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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:

Bonus: Live Coaching - Helping a Child Take Responsibility after a Mistake Oct 28, 2022

Show notes

This week will have another bonus episode - a live coaching I did with one of my BalancingU community members. We will be talking about how to help a child take responsibility after a mistake WITHOUT forcing apologies. I hope that as you listen, you can pull out meaningful takeaways that apply to your family. And if there are, I'd like you to share your reflections on Instagram and tag me @laurafroyenphd.

141: What You Need to Know about Childhood Substance Use with Richard Capriola Oct 25, 2022

Show notes

The topic that we will be tackling for this week's episode on The Balanced Parent podcast is a bit tricky, but it's also something we will all need to think about sooner or later: Substance Use. I don't love the idea of parenting from a place of fear, as I'm sure you know, but I also know the statistics about teenage substance use and the risks. I want to be mindful and conscious as my children approach their teen years, with the hopes of fostering honest conversations that help my kids see me as a safe space to get information and help when they need it. I also know that some of you with teens may be feeling a bit lost for warning signs to look for and how to hold boundaries while honoring your teen's autonomy.

No matter where you are in your parenting journey, I hope this conversation can be there for you when you need it! To help me in this conversation, I am joined by Richard Capriola. He has been a mental health and addiction counselor for over two decades. He worked as an addictions counselor at Menninger Clinic in Houston Texas for over a decade where he treated adolescents and adults diagnosed with mental health and substance use disorders. He is the author of The Addicted Child: A Parent's Guide to Adolescent Substance Abuse.

If you want to get more support for your kiddo, visit Richard's website helptheaddictedchild.com.

140: Shifting Focus from Behavior to Seeing the Whole Child with Shani Mandel Oct 18, 2022

Show notes

As a podcast host, I get approached by experts in different fields. And one of the fields I get approached by a lot are board certified behavior analysts who practice a form of therapy called Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). ABA is one of the very few forms of therapy that are "approved" for autistic folks and in listening to and learning from the autistic community, many have outlined the harm caused by ABA to themselves and their loved ones. And while the ABA field as a whole seems to be working to change their practices and stop the most harmful of them, it is still grounded in a behaviorist perspective that can be incredibly dehumanizing.

On the flipside, I also have desperate parents reaching out to me on a regular basis who are looking for guidance and ABA is the only option being recommended to them, and I simply don't know enough about ABA, and how it is changing to, to make a responsible recommendation. It's a really nuanced issue and I felt the need to discuss it with someone who knew ABA from the inside, who knew how to look beyond behaviors, and who if all possible identified as neurodiverse.

Well, I finally found the person to come on and talk about it with us, so here we go! For this week's episode, I am excited to introduce Shani Mendel. She is a certified provider of Collaborative and Proactive Solutions and has formal training in the RIE parenting method. She is a neurodivergent adult and a parent coach specializing in transforming parents’ relationships with their children. She is also a former Applied Behavioral Analyst.
If you want to get more support for your kiddo, visit Shani's website yourconfidentchild.com. And, follow her on Instagram @your_confident_child.

139: How to Support your Sensory Kids with Laura Petix Oct 11, 2022

Show notes

Let me ask if this sounds familiar:

Your child freaks out if there are tags of seams on some of their clothes or the transition to weather-appropriate clothes is a nightmare...

Or it feels like your child is always crashing into you or things, jumping off of high stuff or needing a wrestle...

Perhaps loud noises or bright lights overwhelm them...

Or maybe they are just so. dang. loud. themselves?

If this does sound familiar for a kiddo in your life, your child may need some support with sensory processing! I hear this sort of thing from parents all the time, but sensory processing needs are still something that a lot of the professionals in our kids lives aren't fully versed in, let alone in how to help. So, to help us understand how to recognize "sensory stuff" when we see it and figure out if Occupational Therapy could help, I brought in the wonderful human behind one of my favorite Instagram accounts, The OT Butterfly (@theotbutterfly). She is a mom to her own sensory kiddo, wife and pediatric Occupational Therapist. With a degree in Neuropsychology and Masters in Occupational Therapy, she teaches parents how sensory processing impacts their child’s behaviors and how to support them.

138: Creating Success for Children w/ Learning Differences with Victoria Waller Oct 04, 2022

Show notes

It can be so hard to see our children struggle to learn new skills, especially in school, where learning differences often manifest as behavioral challenges. In so many cases when our kids are young, the advice is to wait and see, and trust that they will do it when they are ready, but sometimes we get to a point where we know our child needs more support than they are getting, and we need help figuring out what that needs to look like.

To help me in this conversation, I brought in Dr. Victoria Waller. She shares with parents, teachers, and therapists her proven techniques for helping any child to discover their natural love of learning, overcome their particular challenges, and succeed in school. Her methods are designed and proven to draw out the singular genius within your child, whether they’re just a reluctant reader or have a diagnosis such as ADHD or other learning differences.

If your child has trouble reading, can’t sit still in class, or doesn’t feel like they can participate, then this episode is for you! Plus, there are some great tips for every parent about recognizing your child's unique interests and supporting them in exploring them! For example, in the episode she recommends a weekly news magazine for kids. We decided to check it out and my kids absolutely love it!

Bonus (Group Coaching Call): The Power of Mindset When Big Kids Meltdown Sep 30, 2022

Show notes

Hey, my dears! We are going to do something a little bit different for today's episode. I'm going to let you listen in on one of the group coaching calls that I had recently in my membership, Balancing U.

You may have been following along with the Reactivity to Responsiveness Challenge and if you have, then you know that I have decided to move all of my courses and programs into my membership. And starting next week on October 10, we're going to be doing my program Parenting from Within as a part of the membership, which means you get to have my biggest program for the monthly right of Balancing U.

So, I wanted to give you a taste of what it's like to be in a group coaching program with me, and what it's like to hop into a Zoom room and get to discuss the ins and outs of being a conscious parent in this conversation.

137: How to Help Your Child With School Struggles with Philip Mott Sep 27, 2022

Show notes

Every year in the month after school starts back up here in the States, I get flooded with questions from parents about how to ease their child's transition back to school and how to navigate an educational environment that is not always grounded in the same principles of respect that we focus on at home. And I know from personal experience that big transitions are never easy, especially for those of us with sensitive, spirited kiddos when moving into an environment where they aren't fully seen and accepted. And so, to give you tips on how to help children with school struggles, I brought in Philip Mott, a homeschooling father to three and a monthly contributor to First Time Parent Magazine and FatheringTogether.org. He runs Kids Are People and Self Directed Community, two online groups for parents who are practicing and supporting each other in a non-authoritarian approach to educating and raising their children.

If you are looking for more resources, visit Philip's website www.philipmott.com and follow him on Instagram @philip.mott.

136: Language Development: What You Need to Know with Leanne Sherred Sep 20, 2022

Show notes

For this week's episode, we are going to talk about speech development and how to go about getting your children's support. To help me in this conversation, I brought in a speech pathologist and therapist, Leanne Sherred. She is currently the President and Founder of Expressable - online speech therapy, a company that envisions a modern and affordable way for anyone who needs speech therapy to access these vital services.

To get more resources and look for more support from Leanne, follow her on Instagram @expressablehq and Facebook.

135: Why Coming Home Can Be So Hard, and How to Make It Easier Sep 13, 2022

Show notes

I hear a lot of parents who want to help their kids make transitions a little bit easier, but transition can be difficult for us, adults, too! Like when you come in from a grocery store run and you'd like to just unload in peace but everyone needs something! Whether you've just been gone for luxurious solo Target run, a relaxing yoga class, a lovely nature walk, or even a night away, the chaos of coming home can feel like it "un-does" the alone time you just had. I wanted to know if I was alone in experiencing this and if anyone had developed any strategies to make home-comings as a parent a bit easier. Well, my IG community agreed that they can sometimes be so hard they aren't really sure the trip out is "worth it". When I asked my community if they had any rituals or practices they do to make their transition back to their homes (after going out, buying groceries, or taking a mini vacation alone) a little bit easier, most of them answered NO.

And so, for today's episode, I want to help find a bit more ease and peace for those moments when you need to transition from being away from home to being with your kids and put on our 'mom' or 'dad' role.

Hey, we are already halfway through September! If you didn't get the memo yet, I'd love to invite you to join me in my Reactivity to Responsiveness Challenge taking place at the end of of this month. All the details for signing up are here: www.laurafroyen.com/reactivity.

134: The Sneaky Double Standards of Parenting with Blimie Heller Sep 06, 2022

Show notes

I truly believe that the way for us to teach kids the values we really want to pass on, is to do our best to embody and model them in our daily lives. But it's hard because sometimes these double standards are so sneaky, and are cloaked in our cultural conditioning that can make us prejudiced against kids so that we can feel justified in saying, "my kids can't do this but I can since I am an adult." And some of these may be so deeply ingrained that we aren't even aware of them, which means we may be perpetuating them without even realizing it! (And I'm right there with you on this, I still find myself setting double standards from time to time, and luckily we've created an environment where our kids feel safe enough to push back and question us, and show us where the double standards are. They are such amazing partners in this parenting journey.) And that is why, for this week's episode, we will be talking about the sneaky double standards that gets in our way of parenting.

And to help me in the conversation, we have Blimie Heller of Unconditional Parenting (one of my favorite Instagram accounts, go check it out @unconditional_parenting). She is a mom who’s passionate about helping parents build relationships with their children based on respect and trust.

We would like to invite you for a little homework after you listen to this episode. Grab a notebook or your journal and list down the double standards you notice in your parenting and share it on Instagram. Don't forget to tag us, @unconditional_parenting @laurafroyenphd so we'll know. And if you're up for more work, I'd love to invite you to join me in my Reactivity to Responsiveness Challenge taking place at the end of September. All the details for signing up are here: www.laurafroyen.com/reactivity.

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