The Heartful Parent Podcast

We want our kids to follow their dreams, explore their passions, and show gratitude. But if you've ever tried talking to your teens about these topics, or asked questions to guide their thinking, it may not have landed as well as you'd hoped. So how do we teach these things to our teens and make sure it sticks? Inspirational Author, and Podcast host, Ed Gerety, has some valuable insight into how t...

Teri Schmidt defines leadership as "courageously using your talents as a way for others to courageously use theirs", and I have to say that is a nice picture of leadership. Teri is a repeat guest on The Heartful Parent Podcast, and she is back to not only define servant leadership, she is here to teach us how to become strong leaders.  Imposter syndrome is real, and the world has unfortunately con...

We are back for the second half of the 'mealtime battles' conversation with my good friend and colleague Christine Muenz. If you missed part on, go check it out Eliminating Mealtime Battles––Part 1 .  In this episode, I'm firing all my feeding, food, and mealtime questions at Christine. And she offers her thought provoking perspective on how mealtimes can play out on a daily basis. She shares how...

If you celebrate, Happy Thanksgiving! Whether or not you celebrate, I'm still glad you are all here to dig into the benefits of inviting more gratitude into your life daily, weekly, and beyond.  In this episode, I'm giving you the numbers of how an active gratitude practice benefits your emotional and social wellbeing and helps you get the D.O.S.E. chemicals that benefit your overall physical heal...

Do you have mealtime battles in your house?  Most parents do, because there are a lot of confusing resources out there, and because most of us got some messed up ideas about food from how we were raised.  So to dig into this, I have my good friend and mentor Christine Muenz on the podcast to share her deep wisdom.   Christine is a parenting educator, lactation educator, and an infant feeding speci...

Have you ever tried to meditate and thought to yourself, I must be doing it wrong. I know I have. But Aparna Venkataraman, founder of Beauty In Parenting, helps us all feel like we can actually benefit from meditation and breathwork practice; she makes it feel accessible for both yourself and your kids.  Aparna has a warm and approachable nature and offers her guiding hand to help us use meditatio...

I love Halloween! We get to dress up and pretend. It's great for building community and connecting with our neighbors. If you celebrate, it is a lighthearted, low prep holiday. And… I'm all about safety, so let's talk about safety on Halloween.  However, I bet my list will surprise you! I'm not going to tell you to inspect your kids' candy or follow them around the neighborhood. I'm going to expla...

Work-life balance is one of the biggest challenges in parenting. On this episode of The Heartful Parent Podcast, Wendy S. Meadows joins me to dig into what to do when you are overwhelmed, burned out, and you are stuck, feeling frustrated, and so tired day in and day out.  Wendy brings not only her expertise as a mom and best-selling author into this conversation, she is a certified Life Coach, Fam...

My friend and colleague, Lihi Netzer joins me on the podcast today. Lihi is a fellow Positive Discipline Educator and Parent Coach. She focuses her work on pre-teens and teens struggling with social emotional challenges. Today, Lihi is here for a different reason.  Lihi lives in Tel Aviv, Israel and she is sharing her personal account of living and parenting through the events that happened in Isr...

When the world is scary, how do we parent? You might find yourself thinking, I want to talk to my kids about [insert scary or unsettling world thing], but I don't know how. Maybe you're feeling a little overwhelmed, scared, or triggered yourself.  This episode is all about the Heartful Parenting Practice of using T.A.L.K. S.C.A.R.E.D.© This is a universal framework that you can use to talk to your...

My friend and colleague Jo Langford joins me on The Heartful Parent Podcast today! Jo is a dad, a Master's-level therapist, an author, and a sex educator for tweens, teens and parents. He is here today to tell us all about his new editions of his Spare Me the Talk book series.    If you know a 12-22 year old, then you need to hear all about these books.. The books (along with Jo's other work) focu...

I'm getting raw and real with you again today. I'm sharing a story that while, yes, it's a first world problem, it was also an opportunity for self-reflection. It was brought about by an extremely disappointing weekend.  And disappointment is something our kids feel too, even when we don't totally agree with them. Often, it is necessary to make space for feeling all the feelings, for us and our ki...

Anna Dearmon Kornick, Time Management Coach, is back for Part 2. (If you missed Part 1, go back and listen to Episode 31: Getting to the Heart of Time Management.) Anna is a wife and mom who helps busy professionals and business owners master time management so they can stop feeling overwhelmed and start spending time on what matters most.  Now that we have our boulders, rocks, and pebbles identif...

The start of school, the fall, is a time for getting back into routines, hitting that reset button, and setting some goals. But, at least for me, the to-do list is longer than the day. So Time Management Coach, Anna Dearmon Kornick is here to help us master our time and stop feeling overwhelmed.  Anna is a wife and a mom who helps busy professionals and business owners with time management. She al...

You might have fond memories of sleepovers as a child, I know I do! It seems that now, sleepovers are much more controversial, and with good reason. I'm not here to tell you if you should or shouldn't let your child have a sleepover. Today on The Heartful Parent Podcast, I will help you weigh the benefits and the risks so you can make the decision that is right for you, your family, and your kiddo...

Dr. Samantha Radford joins me on The Heartful Parent Podcast today. She is here to help us use a combination of scientific research with wellness and self-care to promote non-toxic living in our homes. As the owner of Evidence-Based Mommy, she focuses her work on helping families thrive in an attainable way.  Dr. Radford and I dig into the places (and things) in our lives where our babies and kids...

Today on The Heartful Parent Podcast we're diving into a thought-provoking topic––food, eating, & how we're feeding our children. Julie Zivah is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Parenting Educator who aims to coach clients toward meaningful relationships with their bodies, people, and nourishment. She is here and invites you to start thinking critically about feeding your children and figur...

We all love to share and it has become second nature to post that cute or funny picture of our kiddos, but it is time to pump the breaks and think twice. Today on the Heartful Parent Podcast , I welcome Fareedah Shaheed, an award-winning Internet Safety Expert, who is here to talk to us about the aspects of cyber security that parents need to be thinking about.  Fareedah's background is in cyber s...

This is a continuation of the conversation from Episode 25: Heartful Parenting Practice: STOP Saying "Stranger Danger" . This week, I have author and professor Dr. Paul Renfro with me to share thought-provoking evidence in the harm of the phrase "Stranger Danger". Dr. Renfro wrote the book Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State which speaks to the history and no...

"Stranger Danger!" –– We all learned it and you may have taught it to your kids in the interest of keeping them safe, but it doesn't! The danger of abduction or kidnapping is actually very low (come back next week for more on that with Dr. Paul Renfro). In the meantime, I'm sharing with you why the phrase "Stranger Danger" needs to be completely eliminated from our lexicon and what we should be te...

Today I have the pleasure of talking with Parent & Enneagram Coach, Valerie Tih on The Heartful Parent Podcast! She is the founder of JoyFULL Coaching and she frames her work around helping parents who feel frustrated by the gap between who they want to be as a parent and the day-to-day reality of parenting. Valerie transforms outdated parenting paradigms into research-based Positive Discipline fr...

Teaching our children about consent can be one of the "awwww…I know!" conversations with our kids, but it doesn't have to be! Today, Consent Educator and founder of Comprehensive Consent, Sarah Casper joins me on The Heartful Parent Podcast to share her story of how she got into the work of teaching consent (trust me, it's a totally unexpected reason!). And Sarah shares how she uses social-emotion...

Casey O'Roarty, Positive Discipline Lead Trainer and Coach joins me on The Heartful Parent Podcast today, and I'm thrilled to have her here! Casey's work encourages parents of teenagers to discover the purpose of their journey, while also providing them with tools and a shift of mindset that allows them to deepen their relationships with themselves and their families. Casey and I agree that our pu...

I'm getting real with you today on The Heartful Parent Podcast! I'm sharing a personal story about a [very recent] time I didn't use the techniques of Positive Discipline––instead I let my anger get the best of me. Instead, I spoke to my daughter from a place of fear, frustration, and disbelief; I let the imperfect human side of me win out over the so-called "parent expert" side of me. BUT, it's n...

Emily Cherkin, M.Ed. joins me on The Heartful Parent Podcast for a thought-provoking conversation about how we, as parents, may be worrying about the wrong thing(s)! Emily is former teacher who is now The Screentime Consultant, and her work focuses on understanding the challenges we face parenting through a digital age. Emily and I dig into the difference between scary versus dangerous, and why th...