How To Talk To Kids About Anything

Donna Nakazawa: is the author of four books that explore the intersection of neuroscience, immunology, and emotion, including The Angel and the Assassin, named one of the best books of 2020 by Wired magazine, and Childhood Disrupted, which was a finalist for the Books for a Better Life Award. Her latest book is GIRLS ON THE BRINK: Helping Our Daughters Thrive in an Era of Increased Anxiety, Depres...

Dr. Jen Pratt: Childhood illness can turn a family’s life upside down. We probably all have friends, neighbors, community members or maybe even family members who have coped with or are currently coping with childhood illness. While it wasn’t my child, many of you know that my dear friend’s son, Gavin, was diagnosed in 2018 with Ewing’s Sarcoma and I was there for the initial meetings, tests, surg...

Dr. Thema Bryant: Children deal with stress, disappointment and trauma often—in the form of discrimination, bullying, abuse, neglect and other stressors—how do we help them deal with the trauma instead of burying it, dwarfing it and hiding who they truly are so that they can simply survive? How can they acknowledge their trauma, express their toughest emotions and in a sense, “come home” to who th...

Catherine Newman: Middle School is a time of incredible growth—kids change a great deal while learning and practicing vital social skills that they will use throughout their lives—how to get along with others, talk about tough topics, compromise, still to your values, be an ally, show up as a good friend and so much more. How do we help open up these topics to kids so that they know what to say wh...

Special Guest: Dr. Gail Saltz Every parent wants his or her child to be happy and successful. As parents, we learn from many books, experts, our own parents that there is a formula for this—they get enough sleep, we feed them right, we send them to school, give them love and boundaries, make sure they do their homework, we put them in the right sports, get them involved with enrichment activities—...

Jeffrey Marsh: This podcast will focus on the collision between self-esteem and gender identity- especially for children who don’t have the support they need to truly embrace who they are. For kids who identity as LGBTQ, they don’t need a “perfect” parent who knows exactly what to say, but rather, one who will ask the questions, stay curious, and above-all-else, be a supportive advocate for their...

Special guest: Alyssa Blask CampbellThis podcast will focus on how to help little kids navigate big emotions in specific common situations. Alyssa Blask Campbell of Seed and Sew will help us understand what to do and say to help our kids (and ourselves) through those frustrating situations so we don’t get derailed and get to the other side!

Meghan Leahy - Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the stress and perfectionism of our overparenting culture–and at the same time, yearned for solutions to ease the struggles of everyday family life? Perhaps you have been caught at the grocery store with a tantruming 2-year-old, made organic salmon for your 4-year-old only to have it thrown across the room or attempted to reason with your 5-year-old...

Special guest: Melinda Wenner Moyer This podcast will focus on how to raise kids who don’t act like jerks—who aren’t racist, sexist, rude bullies and instead show up in this world as empathetic, kind good people. Melinda Wenner Moyer, who writes for Scientific American and The New York Times, offers her insights from assessing thousands of research studies on kids on this latest episode of How to...

Special guest: Ibram X. Kendi Many of us, in the past, have been taught that we should not see color—not to mention color-- when looking at the people around us, in our community, in our schools or in the various towns, cities, states and countries. But is parenting in this “colorblind” way really the method of irradicating racism? There are great tragedies involving black and brown people- discri...

Kristin Russo - When a child or teen comes out to their parents as gay, parents are often left with many unanswered questions fueled by fear, lack of knowledge or concerns about the wellbeing of their child. The conversations that need to take place are not as much about you answering questions for your child but about your child answering questions for you. Your child has likely been navigating t...

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: Cathy Cassani Adams. This podcast will focus on how we can stay curious about ourselves and ensure that we are growing and learning so that we can encourage our children to do the same. There are many areas of life that are being questioned and evolving right now- from questions about race, gender, sex and identity. How can we engage in conversations with our kids about these topics...

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: Abbie Goldberg, Ph. D. This podcast will focus on the range of different types of families there are—especially families that were built through adoption and families that are headed up by two-dads or two-moms or a range of others who love them (grandparents, single parents). What makes a family? It’s about process not structure—it’s who loves and takes care of you, not their gender...

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...

Special guest: Rebecca Rolland, Ed. D Science has shown that the best way to help our children become independent, confident, kind, empathetic and happy is by talking with them! Thank goodness this is true since we’ve been discussing talking with kids about all kinds of topics since 2017 on this podcast. However, so often, parents , educators and caregivers are at a loss and have trouble communica...

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...

In the wake of the very public emergence of the #MeToo, #TimesUp and #girlstoo movements, the latter that we discussed with our Girls Inc Team, Lara Kaufmann and Dr. Christina Spears, a few weeks back-- women and girls have encouraged to find their voice, claim their power, come out of the shadows and not back down. But with a history of messages that tell women and girls that they need to be perf...

Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you find the best traits of ADHD and work really hard to make them benefit you. Diagnosed at seven years old with “sit down, you’re disrupting the class” disease, Peter wasn’t formally diagnosed with ADHD until his mid-30s. By that time, however, he’d started and sold two companies, and realized that all the differences that formerly lab...

Special guest: Diana Graber. Are you concerned with how much screen time your kids are using? What kind of digital reputation they are creating or how their self-esteem in being impacted by certain apps, cyberbullying, sexting or exposure to possible predators? How about clickbait, deep fakes, fake news or the like? There’s a lot of information out there and it’s here to stay. We can’t stick our h...

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...

As children grow and enter their preteens and teens, they experience a lot of changes. Social changes, emotional changes, cognitive changes, and yes, physical changes as well. Many girls and boys feel dissatisfied with their bodies. Countless studies have shown that negative body image in girls has been linked with depression and eating disorders as they receive message after message that thinner...

Special guests: Dr. Lindsay Kite and Dr. Lexie Kite. This podcast will focus on how to talk to girls about body image, body acceptance and body resilience. Dr. Robyn Silverman interviews Drs. Lindsay Kite and Lexie Kite, sisters and co-directors of Beauty Redefined about this important topic, helping girls learn that their bodies are instruments, not ornaments.

Special Guest: Dr. Susan Bartell Dr. Susan Bartell is a nationally recognized parenting psychologist and author, supporting parents in raising happy and healthy kids in a stressful world. She has written the book, The Top 50 Questions Kids Ask and you can find her on national TV and radio- and She writes for US News & World Report (along with me and several other fabulous experts I’ve had the plea...