The Family Lab: Experiments in Parenting and Home Management

Connecting with your kids takes effort, creativity, patience--and a lot of experimentation! Whitney Archibald, Angelynn Singley, and Paola Jellings, who have (gasp) 18 children between them, talk about experiments they've tested to connect with their kids, and come up with a few for you to try. Then four contributors share their ideas as well. Here are the books mentioned in this episode: The Five...

If your child struggles with anxiety, you know the balancing act between helping them feel safe and helping them become more resilient. Dr. Mary Wilde is here to help. In this episode she explains what anxiety is and teaches us how to focus on building our kids' (and our own) resources rather than putting our energy into minimizing risk.  Dr. Mary Wilde is a licensced integrative pediatrician and...

Do your kids have good manners? What does that even mean? Today we talk to Brooke Romney, author of 52 Modern Manners for Today's Teens, Volumes 1 and 2, and 52 Modern Manners for Kids. We discuss this idea of manners and how we can teach our kids social skills that will help them connect with other people and become more confident. You can find more resources from Brooke Romney at brookeromney.co...

Whitney interviews moms from the village that helped raise her. They talk about friendship, the work that goes into building it, and some of their kids' shenanigans. 

This summer I fell 30 feet in a rock climbing accident. Here's my story.

Screentime is a struggle--setting boundaries, resetting those boundaries, keeping kids safe, teaching them how to be intentional about tech. In this episode Whitney shares some of the ups and downs of screentime experiments in her own family.  For more episodes about managing screentime, check out the rest of the series:  68: How Andrea Davis Manages Screentime 107: How Catherine Teaches Kids to M...

Jessica Jackson's framework for transitioning from surviving to thriving might just transform your whole way of looking at motherhood and life (because survival mode isn't exclusive to motherhood). Best of all, Jessica has given me words to describe the transition from survival mode to re-entry to normalizing to exploring to thriving and even soaring. Don't worry. She'll explain the whole thing. F...

Hillary Wilkinson, one of the founders of Healthy Screen Habits tells the story about how she helped start this organization, shares research about kids and screens, walks us through some safeguards we can put in place, shares some great ways we can connect with our kids through tech,   and teaches us some healthy screen habits.

Seven ways to create a healthy digital culture and connect with your kids. Featuring advice from seven different tech-savvy moms:  Andrea Davis, betterscreentime.com Hillary Wilkinson,  healthyscreenhabits.com Catherine Pearlman, thefamilycoach.com Jen Brimhall, raisethegood.com Alex Fales, mindfulwithmedia.com Kailan Carr, quietbookqueen.com Chanelle Neilson, chanelleneilson.com

In which we talk about all the expectations in the winter season, plus parenting expectations in general. I also talk about some of the experiments going on here in the Archibald home from family discussions to chores to Christmas gifts, plus a new podcasting adventure for me. 

Christina Acosta  shares practical tips for building friendships, from analyzing and repairing past friendships to going deep and getting beyond surface relationships. Christina is the founder of Growing Up Gorgeous, a community for black women of faith. 

Ideas for making time to connect with friends and organizing gatherings, from one-on-one activities to small groups, to parties and even traveling with friends.

Twelve tips about making new friends from seven different moms. 

Katherine Wintsch struggled with self-doubt and perfectionism for years—even while outwardly achieving all her goals as a successful advertising executive. Then she decided to confront and slay those dragons of fear and doubt, rethink her priorities, and start her own company, where she could redefine work-life culture.

In which I discuss some of the fall experiments that have been working for us as we drive kids from one activity to another. I'll talk about our big push to improve hygiene and sleep habits, our holiday experiments, and then update you on some plans for How She Moms and other related projects.

Kathryn Thompson was having a great day--just killing it. But then self-doubt tried to creep it's way in. Right then and there, she stopped those thoughts and started a new practice--collecting drops of awesome, little successes that add up to a full bucket of awesomeness. She tells her story and other practices that help her keep self-doubt at bay. 

Dr. Catherine Pearlman, author of the fabulous book, First Phone, talks about how we can empower kids to make good choices about how they use technology.  For more resources from Catherine, go to thefamilycoach.com

Gini Ewart's teenage daughter was getting in some serious trouble. Just when Gini thought she had tried everything, she learned some key principles that transformed her relationship with her daughter.

Fourteen tactics for connecting with teens, from ten different moms. 

In 1983, Ellen Weir Casey delivered the first "test-tube baby" born in Colorado,paving the way for the more than 8 million in vitro babies that have been born since--including my own miracle baby. She tells her amazing story on the podcast today.

My kids help me evaluate all of our summer experiments, from jobs to swimming to family reunions and lots of bravery. 

Teenagers are people too! Camille Ward, co-host of the Family Looking Up Podcast, shares her connection-first approach to parenting teenagers, while still setting boundaries and preparing them to go out into the world. 

Mary Van Geffen is spicy. Which is why she's made it her mission as a parenting coach to help parents understand their own spicy children. In this episode, Mary teaches how to manage our own reactions as we parent these amazing kids.  Get Mary's guide to Finding Your Calm here: https://maryvangeffen.ck.page/42c9542683

100 episodes! To celebrate, I thought I'd put together an episode of some of the ways the amazing moms I've interviewed have helped me (and maybe some of you) rethink motherhood. I somehow narrowed it down to 12 (or so) ideas that have helped me become a better mom over the past three years. Here's to many more (years and great ideas)! 

Welcome to Season 4! Here's a teaser of some of the topics and guests I plan to feature in this season, plus a behind-the-scenes look at how I put the podcast together.