What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood | Parenting Tips From Funny Moms

This week Margaret’s talking about parent-teacher conferences, after writing about her own most recent conferences on our social media. At one of the conferences, Margaret heard amazing things: her child is thriving, reading above grade-level, adored by all. But she's also had conferences when she heard her kids were struggling, not sitting still, NOT performing at grade level.(Amy has also had both kinds of parent-teacher conferences, by the way.)Some kids are built for school, and they will thrive in that environment. Others will find it much harder. But your kid’s A-plus, or C-minus, is not your own. As a parent, you're in communication with the teacher as an advocate for your kids, but you’re not there to make sure your kid's school experience– or life– turns out perfectly.It's crucial to keep that in mind when we have parent-teacher conferences: we’re not there to find out whether WE passed the test.Link to Margaret's thoughts here: https://twitter.com/WFHpodcast/status/1336079462941806592 * Leave us a rating or review in your favorite podcast app! * Join us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/whatfreshhellcast * Instagram: https://instagram.com/whatfreshhellcast * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatFreshHellPodcast * Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/whatfreshhellcast * Twitter: https://twitter.com/WFHpodcast * questions and feedback: info@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week we’re talking to Susan Katz Miller, author of THE INTERFAITH FAMILY JOURNAL, a hands-on journal that helps families learn how to best honor one another’s spiritual and cultural needs. The holidays are always intense, and if your family is an intersection of multiple traditions, it can really ratchet up the pressure for perfection times two. Which is when it’s time to maintain perspective. As Susan explains:“I try to help people to understand that if they're having conflict often, it's not about religious difference. It's not about theology. It's not about whether there was an actual physical resurrection or not. It's usually about whether to put the fried onions on the green bean casserole or not.”In this episode we discuss why every family is an interfaith family how to reduce conflict about traditions with your spouse’s extended family how to help your spouse when the hard feelings are on your family’s side how to push back on the pressure to do “both” traditions perfectly how to help your kids navigate being of a different faith than most people in your community how to handle it when you’re observant but your spouse is not (or vide versa) the resentment that can occur when the mom in a family is expected to carry the weight of passing on a religious tradition that's not even hers It’s worth it to have the conversations, do the work, and delineate a “sacred circle” that works for your immediate family. As Susan explains, when you and your spouse come from different traditions, “you’re going to be doing the work anyhow.” But challenging your own mindset and context is also an incredible opportunity for growth– even if the way your spouse’s family opens their holiday gifts is completely and totally wrong. Here are links to some other writing on the topic we discuss in this episode: Pew Research Center: Why America’s ‘nones’ don’t identify with a religionhttps://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/08/why-americas-nones-dont-identify-with-a-religion/Stina Kielsmeier-Cook: Blessed Are the Nones: Mixed-Faith Marriage and My Search for Spiritual Communityhttps://bookshop.org/a/12099/9780830848270and you can buy THE INTERFAITH FAMILY JOURNAL here:https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9781558968257* Leave us a rating or review in your favorite podcast app! * Join us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/whatfreshhellcast * Instagram: https://instagram.com/whatfreshhellcast * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatFreshHellPodcast * Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/whatfreshhellcast * Twitter: https://twitter.com/WFHpodcast * questions and feedback: info@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode topic was suggested by Pam Marie in our Facebook group: What's your mom superpower? We often talk about what we get wrong, but what about the things you're really good at? Time to flex, What Fresh Hell community!Everyone needs an ‘Attaboy!’ every once in a while. And when you’re a mom, you usually have to give it to yourself. In this episode, Amy brags about her X-ray recall of exactly where the shirt definitely *is* hanging in her son’s closet. Margaret explains that she’s a “super sniffer,” and you’ll have to listen to know what that’s all about.We discuss some of our listeners’ powers, as well. Whether you’re Eileen, whose kids have not been late to school once in seven years, or Sue, who has the superhuman ability to resist shouldering her children’s emotional burdens for them, we are truly impressed by all of your superpowers. Attaboy.* Leave us a rating or review in your favorite podcast app! * Join us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/whatfreshhellcast * Instagram: https://instagram.com/whatfreshhellcast * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatFreshHellPodcast * Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/whatfreshhellcast * Twitter: https://twitter.com/WFHpodcast * questions and feedback: info@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week we're talking to Katherine May, author of the tremendous new book WINTERING: THE POWER OF REST AND RETREAT IN DIFFICULT TIMES.Written before the pandemic but perfectly relevant to the moment we're in, WINTERING explores how the natural world prepares for and survives winter, and how we can apply the lessons of actual winters to the metaphorical winters in our lives where, as Katherine puts it, "we feel like the world has pushed us out. We feel isolated, depressed, locked out in the cold, and that the rest of life is drifting away from us."We all go through personal winters. Sometimes they're for terrible reasons (an unexpected death); sometimes they're for happy ones (a newborn who needs to be fed every two hours). Sometimes they're brief and not too unbearable; sometimes no end is in sight.Winter is cyclical, it's part of life, and it can be understood as a time of rest and of waiting, rather than of stillness and death. There is much that winter can teach us, and we loved both this conversation with Katherine and her profound book.You can find WINTERING: THE POWER OF REST AND RETREAT IN DIFFICULT TIMES hereor in our Bookshop store: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9780593189481You can follow Katherine on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katherinemay_/?hl=enand Twitter: https://twitter.com/_katherine_may_?lang=enand you can listen to her podcast THE WINTERING SESSIONS here: https://podnews.net/podcast/1516642192 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For the last 1.8 million years or so, children were raised village-style. But 2020 has meant a lot of us raising our kids without the usual help of grandparents or schools or caregivers or friends.As New York Times parenting writer Jessica Grose explains: "Throughout basically all of human history, parents have never, ever raised children in isolated nuclear units the way they have been doing for much of 2020, with little to no hands-on family or community support."And now we’re on month nine of no village. And it’s getting cold. And here come the holidays. Yes, this is as hard as you think it is. The village doesn’t just benefit the kids– it helps the parents keep going, too. So make your own village, even if you don’t feel like it. Whatever community you can create right now counts, whether it's on Zoom or on social media or on a group text or in your podcast listening, or by posting your #danishbaby photos to our Facebook group, never apologize for what that village looks like. Here are links to the research and other writing on this topic that we discuss in this episode:  Jessica Grose for NYT: Parenting Was Never Meant to Be This Isolating https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/parenting/childcare-history-family.html Sarah Blaffer Hrdy for Natural History Magazine: Meet the Alloparents https://www.naturalhistorymag.com/htmlsite/0409/0409_feature.pdf Lynn Steger Strong for Time: Women Value Their Group Texts in Normal Times. During the Pandemic They've Become a Lifeline https://time.com/5894745/group-texts-women-coronavirus/ Stephanie Coontz for The New Republic: The Way We Never Were https://newrepublic.com/article/132001/way-never * Leave us a rating or review in your favorite podcast app! * Join us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/whatfreshhellcast * Instagram: https://instagram.com/whatfreshhellcast * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatFreshHellPodcast * Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/whatfreshhellcast * Twitter: https://twitter.com/WFHpodcast * questions and feedback: info@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Lindsay asks: How do you discipline a 1-year-old? Specifically, with pulling my hair and dropping his food on the ground. I say “no" in a firm way and he laughs at me. Any advice you could provide would be much appreciated. Thanks for all you do- love your podcast!You can't discipline a 1-year-old. They don't get it. But you can redirect, and in this episode Amy explains how that can work.Toddlers drop food on the floor because they’re fascinated by cause and effect, and in repeating the few things they can control. It's a behavior kids will bore of sooner than you can correct it. But if the parental reaction is swift and predictable, it can actually encourage more food-throwing. The challenge is to make throwing food on the floor more boring than NOT doing it.Pulling hair is another brief but intense stage of toddler behavior, and the quickest way to discourage that might be by adding an incompatible behavior– something that can't happen at the same time as the hair-pulling. If you hand a toddler a toy he loves before picking him up, he can't pull your hair. If you untangle your hair, put him down, and otherwise blank-face it, that's another incompatible behavior. So is pulling your hair back until this stage passes.To come up with ideas for redirecting undesirable behaviors, consider the strategy Carolyn Dalgliesh suggests in her book THE SENSORY CHILD GETS ORGANIZED: "What can you add? What can you take away?" Think about what dial you can adjust on the situation to refocus your toddler's attention. It takes patience and a little outside-of-the-box thinking, but you'll find something that really works for you.Find Carolyn Dalgliesh's book, and all the books Amy and Margaret recommend, in our Bookshop store:https://bookshop.org/shop/whatfreshhellcast* Leave us a rating or review in your favorite podcast app! * Join us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/whatfreshhellcast * Instagram: https://instagram.com/whatfreshhellcast * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatFreshHellPodcast * Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/whatfreshhellcast * Twitter: https://twitter.com/WFHpodcast * questions and feedback: info@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We asked all of you to tell us your super-secret awesome things: the life simplifiers that you think everyone else needs to know about. This episode has an incredible collection of indispensable condiments and doo-dads, portable boredom busters, and things that will keep any kid happily busy for a surprisingly long time. Head to our website for links to everything you hear about in this episode- you can find it all here: https://bit.ly/WFHep183Most are affiliate Amazon links– but we encourage you to shop local if you're buying! * Leave us a rating or review in your favorite podcast app! * Join us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/whatfreshhellcast * Instagram: https://instagram.com/whatfreshhellcast * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatFreshHellPodcast * Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/whatfreshhellcast * Twitter: https://twitter.com/WFHpodcast * questions and feedback: info@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week our listener Raya asks, "How do I deal with a 4-year-old who is afraid to go to any doctor's office?"Doctors' offices are scary! There are shots, there's vulnerability, and there's an adult in charge who might be really intimidating to a little one.No kid is ever going to dance off to the pediatrician. The goal is to make your child's experience as manageable as possible– by communicating openly about why the visit is necessary, discussing what is going to happen during the visit, and placing a little emphasis on the reward (okay, you might call it a bribe) that your little one can look forward to for good behavior.Margaret quotes this article in this episode :"Fear of Doctors" (whattoexpect.com)Send us your parenting questions- we might answer yours next!Email us: questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com.* Leave us a rating or review in your favorite podcast app!* Join us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/whatfreshhellcast* Instagram: https://instagram.com/whatfreshhellcast* YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatFreshHellPodcast* Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/whatfreshhellcast* Twitter: https://twitter.com/WFHpodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In our latest “Fresh Take” episode we’re talking to Ali Wentworth, host of the "Go Ask Ali" podcast. If you're raising teens during this pandemic, you definitely want Ali's funny, wise, and useful interviews with experts on your podcast playlist!Ali Wentworth is perhaps best known from her iconic roles in Jerry Maguire, Office Space, and Seinfeld. She’s the host of the Daily Shot on Yahoo!, has also written several books filled with wry self-help observations and tips, and regularly stops by Good Morning America to chat with hubby George Stephanopoulos. Ali and George have two teenage daughters. In this episode we discuss Ali's family's experience with Covid how to parent teenagers during a pandemic how to create "space" in your relationship when you're stuck together 24/7 just how much ice cream is allowed during lockdown Follow Ali on Instagram @therealaliwentworth and find the "Go Ask Ali" podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/go-ask-ali/id1523352034?at=11lo6V&ct=podnews_podcast * Leave us a rating or review in your favorite podcast app! * Join us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/whatfreshhellcast * Instagram: https://instagram.com/whatfreshhellcast * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatFreshHellPodcast * Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/whatfreshhellcast * Twitter: https://twitter.com/WFHpodcast * questions and feedback: info@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Parenting as a team is an ongoing challenge– even when your relationship with your co-parent is usually harmonious. But matching headspaces with your co-parent about a problem your family, or one of your children, is dealing with doesn't have to be the goal. Parenting as a team can often mean taking turns, whether it's with the pancake-flipping, the hard talks with teenagers, or the 3 am worried Googling of ICD-10 diagnoses. In this episode we talk about what’s worked for us in moments of disagreement or struggle with our spouses, and how we found common ground.If getting through the pandemic means zooming in, just getting to the next lamppost, parenting as a team means zooming way out. If you know you're on the same page about the adults you want your children to become, it's a little easier to chill out about how they’ll get there. In this episode, Amy and Margaret discuss their "Pre-Cana" experiences in the Catholic Church, and the usefulness of the Engaged Encounter program in particular. To find out more: engagedencounter.com Margaret also mentions the book WHAT CHILDREN LEARN FROM THEIR PARENTS' MARRIAGES, which you can find in our Bookshop store: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9780060929305* Leave us a rating or review in your favorite podcast app! * Join us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/whatfreshhellcast * Instagram: https://instagram.com/whatfreshhellcast * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatFreshHellPodcast * Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/whatfreshhellcast * Twitter: https://twitter.com/WFHpodcast * questions and feedback: info@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices