How To Talk To Kids About Anything

Special guest: Kari Kampakis It’s not easy to be a teenage girl. Dealing with cliques, bullying, rejection, and social media fiascos can be overwhelming and disheartening. So yes, being a parent or a key adult in the lives of teen girls can also be a challenge- how do we best advise the teen girls for whom we only want the best when we don’t always know which way is up! Our teen girls are going th...

Special guest: Jessica Alexander. Denmark has been voted as having the happiest people in the world by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) almost every year since 1973. That’s more than 40 years of happiness! It begs the question—is it the parenting? I mean, is there a Danish Way of parenting? It turns out, there is, and while the Danish Way of parenting is not the onl...

Special guest: Mona Delahooke, PhD. A kindergartener whose father pinches her on the arm at night- once for every time her teacher wrote the girl’s name on the behavior chart at school that day. A three year old in foster care who was found sitting in a car by the side of the road with his mother, who was passed out at the wheel. His daycare-center teacher sends him to a time out room for challeng...

Special guest: Alfie Kohn. Many parenting books offer countless tips for dealing with kids when they misbehave in the eyes of their parents—refusing to go to bed, rejecting the vegetables they’ve been told to eat, talking back, yelling in the restaurant, badgering their sibling or resisting doing the tasks it takes to get to school on time. But the way parents cope with these challenging behaviors...

Special guest: Cindy Goldrich. Cindy Goldrich is a mental health counselor, certified ADHD Clinical Service Provider, and teacher trainer. As an ADHD Specialist, She supports parents, educators and other professionals to address the impact of ADHD & Executive Functioning on learning, motivation, and behavior. She is a recognized Keynote speaker and provides Professional Development for school dist...

Special guest: Michael Reichert, PhD. We’ve talked quite a bit about girls on this show—and how many things are changing for girls due to the momentum of the women’s movement. But what about the boys? How do you raise boys to become great men? How do we raise boys to feel connected to himself and feel connected to others? For many of our sons, while the world of girls seems to be expanding, the wo...

Special guest: Seth Perler. What is executive functioning and what does it have to do with our children’s success in school and life? My next guest explains that Executive Function is what it takes to get stuff done (such as homework, writing a paper or cleaning a room, etc.). In other words, it’s the ability to “execute​” complex tasks and see that those tasks go all the way through to completion...

Special guest: Dr. William Stixrud. Are we raising an anxious generation? Many would agree that we are. The causes of the uptick in anxiety among children has started to be discussed—even within our podcast- we have talked with Jessica Lahey and our obsession with grades and our focus on avoiding failure at all costs. We have talked with Julie Lythcott Haims about the bubble-wrapping of our childr...

Special guest: Dr. Julie Kinn. Military families face many unique challenges- from long family separations and shifted responsibilities in the household to frequent moving, injuries and sadly, sometimes, grief and loss. That means that being a child in a military family means a great deal of adjustment to frequent change as well as a host of undulating emotions that come from deployment, reunions,...

Special guests: Joanna Faber & Julie King. What do you do with a little kid who won’t brush his teeth? Screams in his car seat? Pinches the baby? Refuses to eat her vegetables? Throws books at the library and runs rampant in the restaurant? We’ve all been there. How many of us have seen the parent with the child at the supermarket who is throwing one big tantrum in the cereal aisle because s/he wo...

Special guest: Diana Graber. Snapchat, Instagram, Fortnite, cyberbullying, sexting, and technology addiction are some of the digital concerns that keep today’s parents up at night. Some of the statistics being quoted are scary: Common Sense Media reported that 50 percent of teens feel “addicted” to their phones. The Pew Research Center reported just last year that 59 percent of U.S teens have been...

Special guest: Vicki Hoefle. Ask an audience of parents to shout out the most annoying behaviors their children exhibit that they desperately want to get rid of—there won’t be lack of answers. From fighting and hitting to getting up from the table, getting out of bed, making a mess, whining and talking back—parents have a bunch of challenges they are trying to solve to make their family homes more...

Special guest: Dr. Dan Reidenberg. Nearly 800,000 people die by suicide in the world each year, which is roughly one death every 40 seconds. Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death in the world for those aged 15-24 years. Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death for 15 to 24-year-old Americans, according to the CDC. These are the statistics—but when it comes to suicide and talking to kids, the...

Special guest: Katherine Reynolds Lewis. There is a new and surprising problem that has quietly but perhaps not unnotably come to fruition during more recent years—our children are out of control in comparison to previous generations. It’s not your imagination. A recent study of first-graders found that they could sit still for no more than three minutes—which is actually only a quarter of the tim...

Special guest: Jodi Bondi Norgaard. How do we keep going, hammering away at our dreams, when we find ourselves faced with disappointment, frustration, failure and a big fat NO from those who can help make these dreams happen? It comes down to perseverance. Persistence. Determination and grit. We keep on going because there is a fire in us that tells us we must try yet another time. How does this p...

Special guest: Dr. Jane Nelsen. Children are always learning- and yes, they also make a lot of mistakes. Whether they are fighting with their siblings, tantruming about bedtime, missing the bus, forgetting their homework or talking back to you, it seems like there is a constant need for correction, apologies and do-overs. At the same time, there are all kinds of parents and teachers out there who...

Special guest: Jenifer Joy Madden. According to Forbes magazine, the most sought-after attributes in an employee are not technical. All are human-centered, including the ability to work in a team, make decisions, and prioritize. But authors and experts have found a sad shift regardless- During a lecture at Rochester Institute for Technology, Allen Chochinov urged design students not to eliminate h...

School shootings, traumatic weather events, local fires and acts of terror-- When the world is struck with a catastrophic event, it is natural to want to shield our children from the effects of it. We want to keep their innocence in tact- allowing them to grow up carefree and unfettered—feeling safe and calm wherever they go. We might wonder, if we just don’t talk about it- could our children rema...

Why do children play sports? According to a study by researchers at Notre Dame’s Center for Ethical Education, it’s to (#1) have fun, then—do something that are good at, improve skills, get exercise, be part of a team and enjoy the excitement of competition. But looking out at many sports fields or at many athletic events- sometimes, if we are being truthful, it looks like we are missing the mark....

Many children grow up with no clue about how money works—what it means to save for something they want, how to spend wisely, how work can translate into money and why we must give to others in need as part of our life’s journey. Somehow, in our busy lives, discussions about money get pushed off until later. But of you think about it, when kids don’t know how money works when they are younger and u...

We have all seen the spikes in anxiety and stress in our young people these days. There is an unbelievable amount of pressure to succeed, to look perfect, to be liked and to do it all. There are pressures at home, in school, within relationships and it feels heavy and constant. Now, though anxiety has risen among young people overall, studies confirm that it has skyrocketed in girls. What in the w...