Raising Daughters

 There are tons of life’s clues scattered along your journey that reveal the way towards achieving happiness. And sometimes, they are found not in the adult’s way of life but in the simple stories of children. Tim Jordan, MD chats with Angela Santomero , co-creator of the show Blue’s Clues, who shares how adults can learn from observing and gathering clues from the lives of children. She explains...

Being young should be the time for freedom, fun, and self-exploration. Unfortunately, in today’s competitive environment, kids as young as grade schoolers already worry about their futures. Tim Jordan, MD has seen this during a father-daughter retreat, where young girls show how they already feel the pressures of having a life mapped out. As parents, what should you do? How can you guide your daug...

If you’ve ever been bullied in your childhood, you’d know just what a quagmire the hallways of middle school are for kids. No matter how much you want to protect your daughter, there is simply no way to prevent bullying incidents from happening. How do you bully-proof your daughter? The answer has surprisingly little to do with the bullies themselves. In this episode, Tim Jordan, MD, teaches us a...

Show Notes: Digital wellness expert Dawn Wible discusses programs for keeping kids safe on their devices and social media. Dawn shares who is most vulnerable to the harmful effects of devices and social media, including information about the immature adolescent brain. Dawn talks about the areas in our lives that are deeply affected by our screens and what we can do to move toward healthy and safer...

Show Notes: Mariana Alessandri, author of Night Vision, discusses the need to normalize all of our emotions and to educate girls to listen to what they have to teach us. Learn all the ways our culture has conditioned us to be ashamed of our feelings, that it means that we are broken and lazy and weak, and that they need to be diagnosed and medicated. The author discusses the need to listen to thos...

Show Notes: Gynecologist Dr. Maggie Abraham discusses how to educate girls about the physical changes from puberty and about menstruation management. Dr. Maggie Abraham is a board-certified OB-GYN with subspecialty training in pediatric and adolescent gynecology. She shares her expertise about educating girls about their bodies. Learn about when to start conversations about the upcoming changes th...

Show Notes: Girls often respond to toxic friends with tend & befriend behaviors instead of moving on for fear of being alone. Dr. Jordan describes how important friends are for girls and their fear of losing them if they confront them about being mistreated, even to the point of putting up with abuse, Girls haven’t learned the skills for handling conflicts directly and so their emotions get pu...

Show Notes: Health coach Marnie Dachis Marmet discusses the many ways girls & parents can practice regular self-care, including sleep, nutrition, yoga, and mindfulness. Marnie shares the reasons why teens and adults don’t take the time to practice regular self-care. Learn the many health and mental health benefits of yoga Learn about some invaluable self-care habits girls can incorporate into...

Show Notes: The most beneficial diet for adolescent girls includes social-emotional and mental health items, not calories. Perhaps there is a different, healthier kind of diet plan that would better suit the developmental and social-emotional needs of girls in grade school on up. Here are some items girls may want to consider giving up = mental health diet Fitting in Move on from toxic friends Non...

Show Notes: The book, The Soul’s Code, offers a way to see thru children’s misbehaviors for the deeper meaning behind them, i.e., see the oak tree when all you have in front of you is an acorn. Too many kids get mislabeled & misdiagnosed because our lens is so short-term oriented; also the medical & psychological communities are so pathology & negative & deficit focused. Children’s...

Business meetings are designed to help businesses run more effectively. So, why shouldn’t families use family meetings in the same way to be better? Running weekly family meetings results in more closeness, increased cooperation, kids who feel empowered & heard, & kids learning many crucial life skills. Here are some of the main intentions for running family meetings: All have a voice, fee...

Show Notes: Women don’t scream or fight back during sexual assaults and rapes due to protective brain responses and cultural conditioning. In this podcast, listen to the recent story of how World Cup soccer player Jenni Hermoso was forcibly kissed by soccer federation president Luis Rubiales and how this experience mirrors so many other times when girls and women have had their boundaries crossed....

  SHOW NOTES:  Dr. Jordan many reasons why kids engage us in power struggles including: feel disconnected from distracted parents, intense & powerful temperament, autocratic parenting style, being tired or hangry or overstimulated, pushed to conform to other’s expectations Learn also the need for parents to understand why their child might trigger them to get angry and engaged in these conflic...

Show Notes: Learn how to handle calls from homesick college freshmen to empower them to learn how to cope, problem-solve, and grow in confidence. Many parents have been guilty of doing too much for their daughters prior to launching them off to college: solving problems, advocating, rescuing, not allowing her to make mistakes or suffer, wanting her to be happy always This results in girls never le...

Show Notes: Dr. Jordan discusses how girls can reframe past experiences & scars into healthy stories Dr. Jordan describes an exercise he did with his high school campers where they visualized any scars they carry, physical or emotional, from past experiences & which carried strong emotions. The girls then painted something positive and beautiful over their scars where previously they’d see...

Show Notes: Creating a lot of down time at our camp allows kids to take initiative & create their own fun and games. In this podcast, Dr. Jordan describes how seldom kids get to experience unsupervised down time where they can take initiative and create their own fun. Dr. Jordan describes the game Snake Pit which his campers created several years ago and how it has evolved with each new week o...

Forgiveness is an internal process that sets you free from negative feelings & thoughts, opening you up for love and happiness. Show Notes: BENEFITs of practicing forgiveness Research has shown that forgiveness is linked to mental health outcomes such as reduced anxiety, depression and major psychiatric disorders. Stress relief is probably the chief factor connecting forgiveness and well-being...

Show Notes: The following are 5 ways we are sucking the heart and soul out of our children’s lives and with great cost: 1.   Lack of down time for unsupervised, self-directed play: kids need the freedom to explore and take things apart and play with ideas. This also requires enough down time for kids to be bored, daydream and really get into the flow of their creative processes. 2.   We don’t valu...

Show Notes: Using her book, Cassandra Speaks, author Elizabeth Lesser describes how our human stories and our views of women would change if women were the storytellers. Elizabeth Lesser describes the mythological story of Cassandra where the god Zeus punished her with the gift of clairvoyance but the curse of no one listening to her or believing her thoughts. This story depicts how our culture st...

Show Notes: Dr. Jordan interviews 4 young adult women about the lingering social & academic effects from covid. Questions discussed in this interview: What grade were you in when covid hit & you had to go virtual? What did you like, dislike about virtual learning? What was it like for you socially when you 1st returned to in-person school? Any lingering effects socially from your covid exp...

Show Notes: Girls need to decide what success & having it all means for them, & to develop the following qualities to achieve a fulfilling life. The following are key ingredients for achieving success: Create your own end in mind, click here for link to Dr. Jordan’s previous podcast on beginning with the end in mind Autonomy creates engagement which then develops mastery The pursuit of ful...

Show Notes: Learn the truth about Sunday scaries & trigger warnings as well as how to prevent & manage them. The Sunday scaries are nagging feelings of nervousness and anxiety that creep up on people as the weekend winds down and the new work week approaches; it’s about the anxiety & dread about returning to work on Monday Learn how to zoom out of your life and figure out specifically...

  Show Notes: Listen to author Ginny Luther’s story about learning how to raise her independent-minded son Bart, the childhood traumas he triggered in her, and the tragic story of his death in the military. Temperament of many natural born risktakers: independent-minded, intense, risk-takers, physical, restless, active, love the outdoors. These kids are often described as: hyperactive, wild, can’t...

Show Notes: Research shows that time in nature is associated with improved mental health, decreased stress, enhanced creativity and prosocial behaviors, and increased connection to each other. This podcasts describes the research behind the positive effects of more contact and interaction with nature, including: reduced anger, fear, and stress and the production of stress hormones. Being in nature...

Show Notes: Elevate your parenting by creating an end in mind and using it to guide all of your decisions; listen in for how to do this. Learn the two main fears driving today’s parents to micromanage and overprotect their children: fears your kids are falling behind their peers and the uncertainty of how to prepare kids for an uncertain and ever-changing future so different from parent’s experien...