What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making Life Better, with Two Funny Moms - TopPodcast.com

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

When you’re a parent, every day brings a “fresh hell” to deal with. In other words, there’s always something. Think of us as your funny mom friends who are here to remind you: you’re not alone, and it won’t always be this hard.
We’re Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables, both busy moms of three kids, but with completely different parenting styles. Margaret is a laid-back to the max; Amy never met a spreadsheet or an organizational system she didn’t like.
In each episode of “What Fresh Hell” we offer lots of laughs, but also practical advice, parenting strategies, and tips to empower you in your role as a mom. We explore self-help techniques, as well as ways to prioritize your own needs, combat stress, and despite the invisible workload we all deal with, find joy amidst the chaos of motherhood.
If you’ve ever wondered “why is my kid…” then one of us has probably been there, and we’re here to tell you what we’ve learned along the way.
We unpack the behaviors and developmental stages of toddlers, tweens, and teenagers, providing insights into their actions and equipping you with effective parenting strategies.
We offer our best parenting tips and skills we’ve learned. We debate the techniques and studies that are everywhere for parents these days, and get to the bottom of what works best to raise happy, healthy, fairly well-behaved kids, while fostering a positive parent-child relationship.
If you’re the default parent in your household, whether you’re a busy mom juggling multiple pickups and dropoffs, or a first-time parent seeking guidance, this podcast is your trusted resource. Join our community of supportive mom friends laughing in the face of motherhood!
whatfreshhellpodcast.com

Copyright: Copyright © 2016-2023 What Fresh Hell, LLC

Latest Episodes:

Our Family Had Covid! Here's How It Went For Us (Bonus Episode) Aug 14, 2020

Show notes

In our back-to-school episode Amy dropped some news: her immediate family had Covid-19 back in March.

Thankfully, Amy's family had "mild" or "moderate" cases of coronavirus. (Those terms officially include any course of illness that does not include inpatient hospitalization.)

But even in a single household, their experiences ranged from asymptomatic, to 36 hours of fever, to three weeks in bed, to months and months of continuous long-term Covid-related illness.

Because listeners expressed interest in hearing more from a fellow parent who's actually gone through Covid-19, in this episode Margaret interviews Amy on

how their symptoms progressed
what their recovery has looked like
and what she thinks you should have ready at home before you need it

Here's what we want you to know: it's worth it to have your kids wearing masks and taking other precautions. Their risk of serious illness is lower; it's not non-existent.

As always, if you have concerns, discuss them with a medical professional!

To find out more about "long Covid," search "long haul Covid," #longhaulers, or go to longcovid.org.

Ed Yong wrote a great overview for The Atlantic: Covid-19 Can Last For Several Months- https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/06/covid-19-coronavirus-longterm-symptoms-months/612679/

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Should I Send My Kids Back To School? Aug 12, 2020

Show notes

Our kids’ schools have sent plans. And revised plans. And codicils to the plans. Now it’s time to make our own decisions: if the choice is available to us, are our kids going back to classrooms this fall?

Here are the factors that are driving our own decisions– knowing that the ‘right’ answer is fundamentally non-existent, and that this calculus is by definition personal. As Adrianne La France writes for The Atlantic:

"All along, this disaster has been simultaneously wholly shared and wholly individualized, a weird dissonance in a collective tragedy that each person, each family, has to navigate with intricate specificity to their circumstances."

Amy drops some big news in this episode: her family has had coronavirus. We'll be following up with a bonus episode specifically about that later this week.

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

New York Times: What Back to School Might Look Like in the Age of Covid-19

Ann V. Klotz: This Is The Song That Never Ends

Claire Cain Miller for the NYT: Nearly Half of Men Say They Do Most of the Home Schooling. 3 Percent of Women Agree.

Adrianne La France for The Atlantic: ‘This Push to Open Schools Is Guaranteed to Fail’

WGBH: Harvard Epidemiologist: 'Hybrid' Model For Reopening Schools Is 'Probably Among The Worst' Options

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Ask Amy - My Kid Is a Know-It-All! Aug 10, 2020

Show notes

Amy takes a question from a listener who wants to encourage her know-it-all daughter to speak up while discouraging her constantly correcting everyone in the family.

Is there a way to support her daughter's knowledge and self-confidence, while correcting her annoying habit of having absolutely all the answers?

Check out our other episodes on the topic:

Asking for What We Want and Encouraging Our Daughters' to Do the Same: bit.ly/WFHWhatWeWant

Teaching Our Kids Empathy: http://bit.ly/TeachingKidsEmpathy

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Asking For What We Want, And Teaching Our Daughters To Do The Same (with guest Marisa Porges) Aug 05, 2020

Show notes

From board rooms to town halls to IEP meetings to doctor's offices, there are places where women speaking up for what they want or need are either ignored, resented, or just not taken seriously. (Anyone who's ever had been told by a contractor to "put her husband on the phone, and I'll explain it to him" can tell you that.)

That's why our girls need to be trained in the arts of asking and negotiating– not only because those are things we don’t teach our daughters as well as we teach our sons, but also because the world often doesn’t reward women who speak up.

We discuss how to value our daughters' voices– and teach them to do the same– with Marisa Porges, author of the new book WHAT GIRLS NEED: How to Raise Bold, Courageous, and Resilient Women.

Here are links to other writing on the subject that we discuss in this episode:

Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever

Deborah A. Small et al: Who Goes to the Bargaining Table? The Influence of Gender and Framing on the Initiation of Negotiation

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Ask Margaret - Is There Any Way to Get My Kid to Stop Throwing Stuff? Aug 03, 2020

Show notes

Margaret answers a question from a mom who is pretty freaked out by her 20-month-old's habit of throwing stuff when he's angry.

If you have a question you'd like Margaret or Amy to answer submit to: questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com.

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Advice We Totally Hate Jul 29, 2020

Show notes

As soon as you become a mother unsolicited advice-givers are everywhere, telling you to “sleep when the baby sleeps.” Or “it gets easier.” Or “enjoy every moment.”

Out of all the advice (parenting and otherwise) that we and our listeners have ever received, here is a selection of the very worst.

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Ask Amy - How Can a New Mom Make Friends Right Now? Jul 27, 2020

Show notes

Each week Amy or Margaret answers one listener's most pressing question.

This week Amy answers the question, "How can an introvert make new friends especially during the complicated social limitations of coronavirus?"

Check out our Finding Your Mom Tribe episode:

https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/2019/06/finding-your-mom-tribe-episode-110/

Here's the link to the Catherine Price's Screen/Life Balance site Amy mentions in this episode.

http://screenlifebalance.com

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Two Kinds of People- Which Are You? Jul 22, 2020

Show notes

We asked our listeners to divide the world into two kinds of people, and to stake out their claims on one side.

Sleep cuddler or stop-breathing-on-me?

Book finisher or life-is-too-short-er?

Shoes on or off in the house?

Many of you gave slightly judgmental “there’s me, and the crazy people” types of responses.

Others gave "there's the right way to do it, and the way my spouse does it" sorts of answers.

All of which, in this episode, we are totally here for.

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Ask Margaret - When Does This Get Easier? Jul 20, 2020

Show notes

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

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Hitting the Wall: Get Us Off This Coronacoaster! Jul 15, 2020

Show notes

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 Grief

Deb Perelman for NYT: In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both.

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