Connecting the Dots: Not Just Another Parenting Podcast

Monologuing no more!  In this two part episode, I'm dialoguing with my friend, Alice, about parenting into your children's young adulthood.   I call Alice "The Most Experienced Parent that I Know" because she has seven children, all of whom are older than mine, and I love talking about parenting with her.  I hope you enjoy listening! CONTENT WARNING:  In this episode we talk ab...

Monologuing no more!  In this two part episode, I'm dialoguing with my friend, Alice, about parenting into your children's young adulthood.  This is part 2!  Be sure to listen to Part 1 first. I call Alice "The Most Experienced Parent that I Know" because she has seven children, all of whom are older than mine, and I love talking about parenting with her.  I hope you enjoy list...

We can raise our children so that they're equipped to build the world we want instead of adhering to the norms of the world we're trying to get away from. 

In this short episode, I reflect on the ways that I've made my home full of pleasure and comfort for myself so that I am well regulated and better able to meet my own parenting goals.  Check out the corresponding Instagram post to see pictures ! Or facebook if you're old , like me.

After spending 17 days at home with my kids for winter break, I reflected on the relationship between screentime, hands-on parenting, and low restriction environments.  In homes where adults don't have a lot of time or bandwidth to interact with the kids and where there are a lot of restrictions about what the kids are allowed to do, it is very natural that those kids might have more screenti...

How well are we modeling empathy, perspective-taking, and gratitude in our daily lives so that our children will learn these critical justice-building values? Let's explore it together.

How did COVID impact our parenting, particularly for those of us who were having and raising babies in 2020 and who had kindergarteners in 2020? This is a heavy topic to talk about.  Make sure that you take good care of yourself, even if that means skipping this one. Trigger warnings: Talk of COVID, anxiety, and infant feeding issues

Welcome back for Season 3!  The back to school season has me thinking about grades and connecting the dots between our habit of expecting success to be easily measurable as 100% and what we should reasonably expect from our children.

I love it when there's evidence that my long-term goals for my kids are in motion.  This meltdown turned out to be an unexpected milestone.

Finally!  After months upon months of teasing this episode, here it is:  I'm talking about how I gave up family dinner so that I could work towards the family dinner that I really wanted.

How confident are you that you're succeeding in your parenting?  How can you know if you don't know what you're measuring?  In this episode, I share a story about how my daughter's confrontational nature allowed me to double-down on my own confidence in my success.

In this episode, I offer a follow up to explain some of my responses to my children as we talked about slavery in American History.  I also describe a conversation about racism and colorism that my family had over dinner.

In this bonus episode, I explain why and how I told my five-year-olds about the existence of slavery in American History.

In this very short episode, I share an anecdote about parental invisibility, that phenomenon when all of your hard work parenting your children is completely unseen by them...and maybe others.

In this episode, the second of the Spring Break Challenge (in which I post a half-baked short episode every day that my children are home for spring break), I analyze the therapeutic value of Frozen 2 during this weird era of American history.  As bonus content, I unexpectedly defend a MegaCorporation with a problematic  history... (spoiler alert: it's Disney).

In this short episode, I introduce a challenge that I've created for myself to upload a short episode every day of my children's spring break.  Connecting the dots between the value of changing the environment in order to change children's behaviors AND changing the environment in order to change MY OWN behaviors, I'm attempting to build new neural pathways to accomplishing tas...

I've been fiddling with this theory that all behavioral change requires an environmental change.  In this episode, I describe what that looks like in my life and might look like in yours.

We're welcoming back the podcast with a new name and an official new format by talking about walking the talk and lessons learned.

In this short, solo episode, I wend my way through my own thoughts and experiences in the early hours of November 6, 2024, sharing perspectives on finding gratitude, talking about hard stuff with kids, and confronting fear.

This episode introduces a series  in which I explore the ways that white supremacy culture influences my parenting.  I first became familiar with Tema Okun's White Supremacy Culture article within my professional life, as the organization that I worked for took on the effort of grappling with the ways that white supremacy culture was present in our environment and practices.  It didn't t...

In this "Dismantling White Supremacy Culture" series, I share my process of learning more about the characteristics of white supremacy culture and how they show up in my parenting beliefs and behaviors, unintentionally, and how I am working towards change. In this episode, I explore the characteristics of "perfectionism," "one right way," and "fear." You can...

 In this episode, I am in conversation with Steph, a mom who describes herself as a "neurospicy."   We talk a lot about how it actually, physically FEELS to parent, particularly when we are committed to gentle or responsive parenting and we are managing big feelings from our kids and ourselves at the same time.  We question whether our expectations for our kids prevent us from being empa...

In this interview episode, I'm talking with Erin, a mom who weaves her background in early childhood education into her everyday parenting as she raises and homeschools her two young children. We talk about the connections between creativity, parenting, and education, as well as the power of being a role model for your children in ordinary interactions.  Here is Erin's favorite recipe fo...

In this short episode, I share my own experience with feeling stuck in some unpleasant cycles with my children and what I'm doing to get unstuck. To connect with me about helping you get unstuck, you can reach me through my website: https://www.jillianbestadler.com/

It's been a few weeks since I released an episode.  In this mini, unscripted episode, I share why and how that's been for me. Resources shared: Chani Nicholas https://chaninicholas.com/ We Can Do Hard Things Podcast https://wecandohardthingspodcast.com/ Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey https://thenapministry.com/