The Balanced Parent Podcast

I'm excited to share that my latest podcast episode features a special guest, Dr. Rina Bliss. Dr. Bliss is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University and the author of several books, including Rethinking Intelligence: A Radical New Understanding of Our Human Potential .

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Caroline Clauss-Ehlers, an award-winning psychologist, researcher, and professor at Long Island University, Brooklyn, to discuss the power of mindful eating for family connections. If you're looking for practical ways to improve your family's eating habits and deepen your connection with your children, this episode is a must-listen. Join us as we explore the p...

I am excited to share with you the latest episode of my podcast, where we explore the topic of nutrition and ADHD in children. As a parenting expert, I always emphasize the importance of a holistic approach to raising our children; this episode is no exception. I had the pleasure of interviewing Momina Salim, a certified Pediatric Functional Medicine Health Coach with extensive experience supporti...

As a parent, I know how challenging it can be to juggle the many responsibilities that come with caring for our children, partners, and ourselves. As you may remember, recently I've been struggling with health issues and burnout, and it has been a really difficult journey. I've come to realize that many other parents are experiencing similar struggles, and it's time we have a compassionate convers...

This week on The Balanced Parent podcast, we will have a deep-dive discussion into how we can help our children develop crucial skills for building meaningful social connections, like perspective-taking and problem-solving. Miriam Campbell will be joining me in this discussion. She is a mom who uses her experience as a speech therapist, social worker, teacher, and parent to support parents who wan...

When I ask the parents I work with about their long-term goals for their children, kindness is one of the qualities I hear most about, and it's no wonder, right? Most of us have personal experiences where we have been on the receiving end of the kindness (and unkindness) of others, and it makes sense that we hope that our children will put good out into the world. But how is something like "kindne...

Ok, so we've all heard the term "conscious parenting" before, right? We've even talked about it on the show, but out there in the online world I see a LOT of people talking about it in a lot of different ways and I'm not always sure we are talking about the same thing. In my mind there is a difference between respectful, collaborative parenting (which is about HOW you interact with your kids, like...

A huge part of my mothering journey has been learning to quiet the fears and outside influences, and seek instead to truly learn with curiosity about my child and myself. The more I learned about the unique child I had been blessed with, the more I was able to see her true needs and trust myself to meet them. I kind of had to figure out how to do this on my own (although the RIE approach helped im...

As my child approaches ten and has started to ask for a phone, it is important that as parents we know how to guide our kids in navigating technology and social media with intention and safety in mind. An important aspect of this is figuring out how to model for our kids the boundaries and relationships with social media that we want them to have. ​ To help me in this conversation, I have brought...

On this week's episode on The Balanced Parent Podcast, I will be joined by Carol Muleta and we will be chatting about how we can help our children develop self-discipline and resilience. Something that I know we all want for our children but that can be difficult to figure out how to nurture respectfully. Carol Muleta is a Parenting Strategist and Consultant. She created The Parenting 411, a porta...

We are nearing the end of my 30 Days of Play Challenge. And with that, I would like to thank those who have joined. I want you to know that I am proud of everyone who put in the work to know more about their children through play and made the effort to make independent play better. I am also proud of every parent in this community who committed to becoming balanced. ​ And before we end our play ch...

We are now halfway through our 30 Days of Play Challenge. For the past few weeks, we've talked about unstructured, independent play and its wonderful advantages it has for kids. Today, I want to give you a full well-rounded picture of how play can help support your kids, and how you can harness the power of a specific type of play, "structured play" (think games with rules someone else made up), t...

As you may have been aware, we are now in the midst of our annual 30 Days of Play Challenge. And when it comes to the play challenge, one of the main things everyone asks for is assistance in figuring out how to encourage your children to play independently more often. Last week we discussed the things your child needs in order to get into independent play, and this week we are going to discuss wh...

We are now back on The Balanced Parent podcast! As you all know, we focus on our children's play every January. And I would like to invite you to join me in my 30 Days of Play Challenge . As part of this challenge, the episodes on the podcast for this month will be all about PLAY! Yay! ​ To start the month off, I wanted to focus on one of the most common questions I get: How can I get my kids to p...

As we enter into a season meant to be filled with light, love, & joy, I wanted to just acknowledge that this can also be a time filled with pressure, stress, and overwhelm. We take on a lot as parents during this time, and just in case no one has said this to you yet, it's ok, more than ok, it's GOOD, to say "no" to some things. To release traditions that feel confining, to embrace slowing dow...

This week's episode is going to be a little different. If you have been following me and The Balanced Parent Podcast, you know that there are times where members of my BalancingU membership community so generously allow us to "listen in" to their coaching sessions. It can be so helpful to hear others' experiences and I know that you may have similar struggles and questions. This way, you would kno...

This is a time of year where we are meant to reflect with gratitude on all that we have, and I just want to express how grateful I am for this beautiful community! And as a token of appreciation, every year for my birthday I put all of my courses & programs (and this year coaching) on sale for the week, STARTING NOW! Check out my Birthday Sale here ! In keeping with the theme of gratitude, thi...

For those of you who are working through Parenting from Within inside my BalancingU membership , this week's episode could not come at a better time! We are currently working through the process of uncovering our inner voices and children and starting the good (but hard) work of healing. If you're interested in this program you can learn more here . We have already started, but it's available as a...

Over the past year my husband and I have been on a journey in figuring out how to be more balanced in our roles at home. We noticed that my husband did a lot of the visible labor, like dishes & laundry, while I did most of the invisible work, like holding emotional space for my kids' big feelings, carefully considering the play and reading materials in our home, and planing meals. A part of ou...

This week we will be talk about intuition and how we can learn to tune into and trust ourselves as parents and partners and create that beautiful relationship with ourselves as individuals. For many of us, our experiences out in the world have taught us to look outside of ourselves for answers, feedback, validation, and wisdom. Has that been your experience? It definitely has been mine! For me, co...

This week will have another bonus episode - a live coaching I did with one of my BalancingU community members. We will be talking about how to help a child take responsibility after a mistake WITHOUT forcing apologies. I hope that as you listen, you can pull out meaningful takeaways that apply to your family. And if there are, I'd like you to share your reflections on Instagram and tag me @laurafr...

The topic that we will be tackling for this week's episode on The Balanced Parent podcast is a bit tricky, but it's also something we will all need to think about sooner or later: Substance Use. I don't love the idea of parenting from a place of fear, as I'm sure you know, but I also know the statistics about teenage substance use and the risks. I want to be mindful and conscious as my children ap...

As a podcast host, I get approached by experts in different fields. And one of the fields I get approached by a lot are board certified behavior analysts who practice a form of therapy called Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). ABA is one of the very few forms of therapy that are "approved" for autistic folks and in listening to and learning from the autistic community, many have outlined the harm ca...

Let me ask if this sounds familiar: Your child freaks out if there are tags of seams on some of their clothes or the transition to weather-appropriate clothes is a nightmare... Or it feels like your child is always crashing into you or things, jumping off of high stuff or needing a wrestle... Perhaps loud noises or bright lights overwhelm them... Or maybe they are just so. dang. loud. themselves?...

It can be so hard to see our children struggle to learn new skills, especially in school, where learning differences often manifest as behavioral challenges. In so many cases when our kids are young, the advice is to wait and see, and trust that they will do it when they are ready, but sometimes we get to a point where we know our child needs more support than they are getting, and we need help fi...