Become A Calm Mama

What are the differences between traditional parenting and connected parenting, and how can you become more compassionate with your kid?  I’ve been thinking about the goals and outcomes of different parenting styles lately, and here’s how I think of it. Traditional parenting is focused more on the external - the way somebody looks, presents themselves to the world and the way the world views...

Delaying your response, the conversation, the consequences when it comes to misbehavior is a valuable tool. In this episode, you’ll learn why delaying helps you stay calm and how to use this tool in your parenting. Misbehavior is rarely an emergency. This is a concept I come back to with my clients again and again.  When you think that misbehavior is an emergency, your stress response is acti...

One of the reasons that being a mom is so hard is because of the pressure we put on ourselves to do everything right. We believe that if we can just be a “good” mom, we’ll prevent pain for our kids and ourselves.  There's a belief that if we do everything right and we plan it all out, we can prevent our kids from having hard things happen to them. This is everywhere in our society. We’ve all...

In motherhood, it’s normal to sometimes look at our kids’ behavior and imagine the worst case scenario.  We’re afraid that if we don’t stop a certain behavior, our kids will struggle with it forever. For example, when my son was hitting a lot at age 4 or 5, I thought if I didn’t change that behavior he would grow up to be violent.  In this episode I’ll walk you through how to play out th...

Robyn Reynolds is a certified professional organizer.  If organization skills are a genetic trait, it is a dominant gene for Robyn who was found organizing stuffed animals by size, shape and color before she could walk . Robyn has been quoted in the Huffington Post, Real Simple magazine, Yahoo.com, Woman’s Day magazine and numerous other publications. She has also worked on the television sho...

Struggling with budgeting, saving or paying off debt? Ready to reach your money goals? This episode is for you! I’m talking with financial coach Erin Harmon all about your money and how you can use it effectively to create the life you want.  Erin is the founder of Tranquil Finance. She helps individuals and couples get ahold of their finances and manage their brain so they can create the lif...

Today on the podcast, I’m continuing the series of conversations with experts in all areas of life. This week, Dr. Chavonne Perotte is here and we’re talking all about your marriage. Dr. Chavonne is a life and marriage coach who helps couples develop the mindset and skills they need to create happy marriages and partnerships. She also has a doctorate from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public H...

This week on the podcast, I’m talking with certified intuitive eating and body image coach, Victoria Yates. We’re diving into diet, body, what we eat, how we take care of our bodies and how we think about our bodies. As a coach for moms, my focus is on helping you become calm and care for your children the way that you want to. But I also see a lot of the other issues that affect women’s daily liv...

One of my life missions is to heal the next generation in advance. So today, I’m sharing the 5 things every kid needs for emotional health. I want to give a whole generation of moms the tools that they need in order to raise emotionally healthy kids.  I imagine a generation of kids who grow up and already know what to do with their feelings. A generation of young adults who feel like their pa...

It’s the last episode of 2022! And the New Year is a time when many of us think about goals for the coming year. But have you ever set parenting goals? Learn what parenting goals are and how to use them to pivot behavior and teach your kids new skills and values. What are parenting goals? A parenting goal is a goal that you set for your kids based on something that you see as a gap that they need...

MAMA DAY HOLIDAY is December 26! About a decade ago, I declared the day after Christmas to be Mama Day Holiday. It was my official day off. On Mama Day Holiday, I do NOTHING. I don't cook, clean, play with kids, or do anything I don't want to do. It's mama's day off. Kids eat cereal for several meals, watch a lot of TV, and  hopefully, happily play with all of their new toys. I made this...

In this episode, I’m talking about two of your favorite topics - meltdowns (or what I call Big Feeling Cycles) and siblings.  In more than 10 years as a parenting coach, these come up again and again as things that are the hardest for moms.  They are the core issues that lead moms to yell, then feel guilty and wind up stuck in a cycle of guilt, resentment, overwhelm and confusion. We wan...

Around the holidays, everything sort of gets unstructured and chaotic. We get really busy. We get overwhelmed. Our kids lose the sense of routine that we've been establishing. And it stresses us out! As parents, it's good for us to stop and think about how we want our winter break to go and how we want this holiday season to feel.  And a big part of creating the break you want is getting clea...

This week on the podcast, I’m diving into boundaries - How to say no, how to set boundaries with kindness, and how to communicate your boundaries in a way that works. I’m giving you my detailed, step by step process that you can use with the teens and adults in your life. Why do we need boundaries? Ultimately, we set boundaries because we want to feel better. We want our life to work better for us...

Overwhelm often comes from thoughts like… I have so much to do. I don't know what to do. I'm so behind. I don't know where to start. I'll never get this all done. I suck. These are just thoughts. They are sentences in your head. They aren't necessarily true. But thinking them can lead you to become overwhelmed and self-critical. Sometimes the simple act of writing all the things down that are in y...

With this podcast episode released on Thanksgiving, I’m talking all about gratitude, how it relates to children, how it relates to parenting, and what I'm calling weaponized gratitude. What is gratitude? In Brene Brown's book, Atlas of the Heart, she defines gratitude as, “an emotion that reflects our deep appreciation for what we value, what brings meaning to our lives, and what makes us feel con...

Today, I’m getting a little personal and sharing my story of perfectionism - how I realized I was struggling with it in the first place, where it came from, what it looked like in my life and some of the strategies I’ve used to get out of my own perfectionism.  Of course, I’m also talking about how it relates to being a mom and what happens when we, as women and mothers, try to do everything...

In this episode, I’m talking all about boundaries, limits and rules. What is the difference between them? And how can you best utilize them, especially as we go into the holiday season? Rules, Boundaries & Limits - What’s the difference? A rule is when you say what your child can or can’t do. Rules are a first step in teaching your kid how to listen, be responsible and think A limit takes it a...

Today on Become A Calm Mama, I'm talking about a concept called codependency and how it shows up in parenting.  Our children are naturally dependent on us to care for them. In this episode, I’ll help you understand the difference between healthy dependency and a less healthy codependent model. I’ll also give you some guidelines to figure out if codependency is a struggle for you and what to d...

Parents often say to me that their child “is being disrespectful” or that “their behavior is disrespectful”. But is it? And if so, what can you do about it? In this episode, you’ll learn how to tell the difference between respectful and disrespectful behavior, why not everything falls into one of those two categories and how to create mutual respect in your family.  What is mutual respect? On...

The difference between being mean and being firm can be confusing. A lot of moms think that when they are firm with their children, they are being mean. For example - when you have one of your kids pulling your other kid’s hair, it’s not mean to say “Stop that. Or Don’t do that. That’s not safe. ” with a firm voice.  Or when your child is hitting you or spitting on you. It’s not mean to say “...

After 10 years of coaching parents, I’ve said a lot of things. But there are certain pieces of information, advice and mindset shifts that I come back to over and over again.  In this episode, I’m sharing the five things I say the MOST as a parenting coach. And even if you’ve heard me say some of these before, they’re always worth hearing again.  #1 Be comfortable with your kid’s discomf...

I keep thinking of the image of a tightrope walker with a safety net below them. Your kids are on the tightrope, up high, navigating the distances between one development stage to another.  You aren’t on the tightrope. You are the net holder.   When your kids are little, your net is really close to the tightrope because you are literally keeping your kid alive.  But as your kid...

** Raising Teens Masterclass! ** Details below. This episode is all about raising responsible adults and, more specifically, developing responsibility in our teenagers. It’s all about the tension between what teenagers want (freedom) and what they don't want (responsibility). Today, you’ll learn how to navigate this tension by using limits and boundaries to give freedom and teach responsibility. T...

Today we are going to focus on the PARENTS! Yay! The thing you want.  Parenthood is a journey from feeling like you have a lot of control to feeling as if you have none. You go from being “in charge” of a tiny human to being not “in charge” of an adult. Yelling, threatening and bribing are ways you try to get your power back. Using fear to get your kids to listen is your attempt to feel in co...