What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making Life Better, with Two Funny Moms

One question we get over and over again is about dealing with grandparents who say to our kids, "I want to– but your mom won't let me." We have a general guideline that you only have three times available to speak to your parents or in-laws about things they do that bother you. This "Rule of Three" forces us to consider whether any given issue is worth discussing, and most importantly, whether it...

Ellen Kahn is the Senior Director of Programs and Partnerships at the Human Rights Campaign. In her role, Ellen provides national leadership and expertise in public education and advocacy efforts on behalf of LGBTQ youth and families. Ellen is nationally recognized as an expert on LGBTQ family life and LGBTQ youth. She's also a proud mom of two teenage daughters. In this interview, Ellen explains...

Our merch store is live! Get your T-shirts, hoodies, onesies, and notebooks: bit.ly/whatfreshmerch. An "Achilles Heel" is a weakness in spite of overall strength. If exploited by our enemies, that small area of vulnerability can be responsible for our total, tragic downfall. This week we asked the members of our Facebook group to tell us their greatest weaknesses as parents and humans. From whistl...

How can a mom whose only parenting experience has been during Covid feel okay about protecting her newborn in a post-pandemic world? A listener emailed us to say: I am pregnant with my second baby, due in September. Now that we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel I don't think I know how to be a mom in a post-COVID world. I have learned how to be a parent during a pandemic and t...

Kira Dorrian and Deana Thayer are parent coaches and authors who are passionate about preparing families to thrive on their parenting journeys. They're the co-founders of Future Focused Parenting, the parenting philosophy that starts with the end in mind, thereby encouraging families to make intentional parenting choices. They are also co-hosts of the Raising Adults Podcast where they discuss pare...

The pandemic shrunk our social circles, first literally and then metaphorically. Our time for ourselves evaporated, and with that any chance of catching up with our best friend– even if she lived two blocks away. We lost the once-a -month lunch friends, the "micro-interactions" with strangers, and even the overheard conversations that spark our curiosity and feed us more than we ever realized. But...

Conversations with kids about consent are tricky. It can be awkward or uncomfortable to talk with kids of any age about sex, but the more often we have these conversations, the more likely our kids will be able to navigate difficult situations. Have conversations about peer pressure, sex, consent, and personal safety as early and as frequently as possible, while keeping these conversations age-app...

Our new podcast Toddler Purgatory is live! Life with little ones isn't all bad. It's just... intense. Subscribe or follow wherever you listen so you never miss an episode! Radha Agrawal was named by MTV as “one of 8 women who will change the world.”  She is the co-Founder of Daybreaker, the early morning dance and wellness movement with a community of almost half a million people around the globe....

Our kids’ summer plans keep evolving– for the better and the more confusing. We fill out forms. Then we get emails saying "Forget the old rules, and fill out these three new forms indicating you agree with these new rules." Then things change again. To be clear: thank you, camps and programs and town pools. We're not blaming the people who are most certainly doing their best to keep up, and to giv...

Do you have a kid at home who obsesses over collecting or acquiring the right kinds of things or just all the things in general? If so you are not alone. A listener had this question: What do you all do with a kid who wants ALL the toys? I've got a second grader who insists all his friends' parents buy all the Pokemon cards, and my husband and I are the worst because we refuse to buy every single...

Our new podcast Toddler Purgatory is live! Life with little ones isn't all bad. It's just... intense. Subscribe or follow wherever you listen so you never miss an episode! Carla Naumburg is a mother, clinical social worker, and author. She is the author of three parenting books, including the bestseller How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t With Your Kids, which not only explains WHY we explode at our chil...

These days we're surrounded by trackers– on our wrists, on our water bottles, on our phones. On the one hand, they help us pay attention to the things in our lives that are important to us, and to create new habits. On the other hand, they're crazymakers that give us new reasons to feel bad about ourselves. In this episode we discuss some of metrics for life we do and/or don't live by, like 10,000...

Aren’t toddlers just the best? Are they not also, at times, the WORST? Blaire Brooks and Molly Lloyd welcome you to Toddler Purgatory, where life with littles is not all bad, but definitely less than perfect. In this premiere episode Blaire and Molly discuss the many challenges of life with the tiny, ruthlessly honest, tantrum-having, often stinky carbon copies of themselves they have running arou...

Does the combination of your kids' squabbling, the repeated clinking of your spouse's cereal spoon, and the Mister Softee jingle send you into a rage-panic? You are not alone. Farrah had this to say on Facebook: Someone talk to me about PARENTAL sensory overload. We have 6 kiddos ages 5-12. I have found that the older I get (or maybe the older they get?) the noise level is less and less tolerable...

Dr. Ilyse Dobrow DiMarco is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Summit, New Jersey. She specializes in helping women use cognitive- behavioral therapy and related evidence-based strategies to navigate the myriad challenges of motherhood. Her writing has been featured in places like Psychology Today and Scary Mommy, as well as on her own blog, www.drcbtmom.com. She lives in New Jersey wi...

This week we're reviewing listener grudges, large and small, and deciding once and for all if those listeners should let it go, or no. Letting it go doesn't mean you're wrong to be annoyed. Sometimes you are totally right and you STILL have to let it go. And sometimes nursing a tiny bonsai grievance for a decade is sort of fun... but that works better when you aren't related to that person. Someti...

Find yourself stuck in the kitchen 24/7 when family comes to visit? You’re allowed to feel overwhelmed and even a little resentful, even if you’re really happy they came. Jenna emailed us to ask: Since both of you have big families, how does everyone get fed when you get together for a few days? Do you get takeout for every meal? Do people take turns cooking? I am the only person in my husband's f...

Toddler Purgatory is launching this month! Help us support the launch of our new podcast by checking out the sneak-peek trailer and following now wherever you listen. Grab all the player links at toddlerpurgatory.com.  Judith Warner’s book AND THEN THEY STOPPED TALKING TO ME: MAKING SENSE OF MIDDLE SCHOOL investigates what can be a truly painful period in any adolescent's life. Warner explains tha...

Toddler Purgatory is launching this month! Help us support the launch of our new podcast by checking out the sneak-peek trailer and following now wherever you listen. Grab all the player links at toddlerpurgatory.com. Sooner or later, most parents discover that their kid doesn't fit society's mold in one way or another. But there's "quirky" kids with unusual haircuts, and then there's the kids who...

Kids often struggle to keep their hands to themselves– and this can be especially true for boys, who love to punch, tackle, and poke at anyone who gets near them. This week Emily asks: As a mom of boys, I am finding that my five-year-old son is very handsy with his friends and boy cousins. It's like my younger son and other boys are magnets that cannot keep their hands off each other. It's not agg...

Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff is the author of the New York Times best-seller Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans. In this interview, she tells us about the circumstances that inspired her own "aha" parenting moment, and then the book. While on assignment in the Yucatan as a reporter for NPR's Science Desk, Michaeleen saw ch...

We thought we were ready. We were in fact quite excited for all of this to be over, white-knuckling it until we could run outside and hug everyone we saw. But as freedom comes nearer, we’re less sure we want things to go back to how they used to be. Why is that? This reticence feels like it might go beyond issues of measuring risk. If a Fauci godmother showed up right now to wave her wand and magi...

The most important part of addressing our little ones’ challenging behavior is to get curious about what's causing it. For preschoolers struggling with the Covid-Plus restrictions of the moment, it's easy to identify the dysregulation that might accompany post-pandemic expectations. For a 4-year-old who's spent 25% of her life hanging out at home with Mom, all of these new rules are a lot to expec...

Christina Martin is the Director of Curriculum and Instruction at The Children's School, an independent progressive K-8 school in Oak Park, Illinois. She has taught elementary, middle, and high school, with special areas of interest in play and project-based learning, math, social justice, and democratic practices in the classroom. Progressive education has its roots in play– but for many parents...

Are you the “bad parent” in your home? The enforcer of bedtimes, the keeper of deadlines, the stern shusher in the church pew? Or are you the “good parent,” the authority figure more likely to agree that time is a construct and that ice cream not only can, but should, be what’s for dinner? This week we’re breaking down  how this dynamic plays out in each of our homes whether the primary caregiver...