My guest on this episode is Caitlin Daniel, a Harvard PhD candidate in sociology. I had a chance to interview her for my Toronto Star column, Modern Family, recently. This was after Caitlin’s paper on the link between picky eating and low-income households was published in the journal Social Science and Medicine. But while she and I were talking about that research, which we touch on briefly here, I learned that Caitlin has a very interesting personal story of food and family and how the two are intertwined. She and I also talk about the vulnerability around allowing unknown foods into our bodies, how parents of picky eaters can benefit from a better understanding of these, and what it really takes to encourage kids to expand their palates.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
My guest on this episode is Dr. Michelle Borba, an internationally renowned educational psychologist and an expert in parenting, bullying and character development. She is an award-winning author of twenty-two books translated into a whopping fourteen languages. Her latest book, UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me-World, will be out June 7th, 2016. Dr. Borba is considered one of the foremost authorities on childhood development in the U.S. and she’s here today to discuss what she calls “an epidemic of self-absorption” in today’s kids and what parents can do about it. She also explains new research that shows empathy is not just a “nice-to-have” quality; it plays a surprising role in predicting our kids’ happiness and success.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
My guest on this episode is family counsellor Dr. Deborah MacNamara. Dr. MacNamara is the author of a new book called Rest, Play, Grow: How To Understand Preschoolers (Or Anyone Who Acts Like One). Based on the research and teachings of Dr. Gordon Neufeld, one of the world’s most esteemed child development experts, the book stresses the importance of laying a back-to-basics groundwork on which our kids can get to know themselves and the world. The wisdom here applies not just to preschoolers but to how we raise our children through all their ages and stages.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
As those of you who listen faithfully know, almost every episode ends with the question, “What is the best piece of parenting advice you’ve ever received?” It’s been really wonderful to get to hear what people have to say about that over the course of 74 episodes now. Well, today I thought I’d tell you about the best piece of parenting advice that I’ve ever received. I’ve been a journalist in the field of parenting for 16 years and have had the privilege of interviewing hundreds of experts and a lot of the latest literature. Tune in to this short solo episode to hear about the advice that has impacted my parenting experience the most.
I’m doing something a little different and more personal for today’s show—my first solo episode in a while. You see, by the time this episode goes live, I’ll be on a highly-anticipated vacation with my sister. This trip is a celebration of Erika’s accomplishments and the incredible distance she has come in learning to thrive with mental illness. Today I share a little of the 11-year period she was in and out of the hospital, what that was like for her family, and how she’s turned her life, using her own difficult experiences to help others.
Should you consider a “parenting marriage?” Or are you perhaps already in one? In this episode I welcome guests Vicki Larson and Susan Pease Gadoua back to the show. Vicki and Susan are co-authors of a very interesting book called The New “I Do:” Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels. They were on the podcast WAY back on episode 12, “Are We Doing Marriage Wrong?” which remains one of our most popular yet. The New “I Do” explores the modern shape of matrimony. And while they were researching the reasons why about half of marriages don’t last, Susan and Vicki discovered that people are quietly tweaking the institution, redefining it to suit both their needs and the times. One of those is the parenting marriage. Sometimes this takes the form of people seeking each other out for the soul purpose of having a platonic co-parenting relationship and sometimes it’s about changing the job description from your mate being your lover to being just your co-parent. Whether you want a parenting marriage or not, they say, it’s important to have a dialogue about what we do and don’t expect from a marriage—“conscious coupling” as opposed to trying to fit ourselves within a one-size-fits-all definition of marriage.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
My guest on this episode is Traci Costa, the founder and CEO of Peekaboo Beans, a children’s playwear company based in Vancouver, BC. But she’s come on the show to talk about the incredibly challenging time she and her husband went through in order to become parents. Too often fertility struggles are cloaked in silence, which is unfortunate given that so many people experience them. Her story includes one heartbreaking ectopic pregnancy and round after round of IVF. If you’ve had your own difficulties conceiving, I hope you’ll leave a comment on the show notes page for this episode.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
Our society really reveres marriage. We equate being married with having yourself settled in life and in many ways with being a successful person. Yet, we don’t have that much dialogue about what it takes to keep a marriage strong. Then we’re a bit shocked when a couple in our friend group separates. As a result, we’re often talking about what goes wrong in a marriage when it’s already too late. My guest on this episode is small business, mindfulness and productivity leader Leigh Mitchell. Whether she’s advocating for families to get outside and be active together, or mentoring other entrepreneurs, Leigh is all about encouraging her community to thrive. An important aspect of that is thriving in our relationships, particularly the ones we have with our spouses. That’s why Leigh has come on the show to share her own experience with marriage counseling and how it’s helped her and her husband to weather some of life’s storms and stay happily married.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
My guest on today’s show is childhood sexuality expert Amy Lang, who helps parents talk to their kids about sex, love and relationships. Yes, episode 69 features a sexuality expert, something I only realized moments before recording this episode. Amy has a great website called “The Birds and Bees and Kids” and she’s here to chat with us about how to answer that age old question, “Where do babies come from?” She provides us with great language we can use to explain how babies are made as well as how to adapt these conversations for the many ways families are formed today. Amy explains that talking to our kids about sex can actually begin when they’re newborns (tune in for her very sane explanation of how) and then walks us through how to expand upon our initial sex talks with kids in age-appropriate ways as they get older. She and I also dive into what parents need to know about the changing landscape of sexuality for teens.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
For this episode I’m joined by family lawyer-turned-mediator Rosanna Breitman, who was on the show to talk about why marriages end back on episode 26, which is our most popular episode so far. I really wanted to have Rosanna back on the show to share more of her insights, this time on how people can co-parent well together after a romantic relationship ends. And in fact, we’re going to be diving even further into this topic in our very first webinar coming up on Tuesday, May 17th, 2016, at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific. If you or someone you know is co-parenting, whether you’re just recently separated or even if it’s years later, please find the link to the registration for that at thenewfamily.com/coparent.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
My guest on today’s episode is Trevor MacDonald, who shares his incredible personal story of being a transgender dad who has nursed two children. His book Where’s the Mother? Stories from a Transgender Dad is coming out May 24, 2016. Trevor’s here to talk about his coming out experience as well as the realities of transgender parenting. He also shares what it takes to chest feed after having chest contouring surgery, and the work he’s done since becoming a parent to pave the way for other transgender and gender non-conforming people who experience pregnancy, birth and infant feeding.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
My guest on the show today is psychotherapist and author Emily Roberts. Her book Express Yourself: A Teen Girl’s Guide to Speaking Up and Being Who You Are gives teenagers the tools they need to communicate their feelings in assertive and healthy ways. She’s here to talk to us about how parents can help their kids learn to do the same, whether they’re in the teen years or much younger.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
My guest on the show today is Tanel Jappinen of the blog and podcast Brand New Father—also known as T.J. He has an interesting personal story to tell of travelling around the world with his wife and baby in tow. But he’s also here to speak to us about the values of millennial dads. He and I chat about how his generation of dads is defining fatherhood in their own way, and how that compares to how their fathers raised them. We also talk about how millennial dads who wish to take parental leave or even work reasonable hours must wrestle with the expectations put on them by others who may still hold traditional ideas of men as breadwinners, not caregivers.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
My guest on today’s show has made a massive contribution to the lives of 1,000s of children. Marilyn Field is the founder of non-profit called DAREarts. It provides Canadian at-risk children and youth ages 9 through 19 with an intensive out-of-school arts immersion programs aimed building their confidence, courage and leadership through music, drama, dance, visual arts, architecture, fashion and literature. Through her background as a teacher, Marilyn saw that the arts gave kids the tools to build life skills and to realize their potential as leaders. Today her organization has helped more than 170,000 children. She joins me to talk about what parents should know about the link between the arts and life skills, and a little bit about her life as the other mother to 1,000 of children.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
There’s nothing quite like parenting for confronting us with our own vulnerabilities, weaknesses and patterns from the past. We love our children like crazy, yet they can try our patience like no one and nothing else. Yet there’s this pressure to act like everything is magical and wonderful. My guest on the podcast today is Casey O’Roary, a mom, educator and parenting coach who talks frankly about the fact that parenting just isn’t easy every day of the week. Casey was an elementary school teacher in the three-room school house in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. She has an MA in education and today she teaches parenting workshops and hosts her own fantastic parenting podcast, The Joyful Courage Podcast. Casey talks to us about the personal transformations that can come about as a result of our relationships with our kids and how to navigate some of the tough stuff we encounter along the way.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
On this episode I’m joined by Drs. Danielle and Astro Teller. Danielle and Astro are co-authors of the book Sacred Cows: The Truth About Marriage and Divorce and they also have a popular Tedx Talk by the same name. Through their own divorces they learned how widely held cultural assumptions and misinformation that nobody thinks to question create unnecessary heartache for people who are already suffering through a terrible time. They call these assumptions “Sacred Cows” and today they’re going to explain some of these. They also point out that there’s little definitive evidence that divorce is damaging to children long-term.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
In this episode I speak with productivity and time management expert Mike Vardy. Mike is a writer, speaker, podcaster and founder of Productivityist, a resource that helps people get the right things done. Mike is the author of The Front Nine: How To Start The Year You Want Anytime You Want and The Productivityist Workbook. He has served as the Managing Editor at Lifehack, and contributed articles on productivity to 99u, Lifehacker, The Next Web, SUCCESS Magazine, and The Huffington Post. Mike is also a father of two and today we’re going to talk about whether it’s possible to raise productive kids and how to encourage goal setting early in life.
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
My guest on the podcast today is a male birth doula! Brian Salmon also goes by the name The Birth Guy, though as a surfer from California he kind of hoping the term “dude-la” will take off. Brian also owns his own 3D and 4D ultrasound clinics, and he’s a certified lactation consultant, too. He teaches childbirth classes for dads called “Rocking Dads,” couples birth classes called “Facilitating Fearless Birth” and is soon launching his the Rocking Dads video series and online course soon. Brian brings a really unique perspective to child birth that is wonderfully inclusive of dads and places a lot of emphasis on maintaining the couple connection after baby arrives. He also tells us what it’s like to be in such a female-dominated field. The answer may surprise you!
Sponsor:
Wise Bites
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
It seems the sleepover is far more rare than it was when we were kids and that’s a shame. Perhaps that’s no surprise given that we’re quite a hovering and cautious generation of parents who is less willing to relinquish control of our kids’ supervision by letting them sleep elsewhere. And as my guest today explains, most parents are probably over-estimated the amount of work involved on the hosting side. The last time author Chris Shulgan was on the show to discuss why parents fear the wrong things, we had a bit of side conversation about the sleepover as an important rite of passage for kids. Chris and his wife, Chantel, are avid sleepover party throwers, and today he and I discuss why we need to ensure the tradition continues. Chris also shares his secrets for hosting a successful sleepover, including how he manages to get the kids to clean up after themselves!
Press and hold link to visit page.
Sponsor:
Wise Bites
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
My guest on this episode is best-selling author Rebecca Eanes, the founder of positive-parents.org and creator of the very popular Facebook community Positive Parenting: Toddlers and Beyond. Her book The Newbie's Guide to Positive Parenting has been a #1 best seller in its category on Amazon and her latest book, coming out June 7th, is called Positive Parenting: An Essential Guide. But Rebecca is quick to say that she’s a messenger not an expert. She writes from a parent-to-parent perspective and shares her own shift from more conventional parenting to positive parenting, which as she explains, honours our basic human needs for love and for belonging, and respects the mind, the body and the spirit of children. It seeks to build healthy positive relationships between parent and child, which becomes the model for healthy relationships life long, and gives parents influence that’s strengthened through a strong connection with our kids. Rebecca’s here to explain how we can work these principles into our own family lives.
Sponsor:
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
What if there was a better way to raise our children than the nuclear family? My guest on the podcast for this episode is long-time journalist and author Vicki Larson. She and her co-author Susan Gadoua were on the show way back on episode 12 “Are We Doing Marriage Wrong?” to discuss the findings of their book, “The New ‘I Do’: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels,” which is one of our most popular episodes so far. Vicki and I discuss something that’s a pet topic for me—the limitations of and problems with the nuclear family, and the fiction we’ve built up around it. Vicki has a book on the subject in development, and she explains how a form of shared parenting—sometimes called “alloparenting”—is deeply ingrained in how we evolved and learned to thrive as a species. In fact, though we still put it on a pedestal, the nuclear family is already no longer the norm. Fewer than half of children under the age of 18 are living in households with married heterosexual parents in their first marriages. She shares some thought provoking ideas about how we could really learn to live accordingly to the “it takes a village” philosophy.
Sponsor:
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
Today’s show covers a really important topic—how to respond in a supportive manner when your child comes out to you. My guest, Dr. Jen O’Ryan, completed her doctorate in human behaviour with a focus on the experience of childhood and adolescence for sexual minorities. Jen provides coaching and guidance for parents to help them navigate their child’s coming out process, as well as questions about sexuality and gender. But our chat today doesn’t just apply to the parents whose kids have revealed they’re gay. Aunts, uncles, coaches, teachers, community leaders, even supportive family friends—as caring adults we can all benefit from knowing more about being inclusive and sensitive toward LGBTQ youth. She explains how even one caring, tolerant adult can be tremendously protective for kids through the coming-out process. And she provides great, tangible advice on how to provide a safe, helpful environment for LGBTQ kids.
Press and hold links to visit page
Sponsor:
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
This episode tackles quite an interesting question. Should we be raising kids to be romantically competent? And what does that mean? My guests on the show today are Kaycee Lashman and Dr. Joanne Davila, authors of The Thinking Girl's Guide to the Right Guy: How Knowing Yourself Can Help You Navigate Dating, Hookups and Love. Their advice on knowing what makes a healthy relationship, on knowing what you need from a relationship really applies to anyone. And for parents bringing kids up in world where the dating landscape—or at least the vocabulary around dating—may have changed significantly from when we were young, it can be a little hard to know how to encourage our children to form healthy attachments. Joanne and Kaycee identify the skills that make up romantic competence and explain how to encourage our children to develop them.
Sponsor:
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
One aspect of contemporary family life that has touched all of us is the prevalence of autism, and today we’re going to explore a fascinating new area of study that could potentially improve our understanding of autism. My guest today is journalist and author Kimberly Stephens, coauthor of a new book called The Prodigy’s Cousin: The Family Link Between Autism and Extraordinary Talent. Her coauthor, psychologist and researcher Joane Ruthsatz, who just happens to be Kimberly’s mother, has spent 18 years studying child prodigies. This research represents the largest research sample of these exceptional kids in the world. Incredibly, Dr. Ruthsatz’s research has found that many of these child prodigies have autistic family members. In fact, around half of child prodigies have a close relative that is autistic. Interestingly, they also have a lot of behavioural and cognitive things in common as well.
Sponsor:
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!
It seems that nearly every day there’s another news story about what kids are doing online and a lot of it is quite alarmist. If you believe these reports, all of our kids are either cyber bullying or sexting each other, possibly both, and that it will soon be the end of days. My guest Andrew Campbell is here to assure us that this isn’t the fact the case and to chat about how we can ensure we’re up to speed with how—and why—are kids are using social media. Andrew is an educator, speaker and writer who blogs about education and technology. His thoughts on education have been published in The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail and The Hamilton Spectator among others, and he speaks on education at conferences throughout Canada and the United States. Andrew teaches Grade 5 in Brantford, Ontario, and he’s expert on the relationship between kids and technology, including social media.
Sponsor:
This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!