What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making Life Better, with Two Funny Moms

Latest Episodes:

Let It Go? Or No? May 12, 2021

Show notes

This week we're reviewing listener grudges, large and small, and deciding once and for all if those listeners should let it go, or no.

Letting it go doesn't mean you're wrong to be annoyed. Sometimes you are totally right and you STILL have to let it go.

And sometimes nursing a tiny bonsai grievance for a decade is sort of fun... but that works better when you aren't related to that person.

Sometimes shifting our perspective is the best choice we have.

As Margaret's Aunt Terry likes to say: you can't get pizza from a Chinese restaurant.

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Ask Amy- Company's Coming. How Am I Going To Feed Everyone? May 10, 2021

Show notes

Find yourself stuck in the kitchen 24/7 when family comes to visit? You’re allowed to feel overwhelmed and even a little resentful, even if you’re really happy they came.

Jenna emailed us to ask:

Since both of you have big families, how does everyone get fed when you get together for a few days? Do you get takeout for every meal? Do people take turns cooking?

I am the only person in my husband's family who can cook, so I end up doing all the cooking when we get together, and I end up exhausted and don't get to spend time with everyone.

Resetting expectations around who's doing the cooking and cleanup can be a little tricky. If you're a do-it-all hostess who really does make it look easy, you haven't been sending clear signals that it's hard.

Amy gives tips in this episode about the systems that work when her extended family group gets together. But if you've been heading up meal prep because you're the "only one who can cook," a resetting of your own expectations may be required as well. If you're chopping fresh herbs for Monday night's dinner, and then your brother orders pizza for Tuesday night? And everyone gets fed? Take the win. If there are a few too many hot-dog lunches and everything you have been doing is more appreciated in retrospect, so much the better.

You deserve to enjoy time with family as much as everyone else does, so have the difficult conversation. It can be really refreshing to lay down some of the burdens we shoulder, and see the world continue to revolve, and realize no one was really asking us to do it all in the first place.

Special thanks to our "Question of the Week" sponsor:

Jane.com is a boutique marketplace featuring the latest in women’s fashion, accessories, home decor, children’s clothing, and more. You will not believe the prices! Visit jane.com/laughing.

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Fresh Take: Judith Warner on What Grownups Get Wrong About Middle School May 07, 2021

Show notes

Toddler Purgatory is launching this month! Help us support the launch of our new podcast by checking out the sneak-peek trailer and following now wherever you listen. Grab all the player links at toddlerpurgatory.com.

Judith Warner’s book AND THEN THEY STOPPED TALKING TO ME: MAKING SENSE OF MIDDLE SCHOOL investigates what can be a truly painful period in any adolescent's life. Warner explains that our "personal fable" is deeply affected by our own experiences during that developmental period, even if our memories may rely on flawed or incomplete information.

That matters because it can affect how we parent our tweens as they enter the middle-school stage themselves. Are parents sometimes inadvertently reinforcing the narrative that middle school is a Thunderdome of social aggression?

In this interview, Judith tells Amy the history of middle school, the brain science behind its intensity, and what parents can do to make their children's path through these years an easier one.

Check out all of Judith Warner's books in our Bookshop store: https://bookshop.org/shop/whatfreshhellcast

Special thanks to this month's sponsors:

Jane.com is a boutique marketplace featuring the latest in women’s fashion, accessories, home decor, children’s clothing, and more. You will not believe the prices! Visit jane.com/laughing.

Zocdoc has you covered! Whether you need a primary care physician, dentist, dermatologist, psychiatrist, eye doctor, or any other specialist, you can find top doctors at zocdoc.com.laughing.

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When Your Kid Doesn't Fit The Mold May 05, 2021

Show notes

Sooner or later, most parents discover that their kid doesn't fit society's mold in one way or another. But there's "quirky" kids with unusual haircuts, and then there's the kids who really do their own thing, with or without peer approval. In this episode, we're talking about the latter.

Those parents will recognize what Dr. Perri Klass calls "the pivotal moment": "not just one moment of extreme behavior in your kid, but the last in a series of impossible-to-explain-away behavior that resonates with the parent's long-considered and long-avoided fears. It crystallizes in a parent's mind all the floating anxieties and worries of many months."

It’s especially challenging for us when our kids are outside the norm because we can't help but think what will become of this kid? But at those times, we're forgetting two things: not only do our children have the ability to grow and develop, we're going to become better parents along the way, as well.

When it comes to our non-mold-fitting kids, there's reason to hope that the world will someday be wide enough. Albert Einstein didn’t fit the mold either, and things worked out pretty well for him. Which isn't to say he didn't cause his mom some sleepless nights along the way.

Here are some links to writing on the topic that we discuss in this episode:

Drs. Perri Klass and Eileen Costello: Quirky Kids: Understanding and Helping Your Child Who Doesn’t Fit In

greatschools.org: How to support your unique, quirky child

childmind.org: Sensory Processing FAQs

slate.com: What About Kids Who Don't Fit The Mold?

Dana Basu: How to Cope When Your Child is Different

Andrew Solomon: Far From The Tree: Parents, Children, And The Search For Identity

Special thanks to this month's sponsors:

Jane.com is a boutique marketplace featuring the latest in women’s fashion, accessories, home decor, children’s clothing, and more. You will not believe the prices! Visit jane.com/laughing.

Zocdoc has you covered! Whether you need a primary care physician, dentist, dermatologist, psychiatrist, eye doctor, or any other specialist, you can find top doctors at zocdoc.com.laughing.

Prose is the healthy hair regimen with your name all over it! Get 15% off your first order today! Go to prose.com/laughing.

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Ask Margaret - My Son Can't Keep His Hands to Himself May 03, 2021

Show notes

Kids often struggle to keep their hands to themselves– and this can be especially true for boys, who love to punch, tackle, and poke at anyone who gets near them.

This week Emily asks:

As a mom of boys, I am finding that my five-year-old son is very handsy with his friends and boy cousins. It's like my younger son and other boys are magnets that cannot keep their hands off each other. It's not aggressive, it's just constant touching, tickling, purposely running into each other, etc. I am not sure how to curb it,or if it's even possible.

And even if I get my son to break the habit, how would I keep other kids from putting their hands all over him? It's not that I am any more of a germaphobe than anyone else, I just feel like it's a recipe for disaster... and when he goes to school in the fall ,I don't want him to be off task and missing directions. Is there anything I can do, or is this just a boy thing?

Watch any nature show with a group of young lions and you'll see the cubs wrestling, biting, and tussling with each other (often to the non-delight of their mama). The same holds true for our own kids. Roughhousing and other forms of physical contact serve many purposes, helping youngsters find and test boundaries, express anxieties, manage aggression.

So Margaret is extremely pro-touching among kids as long as a few simple guidelines are followed:

All physical contact and especially roughhousing should be among "equals" - no big kids whaling on little kids, and no little kids pawing at uninterested bigs.
Keep an eye on consent - make sure that everyone involved in the physicality is comfortable with it.
Spaces and places- wrestling, roughhousing, and physical play is appropriate in the yard but not in the living room.

Kids tend to get less physical as they get older and keeping "touch-free" spaces (this will probably happen naturally at school) is a great way to help kids start to gain control over their physicality.

By the way: when it comes to germs, once Covid is taken out of the equation, there's not too much to worry about. While Covid is still a threat physical distancing should be maintained– but post-Covid, check out this article for a reality check on germs.

In this episode Margaret also cites this article by Anne-Marie Gambelin for Motherly: Relax, Mama- roughhousing is good for your kids–really

Special thanks to our "Question of the Week" sponsor:

Jane.com is a boutique marketplace featuring the latest in women’s fashion, accessories, home decor, children’s clothing, and more. You will not believe the prices! Visit jane.com/laughing.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fresh Take: Michaeleen Doucleff on Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans Apr 30, 2021

Show notes

Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff is the author of the New York Times best-seller Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans. In this interview, she tells us about the circumstances that inspired her own "aha" parenting moment, and then the book.

While on assignment in the Yucatan as a reporter for NPR's Science Desk, Michaeleen saw children helping around the house, unprompted and unapplauded. She wondered how her own life back in the United States, with a tantruming preschooler and chaotic household, could be so different. It inspired Michaeleen's exploration of how the tenets of WEIRD parenting (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) differ from those of more ancient civilizations, and how we might all restore a little sanity by unlearning some of our Western ways.

Follow Michaeleen on Twitter @foodiescience and on her website: michaeleendoucleff.com.

Special thanks to this month's sponsors:

Jane.com is a boutique marketplace featuring the latest in women’s fashion, accessories, home decor, children’s clothing, and more. You will not believe the prices! Visit jane.com/laughing.

Zocdoc has you covered! Whether you need a primary care physician, dentist, dermatologist, psychiatrist, eye doctor, or any other specialist, you can find top doctors at zocdoc.com.laughing.

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Wait, We're Not Ready Apr 28, 2021

Show notes

We thought we were ready. We were in fact quite excited for all of this to be over, white-knuckling it until we could run outside and hug everyone we saw. But as freedom comes nearer, we’re less sure we want things to go back to how they used to be.

Why is that? This reticence feels like it might go beyond issues of measuring risk. If a Fauci godmother showed up right now to wave her wand and magically declare the world to be fully safe, some of us would probably still stay cozy under our blankets. As it turns out, we've grown accustomed to our Zooms.

So what are the things making us feel less than ready for a return to the world? And are some of the things we're dreading a return to things we don't *have* to resume at all?

Here are links to some other writing on the topic that we mention in this episode:

Adam Grant for The New York Times : There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing

Christine Koh for Washington Post: The pandemic has caused parents to slow down. Here’s how to preserve that pace.

Steven Petrow for Washington Post: I’m vaccinated, but I’m really not ready to leave my pandemic cocoon