How To Talk To Kids About Anything

This podcast will focus on self-injury and how to help young people who are self-harming to find healthier ways to cope with stress, pain and big emotions. Those who are self-injuring are not attempting to die by suicide but rather aiming to find a way to feel better. Those who self-injure need help and Dr. Janis Whitlock provides the information we need to best support and understand those who ar...

This podcast will focus on the importance of allowing children to fail. Discover why, during the school-age and teen years, it is vital for parents and educators to allow young people to experience the disappointment, frustration and struggle that occurs when they are challenged by life’s problems. Find out how failure and learning to bounce back and ultimately succeed, put children on the path to...

Special Guest: Peggy Orenstein The pervasiveness of hook-up culture, ubiquity of locker room banter, accessibility of internet porn, media steeped with distorted images and wide acceptance of the “man box” or “bro culture” participation is having complex and negative effects on our boys. And as pornography has become a new kind of sex education that most boys are privy to by the tender age of 11 a...

Special Guest: Dr. Natasha Burgert Today we are discussing how to talk your child through the bedtime battle—and win. I know- we all need it! How many parents can say “me too” when they hear a sleepy parent talk about how their child wouldn’t go to sleep or woke up in the middle of the night—many of us have dealt with this, me included. My own daughter has had night terrors, nightmares, and I’m ju...

Special Guest: Tina Payne Bryson, PhD Parenting encapsulates so many different aspects of care when it comes to a child. We receive messages about paying attention to how children are doing in school, with friends, what they are eating, how much they are playing, how hard they are working, if they are reading enough, sleeping enough, getting outside enough and much, much more. And while all of thi...

Special Guest Expert: Rosalind Wiseman. Today we are discussing how to talk to kids about treating each other with dignity and respect. What are the cultural messages that our kids receive? Are their differences between how boys deal with their relationships and girls cope with their relationships? How do kids bond and what do betrayals look like? How do we talk to other parents when our child has...

Special Guest: Dr. Ken Ginsburg This podcast helps parents and educators discover how to build resilience in teens. As young people are working to gain more independence, they make more mistakes and must learn how to recover. Sometime they need to learn how to get back up after a big fall while other times they must learn how to move forward after small, everyday blunders. How can we help kids lea...

Special Guest: Dr. Laura Markham Dr. Laura Markham trained as a Clinical Psychologist, earning her PhD from Columbia University. She is the mother of two, now ages 21 and 25. Dr. Laura is the author of the book Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting and Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings: How To Stop the Fighting and Raise Friends for Life. You can find her online at ht...

Special Guest Expert: Mary DeMocker I remember, as a child, learning that you turn off the faucet while brushing your teeth. You close the refrigerator quickly and turn off the lights when you leave the room—little things- and they needed to be taught because otherwise, I admit, I hadn’t thought much about leaving the tap on, standing in front of the open fridge for minutes figuring out what I wan...

Special Guest: Anne Moss Rogers This podcast will focus on how to talk to kids about depression, substance abuse and suicide from the perspective of a mother whose child died by suicide in 2015. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 10 and 24, only behind unintentional injury, in the United States. Much of suicide has a correlation with depression and s...

Special Guest: Dr. Charles Fay As parents, we have heard that the days are long and the years are short. The days can be filled with mistakes, sibling rivalry, tantrums, boundary testing, bedtime battles and tough discussions—and even as they are interspersed with fun, excitement, pride, connection and love, as parents, it’s normal to feel frustrated at times and want tools to help make the days g...

Special Guest: Bento Leal We all know that one of the most important parts of talking to kids—or really, talking to anyone you care about, is listening. Of course, with so many obligations, online notifications, overfilled schedules and to-dos, listening these days can sometimes be a challenge. Still, it’s listening, that builds trust, allows for mutual understanding, creates connection and helps...

Special Guest: Dr. Michele Borba What is needed to help kids succeed in today’s world? Goals? Commitment? Drive? Perhaps. But our next guest has an answer to that question that might surprise you: empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. It allows our hearts to go out to others, helps us to care deeply, help, uplift, connect and love. In a world that...

Special Guest Expert: Mary DeMocker I remember, as a child, learning that you turn off the faucet while brushing your teeth. You close the refrigerator quickly and turn off the lights when you leave the room—little things- and they needed to be taught because otherwise, I admit, I hadn’t thought much about leaving the tap on, standing in front of the open fridge for minutes figuring out what I wan...

Special Guest Expert: Susan Newman, PhD Do you or does your child have trouble saying “no?” Do you find yourself saying “yes” to your children when you really want to say “not today,” “I can’t swing it,” or just plain “no?” Does your child over-stretch or over-commit because s/he can’t seem to say no? Perhaps you or your child is what my next guest calls “a master of yes and a novice of no.” But i...

As a parent or a teacher, you might have had moments where children experience overwhelming feelings such as anger, anxiety or agitation leading to fitful moments, tantrums and melt-downs. Who hasn’t? Statistics tell us that 20% of young children have tantrums daily—this is normal. And as children get older, some still have trouble dealing with over-the-top feelings. And let’s be honest- at times...

Typically, our experts are best-selling authors and top experts who have studied a topic for many years as a researcher, writer, professional and adult. But sometimes, our best experts are the children themselves who are going through a unique situation that make it so only a small portion of people like them would understand. Every once in a while, I will be putting in a special kid edition of Ho...

Special guest: Katie Hurley According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, approximately one out of five teens has a mental health disorder, diagnosable by clinical methods, and nearly one-third show symptoms of depression. Now you might be thinking- well, many teens seem depressed to me, their moods and their emotions are all over the place! Stress is overwhelming! Yes, that can be...

Special guest: Caroline Maguire A child hangs back in gym class because he just knows he’ll be the last one picked. Another child monologues nonstop about dinosaurs on every playdate and still another talks nonstop throughout the movie even though everyone asks her to stop. They don’t get invited to birthday parties, are thought of too much or too little, & playdates often end poorly. Do you know...

Special guest: Kelli Harding, MD We all hear medical stories of triumph and frustration—there are so many mysteries when it comes to health- why some people, who are biologically healthy, but feel ill—and some patients who are biologically ill, but feel healthy. Doctors have racked their brains for years- looking for patterns, problems, links that somehow explain why certain people get better quic...

Special guest: Dawn Heubner, Ph. D We all want our children to feel safe, secure and engaged in their lives. But when big, bad things happen in the world- from mass shootings to natural disasters to other tragedies detailed on the news and filtered through the adults at the restaurant, the neighbors on the street, the kids on the bus and friends at school- the world can feel a little less safe and...

Special guest: Mitch Prinstein, Ph. D Any mention of the word “popular” and many of us are transported to a time when popularity really seemed to matter. Who was on top, who was on bottom and who floated somewhere in the middle of the social hierarchy at school and among peer groups? Who was well-liked by many, who was revered by the masses and who was feared by most- you know, the kids who were p...

Special guest: Simone Davies,Let’s face it. When people hear the word; “toddler” it often conjures up thoughts of “the terrible twos,” torrential tantrums and tirades that feature the word “NO!” in big capital letters. There are frustrations about toddlers not listening, not eating fruits and vegetables, not sleeping, not listening, not allowing parents to go to go out on a date or go to the bathr...

Special guest: Phyllis Fagell, LCPC Middle school is a time of seismic shifts—everything is changing from friendships and relationships to hormones, expectations and not to mention the physical, intellectual, moral, social and emotional growth your child is experiencing in just a short amount of time. Fundamental questions are floating around the heads of adolescents such as “who am I?” “Am I norm...

Special guest: Catherine Weiss As parents, it is normal to have some stressful thoughts. We might be in conflict with our child and think; “he’s not listening to me,” “she’s so spoiled” or “he’s sucking the life out of me.” But what if we turned these statements on their ear to evaluate their truth but also look inward to see what the actual truth might be? We have the greatest of intentions and l...