The Balanced Parent Podcast - TopPodcast.com

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

The Balanced Parent Podcast — Education for Kids
The Balanced Parent Podcast

Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It’s either great joy or chaotic overwhelm. One moment you’re nailing it and the next you’re losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see, balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you DO, not a thing you ARE. It’s an action, a process, a series of micro-corrections that we make, each and every day, to keep ourselves feeling centered. We are never truly balanced, we are engaged in the process of balancing.Hello, I’m Dr. Laura Froyen, and this is the Balancing Parenting Podcast, where overwhelmed, stressed-out, and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts, and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting all delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, YOUR LIFE, with open-hearted authenticity and balance.

Copyright: © 2022 The Balanced Parent Podcast All Rights Reserved.

Latest Episodes:

150: How to Enjoy Play More with Sarah Scott Dooling Jan 24, 2023

Show notes

We are nearing the end of my 30 Days of Play Challenge. And with that, I would like to thank those who have joined. I want you to know that I am proud of everyone who put in the work to know more about their children through play and made the effort to make independent play better. I am also proud of every parent in this community who committed to becoming balanced.

And before we end our play challenge, I would like everyone to know that there will be a Wrap-Up Webinar on January 31st at 1 PM Central. If you'd like to join us just CLICK HERE, and I'll make sure you get the link the day before!

Alright, now for this week on The Balanced Parent Podcast, we are going to talk about how to enjoy play more, not just with our kids but for ourselves too! We are so focused on parenthood and other responsibilities that sometimes we forget to have fun. And so, to help me in this conversation, I have invited Sarah Dooling.

Sarah is a Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor. She provides supervision and consultation to clinicians who work with children and maintains a small private practice. She also created the Kinship Club, an online membership community where clinicians can learn and experience comfort, connection, and FUN. As the creator of the Parenting Power Hour, a program that harnesses kid wisdom, she explores the restorative powers of play and offers doses of comfort and kinship to parents navigating life in the trenches. Co-experiencing joy, delight, and curiosity with like-minded & like-hearted kid therapists nourish her in the best way.

To connect with Sarah, follow her on Instagram @healwithplay and visit her website www.sarahscottdooling.com.

149: How to Build Kid's Resilience with Structured Play w/ Dr. Deborah Gilboa Jan 17, 2023

Show notes

We are now halfway through our 30 Days of Play Challenge. For the past few weeks, we've talked about unstructured, independent play and its wonderful advantages it has for kids. Today, I want to give you a full well-rounded picture of how play can help support your kids, and how you can harness the power of a specific type of play, "structured play" (think games with rules someone else made up), to encourage 4 skills that are key to building resilience.
To help me in this conversation, I have brought in Dr. G (Deborah Gilboa, MD). She is a board-certified family physician and Resilience Expert. She works with families and businesses to improve resilience and strengthen mental health. She's currently working with ThinkFun, a games company, and the larger toys and games industry to strengthen kids' mental, emotional and social health through play.

To connect with Dr. G, follow her on Instagram @askdoctorg and visit her website www.meshhelps.org.

148: Five Things You Can Do to Boost Your Child's Play Jan 10, 2023

Show notes

As you may have been aware, we are now in the midst of our annual 30 Days of Play Challenge. And when it comes to the play challenge, one of the main things everyone asks for is assistance in figuring out how to encourage your children to play independently more often. Last week we discussed the things your child needs in order to get into independent play, and this week we are going to discuss what YOU can do to really deepen their play skills and experience.

And so in this episode, I will be discussing the following five steps on how to boost your child's play. These things will increase the quality and depth of the play they engage in both with you and on their own.

Alright, if you are not in the play challenge yet, you can still sign up and join us here! Most days of the challenge I share a Reel on Instagram with the day's prompt, so if you want to participate that's a really great place to share your observations with me!

147: Understanding Children's Needs for More Independent Play With Blanca of Whole Child Home Jan 03, 2023

Show notes

We are now back on The Balanced Parent podcast! As you all know, we focus on our children's play every January. And I would like to invite you to join me in my 30 Days of Play Challenge. As part of this challenge, the episodes on the podcast for this month will be all about PLAY! Yay!

To start the month off, I wanted to focus on one of the most common questions I get: How can I get my kids to play more independently? The secret to getting more of the coveted independent play we first have to figure out what's getting in the way currently. The play challenge will help you carefully observe your child and get curious about the things that may be blocking independent play in your own family, and in this episode, we will be digging into the underlying needs children have that need to be met in order for them to get into deeply immersive independent play. To help me in this conversation, I have brought in the genius behind one of my favorite Instagram accounts: Blanca of Whole Child Home.

Blanca is a licensed professional counselor with graduate training in clinical psychology who specializes in supporting children’s mental and behavioral health. She is also a parent of a toddler and is now pouring all her professional training into something she has always been passionate about—empowering parents to nurture healthy emotional development at home with evidence-based strategies. She founded Whole Child Home to offer parents an online platform with workshops, social media bits, and personalized consults to guide parents and caregivers worldwide.

Bonus Episode: A Little Bit of Break and Taking a Pause Dec 06, 2022

Show notes

As we enter into a season meant to be filled with light, love, & joy, I wanted to just acknowledge that this can also be a time filled with pressure, stress, and overwhelm. We take on a lot as parents during this time, and just in case no one has said this to you yet, it's ok, more than ok, it's GOOD, to say "no" to some things. To release traditions that feel confining, to embrace slowing down, doing less, and savoring more, and to pause what needs to so that you can be fully present with yourself and your family.

That's exactly why, for the first time since starting The Balanced Parent Podcast, I'm taking a few weeks off from publishing new episodes. After this week, for the rest of December, I'm going to be slowing down, spending a bit more time with my family. Before the break however, I did want to leave you with one last episode. This episode contains a short, guided visualization and meditation that I hope will support you in slowing down and coming back to yourself over the next few weeks. I'm including it here simply because I know that the upcoming weeks may be stressful and overwhelming for some families, and it may be difficult to find a moment to pause and gain some perspective, peace, and compassion for yourself. I hope that you find it helpful and come back to it whenever you need it. If you like this sort of thing, let me know and we can do more of this!

We will return with new episodes in January when we turn our attention back to my annual Play Challenge. I'll be sharing details about that soon. If you have any specific hopes or requests for the play challenge, I would LOVE to hear them. I'm hoping to do some revamping, so your feedback would be super helpful! Just shoot me a message laura@laurafroyen.com.

146: Aligning Your Parenting with Your Long Term Goals (Live Couples Coaching) Nov 29, 2022

Show notes

This week's episode is going to be a little different. If you have been following me and The Balanced Parent Podcast, you know that there are times where members of my BalancingU membership community so generously allow us to "listen in" to their coaching sessions. It can be so helpful to hear others' experiences and I know that you may have similar struggles and questions. This way, you would know that you are not alone and just like you, the couple that I coached in this episode wants to figure out how to

communicate expectations and boundaries in a way that is meaningful and respectful
align their "in the moment" parenting with their long-term goals

If you've ever wondered if respectful parenting is too permissive, or if you can set healthy boundaries without trying to "control" your kids (while helping them learn self control too) this one is for you!

BalancingU members have the opportunity to be coached on the podcast for free as a perk of being the membership. If you're interested in learning more, check it out here!

145: How Gratitude Can Change Your Life with Stef Tousignant Nov 22, 2022

Show notes

This is a time of year where we are meant to reflect with gratitude on all that we have, and I just want to express how grateful I am for this beautiful community! And as a token of appreciation, every year for my birthday I put all of my courses & programs (and this year coaching) on sale for the week, STARTING NOW!

Check out my Birthday Sale here !

In keeping with the theme of gratitude, this week's episode digs into how consciously and intentionally cultivating gratitude can make parenting easier, lighter, and more enjoyable. To help me in the conversation on gratitude, I have brought in Stef Tousignant, a parenting expert and gratitude nerd.

If you wish to learn more from Stef, you can check out her works on parentingwithgratitude.com and visit her on Instagram @parent_differently .

144: Re-Parenting Ourselves in the Here and Now with Christine Dixon Nov 15, 2022

Show notes

For those of you who are working through Parenting from Within inside my BalancingU membership, this week's episode could not come at a better time! We are currently working through the process of uncovering our inner voices and children and starting the good (but hard) work of healing. If you're interested in this program you can learn more here. We have already started, but it's available as a self-study on its own or as a part of my membership. Let me know if you have any questions!

Ok, on to the episode. One of the things that have been the hardest for me in my respectful parenting journey, is swallowing the uncomfortable truth that I can't expect to become a more respectful parent to my children when I'm still using the same old negative tactics on myself, in my own mind. If we know that change and learning and growth for our kids don't happen via shame, blame, and guilt, why would it be any different for us right? And yet it is so hard to let those old patterns go, and start treating ourselves with the same love and compassion we show our children.

And that is where "re-parenting" comes in. Without it, respectful parenting can be quite a slog, because your inner narrative and approach is not aligned with the outer one you're attempting to use with your children. However, WITH IT, in my experience, there is so much healing and grace that it allows respectful parenting to flow through you much more easily.

Re-parenting is actually pretty straight forward and simple and I'm so excited to share with you a process that has been so helpful to me personally. In this week's episode, we will explore how we use Internal Family Systems (IFS- See this previous episode for an introduction!) to help us reparent ourselves and parent our children with compassion, grace, and curiosity.

To help me in this conversation, I brought in Christine Dixon, an IFS expert who I adore learning from. With more than 20 years as an Educational Therapist, Christine's own relational, religious, and medical trauma eventually resulted in panic attacks and bodily symptoms that left her incapacitated. In a desperate effort to heal herself, Christine discovered how integrated her mind and body truly are. After training with renowned Life Coach, Martha Beck, Christine fell in love with the modality of IFS - Internal Family Systems - which she found to be the most direct, effective, holistic, and compassionate inner healing method she had ever encountered. She is committed to sharing her learnings with those who need it.

If you want to know more and learn how to navigate your internal family systems, visit www.theordinarysacred.com (there are courses such as IFS 101 and Self-Compassion through an IFS Lens- which I loved and is a perfect complement to Parenting from Within) and follow Christine on IG @the_ordinary_ sacred.

143: Fed Up: How to Balance Emotional Labor in Your Relationship with Gemma Hartley Nov 08, 2022

Show notes

Over the past year my husband and I have been on a journey in figuring out how to be more balanced in our roles at home. We noticed that my husband did a lot of the visible labor, like dishes & laundry, while I did most of the invisible work, like holding emotional space for my kids' big feelings, carefully considering the play and reading materials in our home, and planing meals. A part of our work this year has focused on both of us fully recognizing and acknowledging all of the invisible, emotional, and mental labor that I do every day. I have to tell you, I've never felt more seen and heard in our family, but getting here wasn't always easy.

A big part of what we need to grow s a couple is an opportunity to learn from teachers who aren't me, so that I can learn alongside my partner, rather than be the one teaching him. It evens the playing field a bit and allows for more vulnerability. Part of that is reading books together and discussing them weekly, like a couple's book club. And one of the books we read was Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women and the Way Forward by Gemma Hartley and I was thrilled to get the chance to interview her for the podcast this week! Gemma is a freelance journalist, speaker, and author who has spoken on the topic of emotional labor around the world, from corporate conferences to festivals at the Sydney Opera House. She is passionate about creating a more equitable world in which invisible labor is valued and supported by both personal partners and public policy alike.

I'd love to hear from you on this topic! Do you and your partner have balanced roles? Is emotional labor & mental load something you're actively discussing together? Let me know!

If you want to know more about how to balance your emotional labor with your partner, visit www.gemmahartley.com and follow Gemma on IG @gemmalhartley.

142: Learning to Trust Yourself as a Parent with Cathy Adams Nov 01, 2022

Show notes

This week we will be talk about intuition and how we can learn to tune into and trust ourselves as parents and partners and create that beautiful relationship with ourselves as individuals. For many of us, our experiences out in the world have taught us to look outside of ourselves for answers, feedback, validation, and wisdom. Has that been your experience? It definitely has been mine! For me, conscious parenting more than tips, trick, and scripts has been about learning to tune out the noise and tune IN to myself and my child. That's what I want to share with you today!!

To help me in this conversation, I brought in a colleague, Cathy Cassani Adams, LCSW. She is a co-host of Zen Parenting Radio (one of my favorite podcasts!) and the author of Zen Parenting: Caring for Ourselves and Our Children in an Unpredictable World. She is a social worker, certified parent coach, former elementary school educator, and yoga teacher.

If you want to get more support from Cathy, visit zenparentingradio.com and follow her on IG @zenparentingradio.

Related Podcasts