Today, we speak with Meghan Leahy; author, parenting coach and Washington Post columnist about raising your kids with confidence, patience and even joy!

Meghan Leahy is the mother of three young daughters, a certified parenting coach, and a columnist for The Washington Post, writing about all things parenting! She is the author of the upcoming book, "Parenting Outside the Lines: Forget the Rules, Tap into Your Wisdom, and Connect to Your Child."

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In this episode, you’ll enjoy:

• Meghan’s path to discovering that parent coaching was her passion just by chance, hard work and perseverance.
• Learn about Dr. Gordon Neufeld of the The Neufeld Institute and the attachment-based developmental approach.
• The struggle of setting boundaries for parents and the commonly faced organizational concerns.
• How the constant influx of stimulation impacts children’s ability to focus, maintain their attention and, ultimately, learn.
• Hear about Meghan’s new book about how parents can examine their preconceptions and to be empowered to follow their own way.
• Kids need boundaries and how to determine how to set them.
• Learn what “Silent Compassion” means. It’s a great technique for expressing understanding and love along with boundaries.

Meghan’s favorite tidying tip: Clean the kitchen every evening for a much better start for the next day. (We love this one!)

What sparks joy for Meghan: The amazing things on TV these days and relaxing with her kids around great TV shows. And, MAKE UP! On top of everything else she’s juggling, Meghan is training to become a make-up artist!

To connect with Meghan, you can kind find her at mlparentcoach.com. mlparentcoach.com

You can sign up for Meghan’s free ebook, From A to Zzzz: How to Get Your Kids to Sleep on her website.

You can also sign up for her online parenting class, "From Conflict to Cooperation: Understanding and Preventing Power Struggles with your Children" here

You can more of Meghan’s’ tips via the Washington Post as the Parenting Expert in the “On Parenting” column.

Gems

• “Parenting is not an automatic thing, it’s a learning on the job kind of thing.”
• “My job was to illuminate why kids were struggling which is the first step to understanding how to get it right.”
• “So starts an avalanche of ‘Screw it, I’ll do it myself.’ which leads to resentment.”
• “There’s a lot of books about parenting skills..in my view all these these books are true and untrue…I didn’t want to write a book where parents had to ascribe to a theory…instead it’s about paying attention to your actual child and your actual life.”
• “It can be positive and fun, but when it falls apart, you just pick up and go on.”

You can find Karin Socci at The Serene Home
You can find Kristyn Ivey at For the Love of Tidy

Special Guest: Meghan Leahy.