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

Margaret answers a question from the What Fresh Hell Podcast Group from a listener who asks when (if ever) life with her 2 and 1-year-olds is ever going to get easier.Submit your question– we might answer yours next! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Even the cheeriest and sunniest of parents are hitting the wall. We're over it. This stinks. Even the most ‘We’ll make a fun obstacle course in the yard!’ moms are suddenly thinking ‘No. NO. I don't want to do this anymore.’”Somehow we've traveled past denial, to bargaining, then circled back to anger, without seeing so much of the acceptance part. That’s life on the coronacoaster.We think this is particularly hard for parents, because we have to hold together some semblance of certainty for our kids that everything's going to be fine amidst our own complete uncertainty. Saying "you don't have to be scared" even when we feel scared. Taking on the anxiety and frustration and boredom and irritation of our littles when we haven’t worked out our own.We don’t have a ton of solutions this week, but we review some rules for zen living and figure out how we might do those a bit more. In the meantime, knowing we’re not alone in feeling this way definitely helps. Here are links to the things we discuss in this episode:Dylan Buckley for BetterHelp: Understanding The Stages Of GriefDeb Perelman for NYT: In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fess up: everyone's got a Bad Mom Moment. Or twelve.We tend to hold these things really close, our shame rooted in deep certainty that no other mother has ever temporarily forgotten their baby in the toy aisle at Target.Guess what? You're not alone. Here are some of our listeners' Bad Mom Moments– and more than a few of our own.Our guest this week is Arianna Bradford, the brains behind The NYAM (Not Your Average Mom) Project, a website dedicated to helping parents -- moms especially -- celebrate the person they are outside of their role as a parent. Her new book, SHAME ON YOU: BIG TRUTHS FROM A BAD MOM, is a hilarious collection of parenting essays that focus as much on a mother's mental health as they do on kids, and how very, very strange they are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Every week Margaret or Amy answers one listener's most pressing question.This week Margaret answers the question, "I know it's silly but I'm really worried about being away from my child for three nights. How I can deal with this?"Submit your questions to: questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This extended pause has been really hard for some of our kids, and actually sort of good for others. For every lonely preschooler who just wants to finally have someone to play “bad guys” with, there’s a formerly rambunctious middle-schooler who became a real scholar without all the distractions of the in-person classroom. And the happiest kids have sometimes surprised us. The family Eeyore is sunnily certain things will be back to normal soon, while the happy-go-lucky one is taking more naps. We've learned (again) that our kids are more complicated than we imagined.In this episode, we discuss the things we’ve learned about our kids and will take forward as parents, both for the kids who have weirdly thrived and for those who have struggled. Here are links to research and other writing on the topic that we discuss in this episode:Aaron E. Carroll for the NYT: The Coronavirus Has Made It Obvious. Teenagers Should Start School Later.Nora Fleming for Edutopia: Why Are Some Kids Thriving During Remote Learning?Randy Kulman, Ph.D. for Psychology Today: Will Distance Learning Produce a Coronavirus Virus Slump?Debbie Meyer for Education Post: It Was Hard Being a Dyslexia Mom Before Coronavirus, And Now It's Even HarderDebbie Meyer for Education Post: Here’s How Remote Learning Could Help Struggling ReadersCaroline Preston for The Hechinger Report: ‘A drastic experiment in progress’: How will coronavirus change our kids? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Each week Amy or Margaret answers on listener's most pressing question.This week a listener asks: "Any thoughts on how to get my 8 year old son to listen to/ ead anything outside his go-to genre?"Amy suggests the "You Wouldn't Want To Be" series as particularly appealing AND educational for grade-schoolers... you can find those books here: https://www.youwouldntwantto.be/Submit your parenting question- we might answer yours next!questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No joke: this is a particularly anxiety-provoking time. And even if our kids are little, and we manage to keep the TV off most of the time, they're still picking up on a certain hum in the house, a new and different frequency. But our job as parents is not to make it feel like like the pandemic, the social unrest, the climate change, and the coarsened social discourse of this moment isn't happening. Our job is to talk with our children about these times in age-appropriate ways.Here's the good news: we're not supposed to present our kids with the solutions to all the things that might scare them. We're supposed to meet them where they are, help them discuss their feelings, and then ask them what feels like the right thing to do next.Our guest this week is Dr. Abigail Gewirtz, a professor at the University of Minnesota. She’s an award-winning child psychologist and leading expert on families under stress, Her new book is WHEN THE WORLD FEELS LIKE A SCARY PLACE: Essential Conversations for Anxious Parents and Worried Kids. There couldn't be a better book for right now! It offers parents a clear and practical guide to discussing sensitive topics in a calm, reassuring, and productive way, that will help kids comprehend and process the world around them. We also mentioned The Week Jr. as a great resource for your 8-14 year old child to receive clear and non-terrifying information about these newsworthy times. If you have a kid who is asking questions, it's a relief to be able to offer them accurate information that won't be more than they can handle.The latest issue is available for free download here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aqNTPKKk7fs6iNMX2zvCuDRiPJzxHbyC/view Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Each week Margaret or Amy answers one listener's most pressing question.Today Margaret answers the question, "What can I do about my husband who gives terrible gifts?"Submit your questions to: questions@whatfreshhellcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shutting it all down was definitely hard, but the parameters of the assignment were clear.Reopening is more like: do what you want when we think you can, or at least aren't fully convinced that you can’t.Most of us are probably going to need to leave our houses before vaccines are available at your neighborhood Walgreens. But how do we do that safely when kids touch seriously everything? When masks are optional? When all we are learning about this virus is how little we know? We live in a world where we are entitled to make our own decisions, for ourselves and for our families. But other people's decisions affect us, including some people we are closely related to.How do we understand and mitigate the actual risks? How are we going to do this when everyone’s doing it differently?Here are links to writing on the topic that we discuss in this episode:Carolyn Hax: Balancing snowbird migration and virus mitigationGerman Lopez and Amanda Northrop for Vox: How to weigh the risk of going out in the coronavirus pandemic, in one chartEmily Oster: Grandparents & Day CareRoni Caryn Rabin for NYT: How to Navigate Your Community Reopening? Remember the Four C’sLeana S. Wen for Washington Post: Four concepts to assess your personal risk as the U.S. reopens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Each week Margaret or Amy answers a listener's parenting question.This week Amy answers the question, "How do I get my incredibly active 2 1/2 year old to stop when I tell her to?"Submit your parenting question– we might answer yours next! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices