Child Explained episode, where we always try to see what's going on in our kids' minds, I share about a huge lie that my son Jason perpetrated last spring. Like all kids, Jay loves his screen time, so much so that for several weeks in the spring of 2015 Jay snuck extra screen time – and lied about it to Ben and I. For full show notes, click here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/070 . T...

As I get ready to publish Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics: Key Tools to Handle Every Temper Tantrum, Keep Your Cool, and Enjoy Life With Your Young Child , I'm bringing you a favorite conversation with the woman behind The Broad Experience Podcast, Ashley Milne-Tyte. In this episode, which first aired last summer during We Turned Out Okay Summer Camp, Ashley shares how she spent her childhood in...

Way back in episode two , my son Max's determination to learn snowboarding thrilled me. I bring it up because, in this most recent ski season, Max built on his true grit using Jack Canfield's book The Success Principles to take his snowboarding to the next level. This year, he rode in places that I'm sure he could never have envisioned – and he brought these possibilities about for himself by chan...

Before I answer today's listener Q&A, I'm reaching out to Ruth, whose question I answered in episode 61 (listen at weturnedoutokay.com/061 ) – Ruth, thank you so much for your question, and I'm glad my response resonated with you! Would you please check your spam and/or promotion folders in your inbox? Somewhere in there are two emails that I've sent you, in response to the two that you sent me. A...

A quick announcement – Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics , the book I'm writing for you if you would like to keep your sanity while raising young children, is coming out on Sunday, April 24, 2016. For health reasons and to make it the best book it can possibly be, I chose to move the publication date from Sunday, April 3, to Sunday, April 24. To get notified the moment it launches – FREE in Amazon...

Hey friends – this week I made the difficult decision to postpone publication of Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics by a few weeks. New pub date: Sunday, April 24, 2016. A resurgence of my chronic illness, combined with my desire to make this book be the best it can possibly be for for you, if you're a mom or dad of young children, contributed to this decision. I hope y'all can be patient while I f...

Today, we wrap up our month of food here at We Turned Out Okay with a show on the mindset of getting our kids to eat! If you have been loving the food/family focus this past month here at We Turned Out Okay, but didn't have a chance to take notes, I have great news – I made you a FREE, two-page Food and Family infographic! It combines key takeaways from this month, favorite recipes, and grab-and-g...

Today, in this Your Child Explained episode, where we always get into the mind of our kids' heads, we're looking at exposure to new foods from the perspective of our kids. March has been – and continues to be – all about food here at We Turned Out Okay, and today's episode pertains to two interviews from this month: my conversation with mom and author of The Lost Art of Feeding Kids Jeannie Marsha...

Continuing in our month-long series about feeding kids, today I have the privilege of talking with award-winning author and blogger Rachel Roddy. Before visiting Italy a decade ago, Rachel enjoyed a great career as an actress. At 32, however, she found herself in Sicily – with no desire whatsoever to go home to England. Rachel wandered around Sicily and then Rome, learning the language, loving the...

Today's episode wasn't supposed to happen; normally, this past Tuesday would've been a Just You and Me, but I recorded a great interview which had so much to do with food that I knew I needed a third Guest Interview episode in March. (That was How to Stop The Weeknight Chaos with Brandie Weikle of The New Family Podcast – listen here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/062 .) And I still wasn't going to...

Today I talk work/family balance – and how to keep a divorce amicable – with Brandie Weikle, host of The New Family podcast. Brandie, who before jumping into her 1000 Families Project blog and The New Family was the editor of Canadian Family magazine and the relationships editor for the great Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Star , experienced firsthand the pain of being a kid whose parents are div...

Today we are taking a break from our month of food – and how to get your young child to eat it – and answering a listener Q&A. When Ruth asked her question, I knew that I wanted to bring it up on the show ASAP because, if you have more than one kid, you have sibling rivalry and that didn't seem like it could wait until April! Ruth asks: "Hi, I would love some advice as to how to reduce the amount...

Today, guest Jeannie Marshall and I talk about a subject near and dear to my heart: food. Italian food, no less – Jeannie, Canadian by birth, and her husband chose to make their home in Rome, Italy a little more than a decade ago. When Jeannie became pregnant with their son Nico, she developed a fascination for how Italians introduce their babies to food, and the part that food plays in Italian ch...

What's your experience with your young kids and food? Do they eat what seems like a balanced meal sometimes – and then other times reject anything and everything you put in front of them? Have you ever felt judged about your kid's eating, either by friends or relatives – or maybe by the pediatrician? This month on We Turned Out Okay, we'll dig into food and kids, and hopefully by the end of March...

This past Tuesday, dad and teacher Bret Turner and I had a fantastic conversation which ranged across many topics including science fiction, Donald Trump, incorporating music into the classroom – and the fact that, as a young child myself, I was molested. Bret and I spoke about confronting fears as a parent, and I just know you're going to love that conversation; listen here or by going to weturne...

Last fall, I posted a picture (that picture, right over there) on instagram, a quote from the movie After Earth: "Fear is not real. It is a product of the thoughts you create. Do not misunderstand me. Danger is very real. But fear is a choice." Today's guest, Bret Turner, and I ended up having a fantastic, lengthy and deep conversation that started with this quote. I absolutely love instagram, and...

Today's episode is a little different: I read a key chapter from my forthcoming book! The chapter, called Handling Tantrums With HEART, is going to help you keep your cool even while your toddler or preschooler is melting down. Here I share my method for dealing with tantrums, which I came up with to help you retain your sanity even when the tantrums are flying fast and furious in your home. Today...

In this Your Child Explained episode, where we always try to get into the heads of our young kids, we look more closely at how kids face challenges. Today's show digs more deeply into one aspect of episode 54 , which dropped Tuesday and features mom and New York Times best-selling author Jessica Lahey. While episode 54 is not a prerequisite to today's show, take a listen back if you get the chance...

Several years ago, today's guest wrote what was for me an earth-shattering piece in the Atlantic Monthly (read it here ). Jessica Lahey's article discusses an experience she had as a middle school teacher, where she realized a student had plagiarized, called the student's mom to discuss the failing grade the student would be getting – and the mom said "you can't fail her… I wrote that paper for he...

Winter is, hands down, my favorite season – which makes sense, given that I'm Canadian by birth. And yet… when the kids were small it was such a killer! We would make plans and somebody would get sick; a simple excursion to the grocery store felt like preparing for a six week hike through Alaska; we'd all feel so cooped up all the time. So today I want to help you handle wintertime better with you...

Today, listener Lindsay channels the thoughts we all have on those days in which our kids refuse to listen. Lindsay writes "it's not like after a few asks we don't make him do it; we do and then we're all in a bad mood because we had to yell. It's stuff like getting dressed or coming to eat dinner. What is an old-school way to get him to just do what he has to do? Or is this just what parenting is...

When today's guest was five years old, he fell off a railway bridge and landed on hard ground 30 feet down. He spent weeks in a coma, and years healing; at the time a doctor wrote into his chart "don't expect Joel to lead a normal life." Well, that statement certainly turned out to be true! Joel Boggess of The ReLaunch Show is living a downright extraordinary life, getting a degree in counseling p...

Today's episode is a real milestone: Episode 50! I can't believe we're already here, 50 episodes in. I really wanted to do something special today, to mark the big 5-0, and since it's so close to the first of the year I got to thinking about New Year's resolutions. Then an instagram follower, writtenandbound, got in touch to ask me how she could best help her three-year-old daughter overcome a hug...

Happy New Year! During the first two weeks of January, we are revisiting favorite, helpful conversations from the very beginning of We Turned Out Okay. These are episodes that listeners really responded to, right from the start, and as I'm planning the next several months of what the podcast will be, it seemed like a great time to go back, re-listen, and remember. Today I'm so happy to bring you m...

Happy New Year! During the first two weeks of January, we are revisiting favorite, helpful conversations from the very beginning of We Turned Out Okay. These are episodes that listeners really responded to, right from the start, and as I'm planning the next several months of what the podcast will be, it seemed like a great time to go back, re-listen, and remember. Today, to start your new year off...