The Family Lab: Experiments in Parenting and Home Management

Maria Kemp's kids start riding horses as soon as they can ride along in a front pack. For them, work is a way of life.

Chances are, you saw motherhood going a little differently. When the rubber pacifier hits the road, we rarely turn out to be the moms we thought we would be—but in so many ways we're better than those fantasy moms we dreamed up. You can learn more about some of the moms I featured in this episode here:  Devon Smiddy: Meagghanthompsoncoaching.com Celeste Davis: marriagelaboratory.com Rachel Nielson...

Today, I'm delighted to share some of the highlights from a conversation I had with Chantel Allen, a mom of four and a life coach. She'll talk about some of the different stages of motherhood, and her career path from preschool teacher to life coach. We also talk about how she has learned to live with anxiety and help her children through some of the same challenges.

Naming a baby is one of the first big decisions we make as parents—and it's a huge one! Talk about pressure! This is the name they're going to be known by their whole lives. It sounds so stressful--so why is it so darn fun? In this episode we're going to talk about some of the common—and uncommon--ways parents come up with names, and how they actually come to an agreement on those names. We'll als...

Every year, Leisle and Vinh Chung take a couple retreat to come up with a new version of their Plan with a capital P--a 30-year blueprint for their family. In this episode you'll learn about their plan and how they infuse their values--including hard work, compassion and service--into parenting and family life.

In this episode I'll share what bedtime looks like for several different moms, some with just young kids and some with older kids and teenagers, including some really sweet ideas about how to connect with your kids at bedtime. Then I'll share some of the advice and research that's helped me improve our bedtime routine this year. Resources:  howshemoms.com Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, PhD Health...

Inspiring stories of women who love and serve their communities and the world and teach their children to do the same. 

Beth Millward is the mom version of Buddy the Elf. In this episode she shares her many Christmas traditions, from Santa's Workshop to the twelve days of Christmas. I dare you to listen without getting excited to celebrate!

In this episode we'll  talk about 10 tactics to bring a little more play into parenting. Along the way, we'll dig into the guilt a little bit and examine that pressure we feel to entertain our kids, we'll talk to moms about specific ways they play with their kids—including march-madness style taste tests, airborne pancakes, and competitive toilet wiping—and we'll even learn some techniques for mak...

Brooke Romney is one of my favorite writers on the topic of being a mother and being a good person in general. Her first book, I Love Me Anyway, released this fall, and it's as beautiful and inspiring as I expected. Here, I talk with Brooke about some of the different stages she's experienced in motherhood, and what she's learned along the way, especially from other moms.

In the last episode, we talked about why self-care is important and some great ideas of how to make it happen. Today, we're going to talk to three moms who have figured out how to take care of themselves while taking care of their kids, in three very different ways and in three different situations.

As a mom, you know what human beings need and how to take care of them. So why don't you take care of yourself? In this episode, I talk to 10 different moms about self-care—the why, the what, and the how.

This episode is all about how to find islands of our own—islands of time and islands of space where moms can be alone and recharge. This is the first of two episodes about self care. The next one will include lots of different ways to care for ourselves, but I wanted to start with this episode because I feel like this desperate need for alone time is pretty unique to motherhood, and especially to...

Ten experiments going down at the Archibald home, from a family retreat to chore routines to bedtime bribery. 

This week's episode is another bonus interview, and a glimpse of what life is like for a mom of 11 children! I recorded this conversation with the incredible Emily Fillmore about a year ago for my episodes "How She Teaches Kids to Work" and "How She Teaches Kids to Be Tidy," and I thought it was time to bring you the whole interview, now that we're all figuring out our fall routines. Links: Family...

This is not an episode about the nitty gritty of homeschooling, though I do plan to do a more comprehensive episode or maybe even a multi-part series about that in the future. This is an episode for first-time homeschoolers and remote schoolers. I'm going to split the episode into two parts: help and hope. We'll start by troubleshooting some of the challenges of teaching your kids at home—includin...

Josie Lauducci mastered the quarantine life before quarantining was cool. She went long stretches where she saw no one but her family; she lived in tight quarters on a shoestring budget; she homeschooled—and here's the amazing part—she did it on purpose. On a sailboat. Read about the Lauduccis and their adventure at afamilyafloat.com

As moms, we are students of child development. We read books. We observe our own kids, and other people's kids to figure out what's "normal." We recognize the different stages they go through. Some pass by as quick as a newborn's smile, some drag like a morning diaper. However, we are less likely to recognize our own stages of development, and the remarkable growth we mothers experience as we lear...

We all know that parenting is a grand experiment. It has become my tradition with this podcast to update you on the experiments we're trying here at the Archibald home about three times a year—summer, fall, and winter. So in this episode I'll talk about our current experiments and update you on some of the ones from the experiment episode last February, called Routine Experiments—the sequel.

  Today's episode is part two of a two-part series about how to take the fight out of food. In the first episode, we talked about picky eating and house rules about what kind of food you eat. In this episode we're going to talk about two other potential battles: When kids eat and how they eat.   Resources mentioned in this episode: SNL sketch: Dysfunctional Family Dinner   Didn't I Just Feed You P...

Most of us haven't been in a sitcom-style, hurl-mashed-potatoes-across-the-room kind of food fight, but I'll bet most of us have been in fights about food with our kids. There are so many potential conflicts here, from picky eating to table manners. The goal of this two part series is to help make eating with your kids a positive experience—with a lot of great ideas from moms on the front lines. I...

Motherhood is a loaded word, full of social, historical, cultural, and familial expectations and responsibilities. Yet, as we all know, there are no prerequisites and no formal training—not even a job interview—required to assume this position.  We've all read articles that break down the many hats moms wear while they juggle balls in the form of children and housework and birthday parties and job...

We've all experienced resets in our lives, both bad and good—things like job loss, illnesses, divorce, deaths, trauma, and tragic events like 9-11, and also positive things like marriage, moves, babies, graduations, new jobs. This time, Corona keeps pushing a giant reset button over and over—sometimes several times a day. No gatherings over 150, wait, make that 10. School's going online for two we...

I'm offering my complete Meal-Planning Workshop for free during the COVID-19 craziness, since we're all cooking at home more than ever. You can hear the entire introduction to the course in this podcast episode to see if it's something that will help you and your family. Go to howshemoms.teachable.com to enroll. God bless!

It's 6 p.m. and you're staring, zombie-like into the fridge. You have no idea what's for dinner. In fact, it's hard to remember what you've ever cooked for dinner. What on earth do people eat? In this episode, we'll hear from three moms with different approaches to meal planning. Kara Farnsworth uses an old-fashioned, analog system, using note cards to plan her meals. Janae Ku uses a digital syste...