Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive

This episode kicks off a series on the intersection of parenting and food.   We begin today with a conversation with Dr. Lindo Bacon, where we bust a LOT of myths about the obesity epidemic that is said to be plaguing people in the United States and other countries that follow a similar diet.   The messaging we get from government entities seems pretty simple: being fat is bad for you. It causes increased risk for a host of diseases as well as early death. If you're fat, you should lose weight because then your risk of getting these diseases and dying early will be reduced.   But what if this wasn't true?   What if this messaging had been established by people who own companies that manufacture weight loss products who sit on panels that advise international governmental entities like the World Health Organization?   What if body fat was actually protective for your health?   We dig into all these questions and more in this provocative interview.   We'll continue this series with episodes looking specifically at sugar, as well as supporting parents who have or continue to struggle with disordered eating, and how to support children in developing eating habits that will serve them for a lifetime, not just get the vegetables into them today.   Jump to highlights: (01:00) Introducing Dr. Lindo Bacon and starting our series of episodes on the intersection of parenting and food (02:22) Stripping the word ‘fat’ of it’s pejorative meaning and reclaiming the term while acknowledging that it may be jarring for some people (03:09) Kicking off the conversation with how we measure health using BMI and how it might not be accurate (05:03) The resistance to Katherine Flegal’s seminal research in weight and longevity (05:49) The development of the Body Mass Index was with scientific bias to fit the bell curve (07:30) Higher body weight does not necessarily mean a person has greater risk of poor health (10:59) We actually know that the research is highly exaggerated in terms on the role that it plays on health (13:16) Dr. Bacon’s turning point: When they found out that BMI recommendations were created by an organization funded by pharmaceutical companies who produce weight loss drugs and products (17:35) Taking the issue one step further with the American Medical Association’s recommendation whether to categorize obesity as a disease or not (19:19) The Obesity Paradox is an observation in the research that people who are obese who get the same diseases as those with ‘normal’ weight are living longer (21:15) The concept of dieting just doesn’t work according to the data (30:33) A story of Dr. Bacon’s and their father’s knee problems (34:40) Individual factors only accounts to 25% to somebody’s total health outcomes and social determinants account to about 60% (42:05) It is cool right now to be your authentic self but not everyone can so easily be their authentic self when their authentic selves are not valued by society at large (45:48) Improving the health of individuals is more communal than individual   Resource Links: Health at Every Size, by Lindo Bacon Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight, by Lindo Bacon and Lucy Aphramor Radical Belonging: How to Survive and Thrive in an Unjust World (While Transforming it for the Better), by Lindo Bacon Association For Size Diversity and Health   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want her children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting.   Jen Lumanlan  00:29 If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a free guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't Listen To You and What to Do About Each One, just head over to YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen Lumanlan  01:00 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. I'm very excited about our episode today because we're at the very beginning of what I hope is going to be quite an extended series of episodes at the intersection of parenting and food. And I'm hoping to look at ideas like eating disorders and intuitive eating and how sugar impacts our children and what we should do about that, if anything, how we should approach eating issues with our children more broadly and how we can all be a little bit happier in our bodies. And today we're kicking off this series with Dr. Lindo Bacon whose seminal book Health at Every Size was written over a decade ago now and which exposes how the ideas that most of us believe about body fat and weight are actually not grounded in scientific research. She followed that by co-authoring a book called Body Respect, and her most recent book is called Radical Belonging: How to Survive and Thrive in an Unjust World (While Transforming it for the Better). Dr. Bacon earned their PhD in physiology from the University of California Davis, where they currently serve as an Associate Nutritionist. They also hold graduate degrees in Psychology and Exercise Metabolism. Dr. Bacon is industry independent, which means they have pledged not to accept money from the weight loss, pharmaceutical or food industries, which makes them almost unique among non governmental researchers on issues related to weight and food. Welcome, Dr. Bacon. I'm so glad you're here.   Dr. Lindo Bacon  02:20 Thanks, Jen. I'm looking forward to talking to you.   Jen Lumanlan  02:22 And before we get started, I just want to acknowledge that I'm going to follow your lead in your books by using the word fat in this interview and using that in a way that's really been stripped of its pejorative connotations. And many people it seems who are fat, who are now reclaiming the term in this way. But I do acknowledge that it may be jarring to some listeners to hear if they aren't accustomed to hearing it like that.   Dr. Lindo Bacon  02:45 Yeah, I think it's important to name all of that. So thank you, Jen. And I also just want to note for the listeners that if you do feel uncomfortable when you hear the word, then that's something helpful to look at, because that really shows that you've absorbed the cultural ideas about that. And hopefully, we can start to normalize it so that you could feel better about it.   Jen Lumanlan  03:09 Yeah, and hopefully this conversation is going to be a big part of that as well. So I wonder if we can start at the beginning with what I know is a big topic as it were, which is how we measure health. And so this body mass index, or BMI for short, has become the standard measure of how much weight a person is carrying compared to their height. And it's best considered an indicator of how healthy they are in some way. And it's used by everybody from the Centers for Disease Control in the US to the World Health Organization. Is the BMI actually a good measure - I guess I should start by saying of anything at all and then we can go from there and to health.   Dr. Lindo Bacon  03:47 You right. I think that your question already answered itself, but it really does not play much of a role in health at all. And I think that its use has been quite damaging to people. So I wish that the medical industry would throw it out.   Jen Lumanlan  04:03 Yeah. So where did it come from? How did we end up here?   Dr. Lindo Bacon  04:07 Well, it actually was written by or devised by someone who was a statistician looking at insurance, and that it wasn't meant or designed for health. And it was meant to look at what's going on in a population, not what's going on in an individual. And it's amazing when you start to look at the research of how it corresponds to health and you find some really surprising things. For example, it's pretty clear from the research that that the people that are in that category we call overweight are the people that are living longest. Most research studies are showing that and the people that are in the obese category, most of them are living as long as people in the normal weight category, or the I'm sorry that we call normal wait.   Jen Lumanlan  05:03 Yeah   Dr. Lindo Bacon  05:03 Right. And it's only really at the very extremes that you start to see things that are different. Mm hmm. And but yet, the end, there was an expose a that was actually published just a few days ago by a former CDC researcher, who was her name was Katherine Flegal, and she actually did some of the seminal research in weight and longevity. And the history she said, of how she was shut down, and how all of people in industry were trying to discredit her, it was just amazing to see how much resistance she ran up against, and how people fought her.   Jen Lumanlan  05:49 Yeah, it's, I think that that seems to be quite pervasive. And I think we're gonna talk some more about how political issues impact the way that we think about these things. But I just want to really be crystal clear about this, we were talking about somebody who was a statistician who developed the original idea of the BMI and was looking to understand and define the characteristics of normal man. And we can insert the word white in the middle of there I assume. And fitting that distribution around the norm. He wasn't, you know, he's not looking to understand an individual person's health. He's trying to find this statistically interesting relationship that fits the bell curve. And somehow we've latched on to this idea, and we're using it to try to say whether an individual person is healthy or not?   Dr. Lindo Bacon  06:38 Right? I know, it's really interesting. I think about, like, if you did a height curve, you would come up with the same bell curve. And I would be all the way the extreme end in the 5%, because I'm rather short. But obviously, that doesn't indicate disease. You know, it's just, there will be some people who are on the extremes of the bell curve. That's the nature of bell curves.   Jen Lumanlan  07:04 Right. Yeah, somebody has to be there. Okay. And so I'm wondering if we can look at this sort of commonly accepted wisdom that people with higher body weight have a greater risk of poor health, and you've already sort of indicated implied and mentioned that that's not necessarily the truth.   Dr. Lindo Bacon  07:23 Right.   Jen Lumanlan  07:24 What's going on here? Why is the commonly accepted idea different from what the research is actually showing us?   Dr. Lindo Bacon  07:30 Right. Well, as I mentioned, with the suppression of the researcher, who came up with this, one of the things that was fascinating to me in that was, nobody debated her with actual data that challenged it. It was more just, you know, like, they didn't want it out. Right. And that that was what was fascinating. And still to this day, you'll see almost regular reports in the media about how damaging that is. And one of the things that I want to suggest is that every time we see a new research study, we've got a look at whether our belief system is so strongly entrenched, that we see through that lens, and we can't really see our data anymore. And that's what's happening. So for example, if you have a research study that shows that the majority of people that have diabetes are fat, then they'll make the conclusion that if you're fat, you're going to get diabetes. Right. And we do, in fact, have that research that shows that, but that research doesn't demonstrate that it's the fat that's causing the disease. There could be other mitigating factors that play a role. For example, there's one obvious factor that's going to play a role. And that's that the people that are fatter meet up with a lot of weight stigma, people don't treat them as well. And we know from the research that when people are stigmatized and disrespected, it wreaks havoc in their body and increases health problems. So it's very clear that that's an example of something that's a contributor, and we can come up with a lot of other contributors. But when we start to kind of tease everything out, we just don't have solid research that shows that it's causative of most of the diseases for which it's blamed.   Jen Lumanlan  09:39 Yeah, and I think that's such a super important point that there is a ton of evidence linking these two things, they are correlated, they vary together. And then there's, there are fun things you can find online to find completely unrelated things that happened to be co-correlated and you know, things that are wildly, wildly unrelated and could never be connected and they're correlated. So they must be, you know, one must cause the other right? When no that's not the case. It's entirely possible that diabetes may be maybe a contributing factor to increase body weight. That one of the other factors may be causing the body weight. We just don't know. I mean, I mean, and that's not the story we're told, right? The story we're told is, if you get fat, you're going to get these chronic diseases.   Jen Lumanlan  10:28 Right.   Dr. Lindo Bacon  10:29 And just to throw in a kind of a funny story there, I actually saw research that was showing that there are more drownings that happen among people that eat ice cream. Right.   Jen Lumanlan  10:44 I'm never eating ice cream again.   Dr. Lindo Bacon  10:44 Which doesn't make sense. You eat ice cream in the summer and you're more likely to be in the water. Right. But it's not the ice cream that's causing the drowning.   Jen Lumanlan  10:53 Yeah, thank you.   Dr. Lindo Bacon  10:55 That's just an example that shows that.   Jen Lumanlan  10:58 Thank you for that.   Dr. Lindo Bacon  10:59 And I should also say that we actually do know a lot about this, that the research that has tried to tease out a lot of these things, find that it is highly exaggerated in terms of the role that it plays in health. And so that's very clear from the research. But, of course, it's not what people are saying. And I think every time we see a disconnect between what's commonly believed, and what this data actually shows us that one of the big reasons that's going to underlie that is you have to ask, well, who benefits from us not understanding. And there is a huge industry of people that are making money off of our body hatred. It's not just the diet industry and certain aspects of the health industry and the bariatric surgeons, but it's also people that sell cars, can sell them off of the ability that you're going to be sexy, and, you know, fine, and everybody's gonna want you if you drive this car. So everybody seems to capitalize on our insecurity in order to make money. The more we hate ourselves, the more they can use it.   Jen Lumanlan  12:22 Yeah, okay, so let's follow that thread for a minute, then, because there are some super concrete pieces to this as well and around following the money, which is a big reason that I wanted to talk to you, because you do not accept money from outside sources that are affiliated with the industry. And it seems pretty clear that when you look at research that's funded by industries, you know, soft drinks and juice and milk, the results are four to eight times more likely to be favorable to the funders product than when that study is not funded by the manufacturer of the product. And the same goes for the drug trials. And a lot of the weight loss drug papers, you know, the scientific papers are written by the very company that is trying to sell us this medicine. They supply the text to the researchers, and then the researchers publish it. It's almost mind boggling the extent to which this infiltrates what we think of as value neutral science.   Dr. Lindo Bacon  13:16 Right? And I tell you, it makes my job hard because I'm a scientist, right. I'm supposed to be looking at data. And I don't trust most of the research that's coming out, because I know what goes on behind the scenes and how much manipulation there is. And I'll give you an example of this, because I think it's really helpful to see and it's about BMI. And the reason I'm going to give this example is because it really marks the turning point in my career and why I'm talking about these issues today. So I'm going to take you back to 1998 when I was getting my PhD in physiology, with a specialty in weight science. And there was one magical day in June I forget the the actual date that millions of Americans, I think it was 21 million Americans went to bed and normal healthy bodies. And they woke up the next day with a medical designation of being fat and a prescription that they're supposed to try to lose weight. And that wasn't because everybody gained weight overnight. That was because the government lowered our standards for what they would be calling overweight and obesity. Now, I was shocked that they did that, because I was in the middle of my literature review. And what I was seeing was that if anything, we should majorly raise those numbers, not lower them. So I wanted to look at why they did what they did. And I found out which group had devised the government on this and a lot of the advice that they took came from the National Institute of Health advisory panel. And fortunately, I knew somebody that was on that. And I called

Many of us haven't been in each other's homes for a while now, but pretty soon we'll be getting together inside again.  And our children will be heading inside, in their friends' houses.   People store guns inside.   Are you certain that nobody owns a gun in any of the places your child plays?   If they do own a gun, are you certain they store it safely?   If not, you need to ask.   That's one issue we discuss in this interview with Dr. Nina Agrawal, a board-certified pediatrician who has expertise in violence against children.  She co-founded the Gun Safety Committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics in New York State, and is leading the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force for the American Medical Women’s Association.   Another issue is the gun violence that is primarily faced by children of color, which turns out to affect a far greater number of children.   And how is this all linked to the Peloton recall?  You'll have to listen in to find out...   Jump to highlights here: (01:00) Indoor playdates are ramping up...will your child be safe? (02:29) Introducing Dr. Nina Agrawal, pediatrician and co-founder of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Gun Safety Committee in New York State (02:58) Understanding how big is the scope of gun violence against children (06:15) The Dickey Amendment: Explaining the massive lack of data and research on gun violence and safety (11:24) The ways that gun violence affects children that we might not expect (12:32) “I get woken up at night to the sound of gunshots.” (17:09) The racial disparity in how children are affected by gun violence (20:46) More people purchased guns in 2020, and there are more first-time owners too (23:39) The statistical likelihood of children coming to harm if they live with a firearm in their household (27:00) Just telling kids not to touch guns doesn't work (even if you think of your child as one who is 'sensible,' and you've talked with them about gun safety) (30:45) The Asking Saves Kids Campaign helps to keep kids safer (33:06) The surprising link between children involved in gun violence and the Peloton treadmill recall (36:07) In American culture, banning all guns can't be the answer (40:52) Effective Child Access Laws (41:45) How to create safer environments for children through building communities [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast.   Jen Lumanlan  00:06 We all want her children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research on principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a free guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't Listen To You & What To Do About Each One, just head over to YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen Lumanlan  01:00 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. And today we're going to discuss a topic that I think is about to come into parents' consciousness in a way that it really hasn't as much over the last year. And for some of us, that's a result of our privilege. And I was reflecting that as vaccinations for children become more available, we're probably going to start moving towards indoor play dates without parents being around because when my daughter went into when we went into sort of lockdown, she was young enough that she wasn't really doing playdates indoors with other people in anyone else's houses. And so I never really felt as though I needed to ask, "Are there guns in your house?" because I was always there to supervise. And so of course, over the last year, she's played with a lot of kids on our street, and they're always outside and I can always hear them. And so the danger doesn't seem to be there in the same way for me in those outdoor playdates scenarios. But of course, as vaccinations become available, and these things start to move inside, I don't know which of my friends has guns in their houses. And if I'm kind of uncomfortable asking about this, I'm guessing that a lot of parents haven't even thought about it and don't have it on their collective radar yet. So I wanted to bring that up into our consciousness before we actually need it. And then, of course, there's another issue here as well, that we're going to delve into fairly deeply today, which is that gun violence is becoming increasingly common in a wide variety of settings that children live in and are exposed to, and that this can have really big impacts on them. And that that isn't necessarily talked about or studied nearly as much.   Jen Lumanlan  02:29 And we have a very special guest here with us today to talk about these issues. Dr. Nina Agrawal. She's a pediatrician who is board certified in Child Abuse Pediatrics, and she has expertise in Violence Against Children. She was on the faculty at Columbia University in Child and Adolescent Health. She co-founded the Gun Safety Committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics in New York State, and she's leading the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force for the American Women's Association. Welcome Dr. Agrawal.   Dr. Nina Agrawal  02:56 Thank you so much for having me, Jen.   Jen Lumanlan  02:58 All right. So I wonder if we can maybe start by just understanding how big is the scope of this problem, and piggybacking on that, how much do we know about how big is the scope of this problem, and why don't we know as much as we might want to know?   Dr. Nina Agrawal  03:12 Right, great question. Right now, guns are the leading cause of death in children 1 to 19 years of age. Before it was motor vehicle accidents.   Jen Lumanlan  03:22 Yeah.   Dr. Nina Agrawal  03:23 Now it's firearm. So it's something that's a health issue. It's a public health issue. It's a safety issue affecting all children.   Jen Lumanlan  03:34 Okay. And yeah, I actually hadn't seen those latest statistics, the peer reviewed papers I was looking at from 2018 still showed it in that number two position, so. So that's an unfortunate development over the last couple of years that that position has switched then. And it doesn't affect everybody equally, right? It affects some children more than others.   Dr. Nina Agrawal  03:53 Yes, definitely. Racially, it affects Black children disproportionately. Blacks, and then Hispanics, and then White children.   Jen Lumanlan  04:00 Okay. And I noticed that actually, the way that this data is collected, we might think, Oh, it's fairly easy to understand how prevalent this kind of thing is, how prevalent injuries are. And actually, there's a couple of different ways of estimating it. But the most common way is using data from the Centers for Disease Control, which is sampled from 100 hospitals. And I'm just thinking, Okay, there are 1000s of trauma centers that are dealing with this kind of thing. Can a sample of 100 hospitals give us a complete picture of what the actual prevalence rates for this are?   Dr. Nina Agrawal  04:34 Right? Yeah, as with a lot of injuries in children, it's a combination of hospital data and mass data and media. We're increasingly using media data. There's a gun violence archive that looks at shootings in communities, and then the CDC data. I think one of the problems with the CDC data is that it doesn't include non fatal injuries and only includes fatal injuries. So we're missing a lot of children who suffered non fatal injuries and understanding those so that we can prevent them.   Jen Lumanlan  05:09 Yeah. Okay. And I think when a lot of parents think about guns, one thing that they may be most kind of afraid of the immediate fear is of a mass shooting. Because there's get so much publicity, right? Is that the thing that we should be the most afraid of statistically speaking?   Dr. Nina Agrawal  05:25 Statistically, definitely not. It's 1% of shootings. So much more common is homicide, and suicide, and unintentional injuries. And then mass shootings are a small percentage, but they gain the most immediate attention. And because again, the most immediate attention, they gain the most resources - prevention resources. And so we have children dying every day from homicide and suicide and yet, we're really not devoting the investing in prevention of deaths in those children due to firearms.   Jen Lumanlan  06:00 Yeah, okay. And I think a big reason why we're not investing as much in the pieces of this that really matter are that we don't understand it well enough. And there's a reason we don't understand much about gun violence, right? Can you tell us about that reason.   Dr. Nina Agrawal  06:15 I love telling the story. It's a story that's not known and once people hear about it, they're like, Oh, my God, this makes sense. So anyhow, enough of the preamble. What it is, is that in 1994-95, there's a study that came out in the New England Journal of Medicine that found that if you had a gun in your home, you're a gun owner, you or somebody else in your home are more likely to die or get injured from that firearm, rather than protect yourself from an intruder. So, most people a lot of people keep it for self protection. It actually doesn't work that way.You know, the statistics tell you you're actually more danger from hurting yourself or somebody that you care about in your home. And so this study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The NRA was not happy about it, because that would affect firearm sales. And they, you know, they basically lobbied Representative Dickey of Arkansas, and Representative Dickey inserted a amendment called the Dickey Amendment after his name, saying that no funds can be used by the CDC or the NIH eventually went to the NIH that could be used to advocate or promote gun control. And so what they did is this Congress took away money from the CDC that had been used for firearm prevention research and earmarked it for concussions. And the CDC doesn't have this pot of money where they can use it indiscriminately. It has to be earmarked for a certain, you know, injury or health issue. And so then basically, they had very limited funding and research plummeted. And it you know, that Dickey Amendment created a chilling effect on the entire research community, because funding is so limited for research and, you know, people didn't want their funding taken away for other things that they could do research on. So gun violence research plummeted. And with that, are solutions. So this was in 1996, the Dickey Amendment passed. And every year, it gets reapproved. And there have been efforts through certain presidential administrations to try and repeal it, but it just keeps going on and on and more recently, in 2019, for the first time, the CDC was appropriated $25 million for gun violence prevention research. And I just want to make a distinction between gun control and gun violence prevention. And the distinction is that public health issues are not trying to control an injury or an illness. We're trying to create safety when it comes to injuries. So just like we don't say highway control, we say highway safety. We don't say cars control, we say car safety. We don't say cribs control, we say crib safety. So this is gun safety. We understand that you can have guns, but we just want them to be safe around children.   Jen Lumanlan  09:22 Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that. And I just want to pull out some pieces of what you said, particularly for listeners who are outside the US. So what we're talking about here is that the CDC is the Centers for Disease Control, and NIH is the National Institute for Health and that these organizations fund scientists working in academia to conduct studies on a whole array of things related to health, but specifically here we're talking about gun safety issues. And the NRA, the National Rifle Association, which has an enormous amount of lobbying power here in the US, and that they had approached Jim Dickey and said, You know, this is this is something that you need to be with us on and he agreed. And I was actually interested to see that he has more recently flipped on that. And he has regretted his role in the stifling the research. He didn't want there to be more gun control. And that was why he advocated for that, because he, he was, I think, worried that the research was going to lead to ammunition, I guess, as it were, for people who wanted gun control to put that into effect. But he now says that he regrets his role in stifling the flow of research on that. So it's encouraging to see that we are now starting to see the spigot loosened and some money flowing through.   Dr. Nina Agrawal  10:35 Yes, for sure. Yeah, right before he actually died. But right before he died, he became before he died. Well, before he died, he became friends with the person who is Head of the CDC at the time and together, they tried to advocate for Gun Violence Prevention Research.   Jen Lumanlan  10:53 Yeah. Okay. All right. So so thank you for, for telling us that story. And it's always amazing how the politics ends up impacting our view of public health issues. And, and I think that seeing this as a public health issue is really at the core of your approach here. And part of that is because of the way that gun violence impacts children. So I wonder if you can tell us more about your ideas and your research and thinking on how gun violence impacts children and how we should be thinking about it?   Dr. Nina Agrawal  11:24 Yes, I think we need to think about gun violence in children more broadly. We have been in the research setting, we've been thinking about his injuries and deaths. How do we prevent an injury? How do we prevent a death? And we're making some headway in that, but what we want is, you know, we're making headway in certain areas. So suicide and accidental injury. So like the toddler who picks up a gun on a play date, how do we prevent that from happening? We haven't made a lot of inroads in homicide affecting children. And that is the most common intent in children and youth. So we haven't made a lot of inroads and prevention of homicide. The other thing that we don't talk about his exposure to gun violence. And when I was working in the Bronx, you know, as a pretty some of I was working in the South Bronx, and it was a busy ER, a lot of people come in with gunshot wounds, but the ones that we weren't, weren't coming in or weren't presenting to medical attention, were the kids who are having mental health problems because of exposure. You know, they're having anxiety they're having, they're having depression.   Dr. Nina Agrawal  12:32 I am actually authoring a book chapter on exposure. And in that included this anecdote of a five year old that I was interviewing, and I asked her about eating and sleeping and you know, school, and she said, she didn't sleep well. Why not? And she goes, she told me there were noises that kept her up at night. I was like, Well, what were those noises and not expecting her to say this. She said they were gunshots. And I was like, Well, what do you do she when that happens? And she said, Well, I get a snack, and I go back to sleep. And it was this five year old living in this, this world of trauma in her bedroom. So the gun violence is going on physically outside her bedroom, but it's coming through into her home, it's coming through into her development and and her health. And what happens to those kids and from the adverse childhood experiences studies, we know that those violent exposures affect children's health across the long term. And they you know, they may develop academic problems, behavioral problems in adolescence, with gun violence, they may become victims and perpetrators. And then later on in life, if they don't die from gun violence, they may have chronic health issues. So basically, you know, what happens before age five children see and hear can affect their brains and their lives, the trajectory of their lives forever.   Jen Lumanlan  14:04 Yeah, yeah. And so to dig a little more deeply into some of those things that you mentioned, firstly, you said that, we've made some progress on the things like the accidental deaths and the suicides, which primarily impact White children. And we have not made so much progress on the homicides aspect, which primarily does not impact White children. It's primarily Black children. And so there's a very racially differentiated issue right on where we focused our attention where we've been able to make progress on this.   Dr. Nina Agrawal  14:34 Yeah. And, again, you know, unintentional injuries where a toddler picks up a gun is, again, a very small percentage of gun violence in children. The biggest bucket is homicide, but within that bucket, we haven't made a distinction between unintentional homicide and intentional homicide. So we see this in the news all the time. You know, people are children and even adults getting hit by stray bullets, and they see the wrong place at the wrong tie but is it that person's, you know, I guess it's like, where does the onus? Is it that person, he shouldn't have gone to that restaurant, he shouldn't have gone to that place, the child didn't go into that playground. So I think we need to make a distinction between the unintended target and the intended target. Because the dynamics are going to be different. The environments may be the same, but you know, a mother of a five year old, you know, getting shot by a stray bullet, like, how can we help her keep her child safe? Can we say, you know, look, maybe this area of your neighborhood is not safe. Or maybe we need to go to the community leaders and say, like, hey, this playground is not safe for our children. There's shootings that happen there. They're drug deals that happen there. Let's make this safe. So, you know, there's work that says that it's found that [unrecognized] of safe green spaces, reduces shootings in communities. And I think that is, I think that's a very viable way of keeping children safer.   Jen Lumanlan  16:03 Yeah. And also thinking back to that five year old who's saying, you know, I get woken up at night, and what I'm hearing is gunshots and, and thinking about how that's gonna play out in that five year olds, academic career, you know, maybe she's asleep at school the next day, because she couldn't, she couldn't sleep at nighttime. And then it's like, well, what are the parents doing? Why...

Explore the intriguing misconceptions surrounding attachment theory and its historical roots from post-World War II. Learn how early angst over parent-child attachment may stem from flawed research. The discussion highlights the role of diverse caregivers and challenges traditional views, emphasizing the importance of secure attachments in all relationships. Discover insights on the resilience of children's development, debunking the myth that early experiences dictate future well-being. A fresh perspective on parenting strategies based on solid research awaits!

"Psychological Flexibility" sounds amazing.  Shouldn't we all want that?  After all, psychological flexibility has been significantly positively associated with wellness during the COVID-19 pandemic, and negatively associated with anxiety, depression, and COVID-29-related distress and worry. (But what is it, anyway?!) Psychological Flexibility is about being fully in touch with the present moment and, based on the situation, either continuing or changing your behavior to live in better alignment with your values. Let's break that down a bit: Being fully in touch with the present moment: We spend a good chunk of our lives not fully present.  And there are times when it makes sense - we don't necessarily need to be fully present for every moment of a long drive.  As long as we're present enough to drive safely, we don't need to observe the exact quality of red in the tail light of the driver in front of you. But when we spend most of our lives zoned out on our phones, or rushing from one activity to the next (probably partly so we don't have to sit down and just be), we aren't truly present. Better alignment with your values: We all have values, although perhaps some of us haven't fully articulated them.  We might value raising an independent child, but then step in every time they struggle.  We might value emotional closeness but struggle to actually do it because our parents didn't model it for us.  When we articulate our values, we define what we're working toward. Based on the situation, either continuing or changing your behavior: One of my favorite parts of ACT is the Choice Point: the point at which something doesn't feel right to you.  At this point you get to decide: Am I going to keep doing the same thing I've always done?  Or am I going to do something that brings me into better alignment with my values?   Want to know more?  Dr. Diana Hill, co-author with Dr. Debbie Sorensen, joins me on this episode to discuss their new book ACT Daily Journal: Get Unstuck and Live Fully with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (this is an affiliate link, so I will earn a small commission through your purchase which does not affect the price you pay).  The book walks readers through a series of exercises to help them become more psychologically flexible, through the practice of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).  The concepts in ACT are ones that I've found to be enormously useful both personally and in working with clients, so I'm excited to tell you about them here!   Dr. Diana Hill's Book: ACT Daily Journal: Get Unstuck and Live Fully with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Affiliate link).   Jump to highlights: (01:26) What is ACT or acceptance and Commitment Therapy (02:07) What is this thing psychological flexibility? (03:48) What are the components of psychological flexibility? (08:07) Cognitive diffusion (11:38) The idea that we could believe that our thoughts are not true is mind boggling to a lot of people (16:36) Values and parenting in particular is such a good one to discuss (18:20) Values are something that are deep within you, that you can pull upon, when you've got nothing left (19:10:) The idea of the choice point (23:36) Perspective taking is probably one of the most important skills we can do for ourselves (27:01) How do we live out committed action (33:55) Our children are naturally beginner's mind (35:18:) One of the things that actually sets humans apart from robots, is our ability to think outside the box (39:58) We can start to teach our children, that it's not about the answer. That there's many ways to solve problems (41:51) The IKEA effect (45:33) Another thing that's really important with embodiment is modeling   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan  00:03 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research on principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't listen To You and What To Do About Each One, just head on over to your YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us   Jen Lumanlan  00:48 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We have a guest here today to talk with us about a tool that I actually discovered through her show and I found it to be incredibly helpful both personally and professionally. So our guest is Dr. Diana Hill, and she's co host with three of her colleagues of the Psychologists Off The Clock podcast, and one of her co hosts is Dr. Yael Schonbrun, who we had on the show to discuss work life balance. And then Dr. Hill actually hosted me on Psychologists Off the Clock and we talked about homeschooling and social justice and parenting and stuff like that. And now she's here with us today to discuss one of her favorite topics, which is acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which is shortened to act. So Dr. Hill has just published a book with her colleague and Psychologists Off the Clock at co-host Debbie Sorensen, called Acts Daily Journal: Get unstuck and live fully with acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which isn't geared specifically toward parents, but there's so much in it that's going to help parents. So welcome Dr. Hill. It's great to have you here.   Diana Hill  01:45 Thank you, Jen, it's so good to be here with you and my interview with you is one of my favorites. So it's time to have the table's turned here and talk about ACT and and specifically around parenting because it turns out if you're more psychologically flexible as a person, it rubs off on to your parenting, and then that rubs off on to your kids too. So I love to talk more about it.   Jen Lumanlan  02:05 Yeah, awesome. So maybe we can start there with Firstly, what is this thing psychological flexibility? And why does it matter? Why does it make a difference? How does it make a difference in our lives?   Diana Hill  02:14 Well, a psychological flexibility is a construct that's been researched for decades now. And some of the research is actually starting to get into the general public. And what it is, is, it's your ability to stay present, open up to your full life experience, not get hooked by your thoughts, and orient your actions towards your values towards what really matters to you, even when life gets difficult. So you can see how even just that term could be helpful as a parent, right? And   Jen Lumanlan  02:43 keep going. I'm not saying it.   Diana Hill  02:47 And what the research has shown is that there's really these Six Core Processes, ways in which you engage with the world that help you become more psychologically flexible. And when you're psychologically flexible. Not only do you have less chances of developing things like anxiety and depression, but specifically with parenting, some of the meta analyses that are showing up with parenting is that psychologically flexible parents engage in more positive parenting practices, they're less harsh, as well as not super overly permissive, you see less spillover effects of stress onto kids. So they did some studies looking at psychological flexibility during COVID with parents and parents that were more psychologically flexible during COVID. Not only did they have less conflict in their relationship with their partners, there was less impact of the stress of COVID on their kids. This set of processes is turning out to be in the research one of the key factors in human flourishing and functioning in lots of different domains of our lives.   Jen Lumanlan  03:47 Okay, I'm convinced. So what are the components of psychological flexibility?   Diana Hill  03:52 Well, there's six of them and you can kind of think of them Steven Hayes, who's one of the cofounders of ACT or Acceptance  a Commitment Therapy talks about like sides of a box. So six sides of the box, that together build your psychological flexibility. And some of them are fairly familiar to folks we've all heard about being present. That's one of them, being able to stay present in the moment sort of mindfulness, but it's a little different in ACT being present has more to do with being present where it matters, because you can't be mindful all of the time. But in that moment, when your kid is showing, like pulling out stuff from the backpack, and they're showing you a piece of artwork and you're on your phone, this is a time to be present because they're bidding for attention. They're bidding for connection, right? So being present when it matters to you as a parent. A second process is about acceptance. And in Act, acceptance isn't sometimes that can be a term that people don't like. It's like I don't want to accept that.   Jen Lumanlan  04:52 I don't want to just roll over and let things happen.   Diana Hill  04:55 Yeah, so acceptance is not about being passive, actually acceptance is not about approval or liking something, but it's really allowing it to be, right. So for me with my youngest child, he had colic. And for the first four months of his life, he screamed, non stop. And so I did all sorts of stuff to try and make him to stop crying I, I bounced, and I walked in, I played music, and I sing. And then I remember one day, when I was so exhausted, and burned out, and just really tired of getting him to stop crying, I decided I was going to stop trying to get him to stop crying. And instead, I was going to accept that this is how he is expressing himself. He's working it out, neurologically, whatever was going on. And what I chose to do is to love him, and bond with him while he was crying, instead of trying to get him to stop. So that's an example of acceptance and Act, which is really opening up and allowing for our full inner experience.   Jen Lumanlan  05:53 Yeah. And just a pause on that for a second, how did your experience shift after that happened? Because I think that's the profound part, right? What was different for you, after you decided that you were just going to accept that?   Diana Hill  06:04 Well, I think for many of us, as parents, we've all had that experience of wanting to fix our kids. And when we're engaging and fixing, there's actually something in motivational interviewing called the fixing reflex, which is our tendency to fix things that we don't like, what it does is it actually can derail us from engaging the very values that we care about. So for me, when I was trying to get him to stop crying, I was walking around in circles of my dinner of my dinner table, and my other child was watching, like, His head was circling back and I was not engaged with him, because I was so focused on getting my child to stop crying, right. I'm not saying that we shouldn't sued or, you know, care for our crying babies. But when it becomes that you are trying to fix something, some kind of internal experience inside of yourself as a parent, and you're trying to make it go away, at the cost of you engaging in the world parenting in the way that you want to be, then it's called something called experiential avoidance, which is actually the opposite of acceptance. So for me, it was liberating my child did not he didn't cry less by me doing that I just related to the whole experience lesson, it freed me up a little bit to be there with him be present with him, which is ultimately, what he probably really needed most from me.   Jen Lumanlan  07:21 Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. Okay, so what are some of the other components of it?   Diana Hill  07:26 Okay, so there's six and you can see why Debbie, and I wrote a book on this? I'll break it down. And in the act, daily journal, we take each one of these processes, and we really do break them down into little tiny nuggets that you try out in your life day by day. So the two that we've mentioned, are more acceptance based processes. And there's another one that's really kind of fun, because it's unique to act or to these new modern approaches to psychology, so act as sort of research based approach to psychology that has taken a different approach to thoughts than what a lot of people maybe even know about, like cognitive behavioral therapy. And in Act, we do something called cognitive diffusion. And I could do a little, it's actually I think, this is best demonstrated not necessarily described, so I'm going to have you imagine or maybe if you wouldn't mind being fully my, my guinea pig. A thought that you struggle with as a parent. It could be a self critical thought, it could be some, so some of the ones that you know, are common are like, I'm not doing enough, or, you know, even as I'm talking people are listening to these psychological flexibility skills. And they're like, Oh, that's I'm not flexible. I'm not good enough.   Jen Lumanlan  08:47 Alright, let's go with, there isn't enough of me to go around that my husband and my daughter will often talk over each other at the same time asking me for things, and I feel pulled in different directions.   Diana Hill  09:00 Okay, so one of those is I feel pulled in different directions, which I would say isn't a thought that's just an experience, like that. We've all had that feeling of like, Oh, I feel pulled, I want to be in many places at once and that probably points, we'll talk a little bit more about values that probably points to some of your values, things that you care about. But there isn't enough of me to be around. What I hear in there is that that could be a sticky thought it could get in the way of you being able to be present when when your husband and child are talking over you. So I want you to imagine that thought were written across your hand, Jen, there isn't enough of me to go around. And imagine you're at the dinner table with your partner and your child. And that thought were just like really close up to your face. So imagine it's waiting on your hand and put your hand right up to your face like the thought.   Jen Lumanlan  09:48 Covering my eyes?   Diana Hill  09:49 Aha, covering your eyes. Okay. Now, if that thought were written across your hand and your hand was in the spot, how well could you see the thought for what it is? So close up to your eyes.   Jen Lumanlan  10:02 WelI, I mean, it's blocking my view, although it's blurry.   Diana Hill  10:05 It's blurry. Yeah. And if it's really close up, actually, the thought itself is blurry, you wouldn't necessarily be able to read it and how well would you be able to see your partner and your child?   Jen Lumanlan  10:17 Hmm, very little.   Diana Hill  10:18 Very little. This is what we call cognitive fusion. We're so stuck on our thoughts. We can't even see what's around us. Now, what I want you to do is slowly move your hand away from your face. Imagining that that thought is still written on your hand? And can you look down and and read the thought if it were written on your hand? Okay. And then could you look around the dinner table, engage with your partner? Have a conversation with your child? Right? Okay. And notice that I didn't cut off your hand, I didn't ask you to write a new thought on your hand.   Jen Lumanlan  10:53 Yeah, you didn't change anything about at all?   Diana Hill  10:57 Yeah, I didn't tie your hand around your back. And in fact, if I tied your hand around your back, you'd have one less hand at the dinner table to work with. Right, what we did is we did something called cognitive diffusion, which is getting a little bit of space from your thoughts. And as parents, as humans, we all have thoughts all the time running through our heads. What can get in the way of us being effective parents sometimes is when we believe those thoughts to be true. And those thoughts dictate our behavior, or they cloud us so much that we can't see what's really happening in the present.   Jen Lumanlan  11:32 Yeah, I just want to pause there on what you said, we believe our thoughts to be true. And I talked about this concept with a lot of parents over the years. And the idea that we could believe that our thoughts are not true is mind boggling to a lot of people. And I've talked to some people who have said, You know, I was grew up in a religious commune. And I was trained to believe that my thoughts were a direct channel from God, and so they must be true, they are true. So there's sort of that perspective coming through sometimes. But even if you don't have that perspective, this idea that I think things and they might not be true is absolutely mind blowing to a lot of people. What do we do with our thoughts? If they are potentially not all true? Like, how could the thing we're thinking not be true?   Diana Hill  12:16 Well, that's just that the human mind does is it produces all sorts of thoughts. And actually, when you look at some of the psychological disorders out there. Some of them have more to do with trying to stop yourself from thinking or change your thoughts than they do with just allowing the thoughts to come and go. So you know, a really good example, Insomnia. Right?. One of the things about insomnia that's really interesting is that it's this paradoxical thing that the more you try and make yourself fall asleep, the less likely you're going to sleep, right. And when you have thoughts, as you're going to bed, oftentimes, I call it the, you know, the middle of the night, sort of crisis moment where everything seems so intense and real and true. And we have to figure this out now. And it's so important that I solved this problem at 2am, which I have no way of solving, right. And then the next morning, we wake up, and we're like, oh, yeah, that wasn't, it's not as big a deal. Right? So if your thoughts were true, then you would have the same feeling at 2am, as you do at two o'clock in the afternoon.   Jen Lumanlan  13:18 It still  be a big deal. Right?   Diana Hill  13:19 It would still be a big deal. Right? So the nature of our thoughts. And what's interesting about the human mind, and sort of what neuroscience is showing is that evolutionarily, our...

  We've been in a liminal space for the last 15 months or so, since COVID shutdowns.  (The word 'liminal' comes from the Latin root limen, meaning threshold).   It’s a place where a certain part of our lives has come to an end but the next thing hasn’t yet begun, so we’re in a transitional state.   We're finally starting to see the end of this liminal state but before we can fully emerge into the new world, we need to ask ourselves: what do we want that world to be like?   Do we want to go back to what it was before?   Because the world we had before wasn't working for a lot of parents.  We were constantly rushing our children around from one activity to the next, maybe also trying to balance a career at the same time, attending thirty kids' birthday parties a year and just feeling completely spent, most of the time.   If we don't take the time to think about what we want life to be like when we reopen, chances are it'll look pretty much like it used to.  And that can seem safe!  It's always safer and easier to go back to what we know, rather than forward to what is unknown and scary.   What would something different even look like?   Maybe we would have fewer friends, whom we know much better.   Maybe we would do fewer activities, and spend a bit more time being, rather than always doing.   Maybe we would actually support families financially instead of having a 'families are the bedrock of our society...but you're on your own to provide for it' approach.   In this Mother's Day Momifesto, I explore all of these issues, and encourage you to think about how YOU want to be in this new world.   And if you need help figuring it out, the Parenting Membership is here to help.  We'll support you through the challenges of today (how to prevent tantrums!  raising healthy eaters!  navigating screen time!) while keeping an eye on where we want to go.  Because you need both.   Join the waitlist and we'll let you know when enrollment reopens in May 2026. Click the banner to learn more.   Jump to highlights 01:27 The Mother's Day Momifesto 02:04 COVID shutdown 04:28 School reopenings 07:04 18% of women in the US have taken antidepressants 09:29 We try to control our bodies in a variety of ways 12:27 Success is defined for men 19:38 Women working communities 20:25 Plenty of parents and children's needs are not met by the school system 22:47 Intersectionality - the idea that different parts of our identities intersect 25:10 Public transit systems are geared around men 26:17 Contribution of scientific research on COVID 19- women scientists have published 19% fewer papers as lead author 29:26 Standard Body Mass Index calculations are based on the weight of White people 31:41 Nonviolent Communication 34:06 How we can begin to make a difference 44:55 Learning how to meet our own needs is a great place to start 46:44 Reopening of your Parenting Membership will close on the midnight of May 12   References Andersen, J.P., Nielsen, M.W., Simone, N.L., Lewiss, R.E., & Jagsi, R. (2020). COVID-19 medical papers have fewer women first authors than expected. Elife 9 (2020): e58807. Belsha, K., Rubinkam, M., LeMee, G.L., & Fenn, L. (2020, September 11). A nationwide divide: Hispanic and Black students more likely than White students to start the year online. Chalkbeat. Retrieved from https://www.chalkbeat.org/2020/9/11/21431146/hispanic-and-black-students-more-likely-than-white-students-to-start-the-school-year-online Brody, D.J., & Gu, Q. (2020, September). Antidepressant use among adults: United States, 2015-2018. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved from: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db377.htm#:~:text=During%202015%E2%80%932018%2C%2013.2%25%20of%20adults%20used%20antidepressants%20in,those%20aged%2060%20and%20over. Brody, D.J., Pratt, L.A., & Hughes, J.P. (2018 February).  Prevalence of depression among adults aged 20 and over: United States, 2013-2016. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db303.htm Cevic, M., Haque, S.A., Manne-Goehler, J., Sax, P., Majumder, M.S., & Orkin, C. (2021). Gender disparities in coronavirus disease 2019 clinical trial leadership. Clinical Microbiology and Infection (in press). Retrieved from https://www.clinicalmicrobiologyandinfection.com/article/S1198-743X(20)30785-0/fulltext Coaston, J. (2019, May 28). The intersectionality wars. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist policies. University of Chicago Legal Forum Vol. 1989, Iss. 1, Article 8. Retrieved from https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5780707-Demarginalizing-the-Intersection-of-Race-and-Sex Gurrieri, L., Previte, J., & Brace-Govan, J. (2012). Women’s bodies as sites of control: Inadvertent stigma and exclusion in social marketing. Journal of Macromarketing 33(2), 128-143. Jackson, A.S., Ellis, K.J., McFarlin, B.K., Sailors, M.H., & Bray, M.S. (2009). Body mass index in defining obesity of diverse young adults: The Training Intervention and Genetics of Exercise Response (TIGER) study. British Journal of Nutrition 102(7), 1084-1090. Kassova, L. (2020, September 8). The missing perspectives of women in COVID-19 news: A special report on women’s under-representation in news media. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.iwmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2020.09.16-FULL-COVID-REPORT.pdf Lewis, H. (2021, March 18). It’s time to lift the female lockdown. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/03/sarah-everard-and-female-lockdown/618321/ Livingston, G. (2018, January 18). They’re waiting longer, but U.S. women today more likely to have children than a decade ago. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/01/18/theyre-waiting-longer-but-u-s-women-today-more-likely-to-have-children-than-a-decade-ago/ National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. (n.d.). Criminal justice fact sheet. Author. Retrieved from https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/ National Equity Atlas (n.d.). Car access: Everyone needs reliable transportation acces and in most American communities that means a car. Author. Retrieved from https://nationalequityatlas.org/indicators/Car_access#/ Nuttall, F.Q. (2015). Body Mass Index. Obesity, BMI, and health: A critical review. Butrition Today 50(3), 117-128. Office for National Statistics (n.d.). Homicide in England and Wales: Year ending March 2020. Author. Retrieved from https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/homicideinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2020#groups-of-people-most-likely-to-be-victims-of-homicide Plank, L. (2019). For the love of men: From toxic to a more mindful masculinity. New York: St. Martin’s. Spohn, C. (2017). Race and sentencing disparity. Reforming Criminal Justice: A Report of the Academy for Justice on Bridging the Gap Between Scholarship and Reform 4, 1690186. Retrieved from https://law.asu.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/academy_for_justice/9_Criminal_Justice_Reform_Vol_4_Race-and-Sentencing-Disparity.pdf The New York Times (2021, April 5). As we look ahead to life after the pandemic, many people are wondering what will be different in our lives. Author. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/05/us/coronavirus-pandemic.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage The White House (2021, April 28). Fact sheet: The American families plan. Author. Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/28/fact-sheet-the-american-families-plan/    

This episode grew out of a post that long-time friend of the podcast, Dr. Laura Froyen, published in a respectful parenting group that we both work in as admins.  In the post she asked people to share how they felt before and after they discovered respectful parenting, and then she created a word cloud of the results.   The words in the 'before' cloud were perhaps predictable - things like 'worried,' 'overwhelmed,' 'resentful,' and 'guilty.'   And the most common word in the 'after respectful parenting' word cloud?   Exhausted.   What on earth is going on here?   In this episode I explore five important reasons why respectful parenting is so hard - and what to do about each of them.   Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits If you want to make your own transformation from a relationship where your child JUST DOESN’T LISTEN to one where you have mutual care and respect for each other’s needs, then the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop is for you. Go from constant struggles and nagging to a new sense of calm & collaboration. I will teach you how to set limits, but we'll also go waaaay beyond that to learn how to set fewer limits than you ever thought possible. Sign up for the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop.   Click the banner to learn more.     Jump to highlights: 01:00 Why we find parenting so hard 01:18 Most prominent words before parents discovered respectful parenting 01:58 Five reasons respectful parenting can be hard 03:03 1st reason: Our needs that our parents just didn’t see despite doing the best they could 05:22 The trauma of unmet needs 06:09 2nd reason: The long game that is respectful parenting 08:54 Our culture trains us to want results 09:56 3rd reason: Our values and what we want to do in an ideal world 10:39 Alfie Kohn’s Unconditional Parenting 13:38 Our child's behavior brings up old trauma 14:10 Shifting the way we see our children 15:12 4th reason: When we see these values that we want to live 16:37 The tendency to engage in negative self-talk 17:58 Self compassion and mindfulness 19:11 The last (and perhaps not the last) reason 24:47 Super short summary information.

  "You're doing it wrong!  You're not asking for consent before changing the diaper!" In this Sharing Your Parenting Mojo episode we meet parent Nicole, who has core values related to being empathic, constantly learning, and upholding justice in the world.  These awesome values came together in a difficult way when Nicole became a parent: she had a deep fear of not getting parenting right, so she was constantly reading and trying to find that one piece of information that would close the gap between her struggles and the kind of parent she wanted to be.   The stress of parenting an infant brought out a controlling side of her where she attempted to script every aspect of her (and her husband's) interactions with her child, thinking they had already screwed up parenting because he hadn't asked their child's consent before changing her diaper.   Nicole was raised by a single parent who had had a traumatic upbringing, and Nicole grew up sometimes feeling scared by her mother's oversized reactions to normal childhood behavior.  She knew she wanted more for her children - but didn't know what to do.  Over the last year she's been working on 'reparenting' herself so she doesn't have to parent from a place of fear any more, and can relax into understanding her children's feelings - and her own and her partner's feelings as well.   Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits If you want to make your own transformation from a relationship where your child JUST DOESN’T LISTEN to one where you have mutual care and respect for each other’s needs, then the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop is for you. Go from constant struggles and nagging to a new sense of calm & collaboration. I will teach you how to set limits, but we'll also go waaaay beyond that to learn how to set fewer limits than you ever thought possible. Sign up for the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop.   Click the banner to learn more.     Jump to highlights: 03:19 Nicole's background 04:36 Nicole's parenting beliefs and values 06:31 Teaching respect by giving respect 08:07 Fear and anxiety of not getting parenting right 09:32 How inter generational trauma show up in your family 11:37 The unexpected reparenting piece 13:35 How talking about death with children led Nicole to my work 15:13 Nicole's experience with the Parenting Membership 18:32 What shifted in Nicole's that made her decide to take the Membership 19:17 Realizing the most unconditional thing you can do for your kids 20:12 Relationships our complex yet we don't think that way when it comes to our relationship with our children 21:08 Nicole's incredible example of how she shows up for her children and handles things differently now compared to before 24:45 Becoming more confident in parenting 26:09 Having the language to talk about our needs 28:39 How Nicole and her husband wants to model conflict to their children 34:44 Wrapping up   Resource links: Setting Loving (& Effective) Limits Workshop The Parenting Membership

  "Do you know what happens to your body when you get older?"   "Um...you get hairy in some places?"   "Yeah...other things happen too.  We'll get you some books."   That was what I learned about sex education when I was seven - I was always grateful that I learned it from my parents (who were pretty terrified to talk about it,  I think) rather than from the other kids at school.  But then the topic wasn't mentioned again until I was about 18, with a vague reference to "being careful" with my first boyfriend, whom I wasn't even sleeping with yet.   Friends: we have to do more than this if we want our children to be able to show up in relationships as fulfilled human beings who understand what pleasure is, how to ask for it, and how to give it.   We need our children to know that sex does not have to equal intercourse, and that there are a whole host of ways to enjoy our (and each other's) bodies without doing this if we don't want to do it (when they're ready for it!).   And we need to help our children understand boundaries so they can protect themselves when they need to - without getting so caught up in the shame that pervades our thinking about sex.  (Since the sex = shame narrative is deeply pervasive in our culture I don't think we can overcome it completely, but we can make a start...).   In this episode we build on our conversation with Charlotte Rose about sex for us parents to go (far) Beyond Sex Ed with sex educator Dr. Nadine Thornhill, whose direct, fun, engaging style will help you to see that you, too, can have conversations about sex and pleasure with your own children.  You can find more information on Dr. Thornhill's work on her YouTube channel where she addresses topics from what happens if the kid walk in on parents having sex to whether first time sex always hurts, as well as on Instagram.   Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits    If you want to make your own transformation from a relationship where your child JUST DOESN’T LISTEN to one where you have mutual care and respect for each other’s needs, then the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop is for you.   Go from constant struggles and nagging to a new sense of calm & collaboration. I will teach you how to set limits, but we'll also go waaaay beyond that to learn how to set fewer limits than you ever thought possible. Sign up for the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop.   Click the banner to learn more.       Jump to highlights: 00:01 Setting Loving and Effective Limits Workshop 02:18 Where we’re at with our mini-series on issues related to sex 03:34 Introducing our guest, Dr. Nadine Thornhill 04:54 The importance of continuing the conversation about sex beyond the basic topics 09:17 Figuring out what kinds of things I need to teach my children and how 12:22 The value of showing our vulnerability to our children 14:45 Talking about the traditional ways we talk about sex and how can we change that narrative 19:03 Having conversations around pleasure of the non-sexual kind 23:27 Modelling intimacy to our children without overdoing it 25:41 Helping our children set boundaries even when we’re having trouble setting boundaries ourselves 31:53 Dr. Thornhill’s son’s case of the “hangry” and how he came to develop recognizing physical signs before he gets hangry 33:41 Talking about shame associated with the White, Christian view of sex 40:34 Talking about bodies and nudity that doesn’t rely on shame 43:07 Going a little deeper into consent and the Authentic Consent Framework 50:48 The House and the Superintendent Metaphor 53:23 How parents can leave more space and be supportive of the potential suite of options about a child’s sexuality 57:46 Should we wait to teach our children about aspects of sex and sexuality until they ask? 01:02:11 Wrapping up   Guest links: Nadine’s website Nadine’s e-books Nadine’s Instagram Nadine’s YouTube Channel   Episodes mentioned: 021: Talk Sex Today! 096: How to prevent sexual abuse 097: How to support gender-creative children   Resource links: FREE Setting Loving (& Effective) Limits Workshop  Sex Is A Funny Word, by Cory Silverberg The Nap Ministry Outspoken Sex Ed

After dinner a few days ago, Carys randomly started telling us that if we want to understand some of the things she's feeling, we should cast our minds back to when we were children and remember how we would have felt about it at the time.  The conversation continued as we explored more of her feelings when she's having difficult moments, and at some point someone (recollections differ on exactly who it was!) suggested we record a podcast episode about it. Carys was immediately on board and wanted to do it right away, but we came back to it the next afternoon.  She thinks that parents often don't understand how their children are feeling and she'd like suggest ways to help your children when they're behaving in a way that may seem 'difficult' to you.   Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits If you want to make your own transformation from a relationship where your child JUST DOESN’T LISTEN to one where you have mutual care and respect for each other’s needs, then the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop is for you. Go from constant struggles and nagging to a new sense of calm & collaboration. I will teach you how to set limits, but we'll also go waaaay beyond that to learn how to set fewer limits than you ever thought possible. Sign up now for the self-guided Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits. Click the banner to learn more.       Jump to highlights: (01:00) My special guest in her podcasting debut (02:18) What helps to understand your kid's feelings (03:18) Feeling the physical sensations of frustration (03:42) What Carys feels when she get 'that feeling' (04:19) Parents don't really understand that children sometimes want to be alone (06:07) Different kids deal with things in different ways (07:34) Our new method for when we disagree on things (10:37) We have rewards now (11:46) Carys's thoughts on problem solving   Links: Setting Limits Workshop     [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen [00:00] Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a free guide called 13 reasons why your child isn't listening to you and what to do about each one, just head on over to YourParentingMojo.com/Subscribe.   You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the free Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen [01:00] Hello and welcome to the, Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. I'm Jen. Who are you?   This is Carys in her world podcasting debut. So if you're not watching this on YouTube, you might want to watch it on YouTube cause then you'll get to see both of us. And so we were having a conversation last night about feelings, right? Yeah. And so I, we were having, you were having ice cream and I was doing dishes.   And all of a sudden you started talking about how you feel when you're having a hard time. And daddy said, You should be in a podcast.   Carys [01:37] Actually, I think I said that.   Jen [01:39] Oh, you did? Oh okay, and daddy agreed. And we were going to do it last night, but you had an appointment to talk to auntie Jas, didn't you? You couldn't do both. So here we are today to talk about feelings.   So how old are you?   Carys [01:52] Six and a half.   Jen [01:53] Six and a half. Okay. You're almost six and three quarters. Aren't you?   Carys [01:56] Yeah. I was going to say that but like....   Jen [02:00] Okay. How many loose teeth do you have? Oh, yeah. Got to be on YouTube to get that one. The two front teeth are wobbly and have been wobbly for a while aren't they? So do you remember what we were talking about last night? Why you started telling us about your feelings? I was trying to remember, and I couldn't remember.   Carys [02:18] I think I just remembered  that it just helps to understand your kids' feelings when you just look back and see a time when you were feeling like that.   Jen [02:32] Oh, that's right. Yeah. That is what you said, isn't it? Yeah. And I was trying to understand more about what you meant by that.   Yeah. Thanks for reminding me about that. And so you were trying to tell us some things about how you feel when you were frustrated. Right? Can you tell us a bit about that?   Carys [02:48] I felt that sometimes maybe somebody, I felt that people weren't really paying attention to me, actually.   Jen [02:58] Okay. And what's it like when you feel like people aren't paying attention to you?   Carys [03:01] It's hard that I don't really want to be with them, or something tells me not to.   Jen [03:08] Okay. So what you're saying is when, uh, when we say something that you don't agree with, is that right? That's when that happens?   Carys [03:18] Yeah.   Jen [03:18] Yeah. Okay. And what, what happens in your body then? What, what kind of things do you feel in your body?   Carys [03:24] Sometimes I just feel like people don't care about me that much.   Jen [03:34] Oh, really? Huh. And does that, do you feel that in your stomach or in your head?   Carys [03:41] Just everywhere.   Jen [03:42] Really. Okay. And so what do you do normally when you get that feeling?   Carys [03:48] I usually like when I'm almost always frustrated, just go in my room.   Jen [03:55] Okay. And sometimes you can seem a little angry to us, right? Like sometimes you close the door or if we try to go to you, you say that you want to be by yourself and you can say it and kind of allowed voice, right? What does it feel like when you're saying that?   Carys [04:11] I just really want to be alone because it helps to... for me to calm down.   Jen [04:19] Okay. And I think that was one of the things that made us want to do the podcast, wasn't it? Was because you were explaining how you think that parents don't really understand that their children sometimes just want to be alone.   Carys [04:32] Yeah. Cause I usually, I sometimes just shut the door on you because I, I just don't want to tell you. And I feel like I can't talk to you at all. So I just shut the door cause I don't want, cause I want to be left alone.   Jen [04:49] And how does being alone help you? How does that help you feel differently?   Carys [04:52] It's just... talking kind of distracts me from everything a little bit.   Jen [04:57] Oh, okay. So when you're, when you're alone by yourself, it seems like you're able to calm yourself down better, right? Like it's easier for you to calm down by yourself then when you're with other people. So, um, I've noticed that then once you've calmed down, you usually come out again. Yeah?   Carys [05:14] Yeah.   Jen [05:15] And then how do you feel?   Carys [05:19] So like sad or something, but I usually just wander around for a little bit.   Jen [05:28] Yeah. And so I'm wondering if there are things that you would like us to do when you're frustrated that we don't do now.   Carys [05:38] Usually it's just if you see me shut the door, that means I don't want you to come in, but you can, but you can still like go into the doorway where your kid is and if they shut the door, it probably means they want to be left alone but if they let you come in, they probably actually really want to be with you.   Jen [06:07] Okay. So you think different kids deal with things in different ways? And that parents can maybe listen to their kids?   Carys [06:14] Yeah. And sometimes I feel usually that I only let you come in cause daddy sometimes just makes me feel even more frustrated.   Jen [06:24] Yeah. We've talked about that, right? How daddy and I were raised very differently than the ways we are raising you. And sometimes it's hard to stop doing things from the way that you learned them when you were growing up, right? Do you remember what you told me when I said that to you last time, a few weeks ago, that we were doing things differently, you said "I'm so glad we're doing things differently."   You remember that?   Carys [06:47] No.   Jen [06:49] No? Yeah. So, um, so I'm wondering if there's anything else that you want parents to know about things that children might be feeling that maybe their children can't tell their parents about?   Carys [07:05] It could be just; they don't really want to see their parents  that much actually.   Jen [07:13] In that moment?   Carys [07:14] And they could just run like  kind of sneak around and wander around.   Jen [07:20] You mean when they're having a hard time?   Carys [07:22] Uh hmm.   Jen [07:22] Okay. Because they need to be by themselves?   Carys [07:24] Uh huh. But they really want to play. So I usually when I want to do that, I just wander around...   Jen [07:32] Yeah?   Carys [07:33] ...the house usually.   Jen [07:34] And so when we do disagree about things, sometimes you get frustrated, right. And then after you've calmed down, we usually.. . There's something we usually do, right?   Carys [07:45] Hmmmm talk about it?   Jen [07:47] Yeah. We have a problem solving conversation. Yeah. And we've been doing those in a new way. Haven't we. Do you want to hold up the diagram, the picture you got to kind of hold it kind of between us so that people can see it?   And so what was happening here? What was happening with this problem?   Carys [08:05] I did not want to brush my teeth.   Jen [08:09] There's the two, there's my toothbrush drawing in the middle and with a big X through it. And then you drew that didn't you? What's that for?   Carys [08:17] Loving teeth. Brushing, no.   Jen [08:23] Yeah. And so we started talking about the reasons why you don't like toothbrushing and you said like, there's you up here. So you look tired cause you didn't like doing it when you're tired and uh, Oh, you, you don't like holding your arm up. So there's you with your arms down. There's you're excited for story time. You liked that one, didn't you? With your holding the book. And then we talked about how you felt about it and that, uh, you often felt frustrated when we tell you to brush your teeth and that it's time to brush your teeth and also mad because you feel, you said again, that I feel like you don't care about me.   And there was one of the things I paid with the toothbrush being loud. Right. You didn't like that either. And so what did we talk about from there? Oh and tooth toothbrushing is boring and it takes too long. It was a whole lot of things you didn't like about toothbrushing wasn't there. And, uh, let's see.   Do we, do we, I guess we didn't look at, um, daddy's and my feelings on this one, did we? Um, cause we had already looked at it with other problem-solving issues, but we talked about some ideas that we could do. You had an idea of brushing every other night instead of every night. So we wrote that down, uh, brushing  after every meal.   Carys [09:43] That wouldn't work.   Jen [09:44] Yeah, you actually, you didn't you say you were going to brush after breakfast this morning. Isn't that what the one number one was for on the floor?   Carys [09:53] Whaaat?   Jen [09:53] Can you turn it around a little bit? Cause I think people can't see you. They're just looking at the back of your head right now.   And you said do it whenever you feel like it in the day. We talked about that, didn't we? The problem with that though, was that then if you don't do it right before bed, the bacteria can be on your teeth. All night. You said find a way to remember to brush after right after dinner. Oh, and that was that the pizza that you drew to represent dinner?   Yeah. And so where did we end up with toothbrushing? It wasn't a place that I would've thought we would have ended up. What are we doing right now? Can you turn around and people can see you? You're sort of facing backwards.   Carys [10:28] Doing two months of brushing teeth. Well, anytime your dinner basically.   Jen [10:37] Yeah. After dinner, right?   Yeah. And then the part about it that I, it wasn't what I thought it would be was you get a reward at the end of it, don't you? What's your reward?   Carys [10:49] Well, a sticker book at the end of the month and also talk about the money.   Jen [10:58] The money? Oh, yeah. Daddy didn't daddy offered to pay you. How much was it? I forgot. Oh, we wrote it down 25 cents for seven days in a row of brushing.   Oh. And there was supposed to be a bonus for two times a day, wasn't there? You forgot about the bonus, didn't you? You can bring that back. So, yeah. So I started looking at ways that we could help you brush your teeth and one of the first things that came up was 'You should reward your child.' And I said that, and you said, I want to do that. Right? So you picked your own reward. You got a ring there, don't you? Okay. Um, I think this is going to make it hard for people to watch.   So I'm wondering you have a lot of practice at problem solving now, don't you? What do you think of problem solving?   Carys [11:54] I think it's actually very, very fun.   Jen [11:58] Yeah? What makes it fun?   Carys [11:59] It's just that I find the pictures sometimes really, really silly.   Jen [12:06] Yes, you do. And what do you think about the ideas that we come up with in problem solving?   Carys [12:13] Pretty good. Yeah.   Jen [12:15] Yeah? They usually work for you in some way?   Carys [12:17] Some way, yeah.   Jen [12:18] Yeah. And then what happens if, if it ends up not working out, what did we do after that?   Carys [12:23] Problem solving.   Jen [12:24] More problem-solving, right? Yeah. If one of us decides that, Ooh, stacked rings. Um, do you want another one of those?   If one of us decides that it isn't working, then we have another conversation and we say, Oh, we thought this was going to work and actually parts of it. It's not working for one of us. Can we have another conversation? And then do we sometimes get to solutions that work better do you think?   Carys [12:47] Yeah.   Jen [12:49] Yeah. Okay. So I'm wondering if there's anything else that you think parents should know about their children's feelings or about solving problems with their children?   Carys [13:01] Well, I would just suggest when you see your kid wandering around, try not to interrupt them cause it sometimes makes me a little bit more frustrated when you do.   Jen [13:16] Yeah? Okay. So, so each child might do a different thing, right? Not all children might do the wandering around thing, but maybe if parents can see what their child does they can think, okay. Maybe my child needs to do that and I should give them a little bit of space.? Yeah. And you think that would help their children?   Carys [13:35] Yeah. Cause I feel like probably most children like to be alone or really like to be with their parents.   Jen [13:44] Yeah. And it's our job to figure out which one of those our child wants.   Yeah. And it will be different for each child. And then if we can do that, we can help you to feel calmer, and then we can feel calmer as well cause sometimes it's hard for us when our children are doing things that we find difficult to understand. Ooh, you got three rings together. All right. So if parents want to know more about understanding their children's feelings and doing problem solving conversations, I'm hosting a workshop which is called Setting Loving and Effective Limits. And we do actually learn a little bit about setting limits, but most of what we learn about is how to set way fewer limits. We don't actually have many limits for free, right? The things that you can't do?   Carys [14:35] I found 8.   Jen [14:35] You did find an 8. Should we show people the eight here's the eight. And so, if you want to learn how to set way fewer limits than you ever thought possible, and also learn some of the problem solving techniques that Carys and I use on a regular basis, you can go to YourParentingMojo.com/SettingLimits, and we will be there for a weeklong workshops starting on Monday, April 26. And we'll walk through the whole thing with you and we'll get you super comfortable with using these ways of being with your children so that you can respond to them effectively... wow. Look at that. You're making rolled up art... even when they're having difficult feelings. Is there anything else you want to say?   How do you use when we're, when you're doing little videos around the house, how do you wrap them up?   Carys [15:24] Usually with thank you...

Today we build on episodes that we've done in the past on talking with children about the basics of sex (so when you listen to this episode we're assuming you've got the basics covered - things like using anatomically correct names for body parts and taking basic steps to prevent sexual abuse).   This is the first in a mini-series of episodes that digs deeper into topics related to sex.  Here we talk with Charlotte Rose, co-host of the Speaking of Sex podcast by the Pleasure Mechanics, about what and how we adults learned about sex. We talk about the shame that pretty much all of us learned to associate with sex (and how to overcome that), and what we can do to improve the chances of having sex with our partner - even if we're feeling so tired that this currently seems out of the question.   We're setting the stage here to approach sex from a less pressured, more fun perspective - which will help us in an upcoming episode to figure out what we want to discuss with our children about sex, sexuality, and pleasure.   Jump to highlights: (01:00) Today's topic and Parenting Membership reopening announcement (02:20) Setting Loving and Effective Limits workshop announcement (03:55) Chris and Charlotte Rose the Pleasure Mechanics (05:16) The primary focus of today's episode (06:09) Sex isn't what it used to be before we became parents (08:39) Responsive desire and spontaneous desire (09:17) Erotic simulation and how there is nothing wrong with your sexual relationship (11:54) Creating a culture of pleasure within your relationship (14:42) Continual consent - it doesn't always need to lead to sex (15:34) Sex is adults at play (17:37) Sex educations centered around abstinence, secrecy, and shame and how we move forward from that (20:39) A parenting opportunity to create a different culture for our children, so that they have to unlearn so much less with regards to sex (22:35) How does shame show up in parents' sexual relationship? (25:21) So much judgment about sexuality and how it gets in the way of our connection with our partner (29:04) A culture of community care to have these conversations (29:49) Initiation and refusal/rejection (34:36) Mindful sex: How to enjoy sex more (39:27) Finding that balance when having the sex conversation with our children (42:23) Giving kids the building blocks so that they can have an experience to healthy sexuality when it is time for them (45:39) Experiencing self massage in a non sexual way (50:16) Body neutrality (51:36) Wrapping up   Here are the resources we discussed on the show:   Pleasure Mechanics Resources Charlotte & Chris' free online course The Erotic Essentials Conversation starters about sex Podcast episode on spontaneous vs. responsive desire Podcast episode on mindful sex (making sex better through focusing on the present) Podcast episode on body image     Other Resources AASECT therapist referral directory Peer-reviewed article on the 237 reasons people have sex Guy Winch's TED Talk on How to Practice Emotional First Aid, as well as more explicit resources on why rejection hurts so much - and in peer-reviewed form too Research on mindful sex Outspoken Sex Ed     Made for you by Jen: The Parenting Membership FREE Setting Loving and Effective Limits Workshop   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen  00:02 Hi, I’m Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want her children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research on principles of Respectful Parenting. if you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't Listen to You, and What to Do About Each One, just head over to YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen  01:00 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We have a bit of a different episode lined up for you today, and if you usually listen to the show with your children around, you might want to reconsider that one today because we're going to be talking about S-E-X. And now we have thousands of little kids around the world asking, "What's S-E-X?" So before we get started with this awesome conversation, I wanted to let you know about a couple things happening in the Your Parenting Mojo world. Firstly, open enrollment for the Parenting Membership is coming up starting on May 2. The membership helps families to take information from the podcast and provides the guidance and the support that you need to help you implement these ideas in your own home with your own family. So whether you're struggling with parenting at the moment and wondering how much longer can things keep going like this, or if you're seeing the vaccine-related light at the end of the tunnel and thinking it's not going to be like this forever, and you're looking for tools to support you through that transition, as well as the normal day to day challenges that will still keep coming up as we all get back to real life, the Parenting membership provides the support that you need to not just survive, but thrive in your parenting journey. I’ll share more in the coming weeks. But in the meantime, you can go to YourParentingMojo.com/ParentingMembership to learn more about the membership. And while you're there, you can join the waitlist if you'd like to be the first to be notified when it reopens.   Jen  02:20 For those of you who might be interested in the membership but would like to dip a toe in the water first or if you can't wait and you need help ASAP then I have some news for you there too. i've just reopened registration for my Setting Loving and Effective Limits Workshop. Normally this is available to pay for and work through at your own pace, but starting Monday, April 26, I will walk you through the whole thing in a series of exercise to help you see limits in an entirely different way. You'll have a little bit of reading and a short exercise to do each day for five days and a supportive community that isn't on Facebook to ask questions and get answers in the community as well as through a masterclass call, where you'll get the chance to ask me questions directly. if you find yourself setting a lot of limits on your children's behavior and they aren't listening to you or they're actively defying you. in the workshop, you'll learn how to cut the number of limits you set by at least half while also not becoming the dreaded permissive parent whose child walks all over them. Parents who go through the workshop report that the tone of the interactions they have in their family makes a huge shift after they learn these tools. And suddenly their children who used to resist every single little thing, are now willing to do amazing things like cooperate, and collaborate, and compromise. So if you could use some more of these things in your life, then head on over to YourParentingMojo.com/SettingLimits to register for the FREE Setting Loving and Effective Limits workshop. Registrations open now and the workshop get started on Monday, April 26. I’ll see you there.   Jen  03:55 So we were supposed to have two guests today, Chris and Charlotte Rose, who are a couple and who are known as the Pleasure Mechanics, and they are also the host of the podcast Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. And unfortunately Chris is in some gastrointestinal distress and is unable to join us today, but Charlotte has gamely agreed to appear with us, and we're hoping that Chris will be available on a future date to continue the conversation. So I found Chris and Charlotte in a really random way because I was exploring a blog post that therapists Dr. Esther Perel had written called the 7 Verbs That Shaped the Way You Love., and we were looking at that in the Parenting Membership Community because one of the important ways that we've learned about these verbs is through our relationships with our children. And we learned about these through our interactions with our parents. And so the most interesting and useful analysis that I found that super short blog post was in a podcast hosted by our new friends Chris and Charlotte and when I started digging into their work, I realized that I wanted to explore so much more about the ways that our children learn about being in relationships as well as about sex from us. And so I’m not just talking about the anatomically correct terminology and how to spot sexual abuse because we have done episodes on both of those things but how to help children understand boundaries and communication and pleasure in their intimate relationships.   Jen  05:16 And so today we're going to focus primarily on the parents angle at this and then we will have more guests, hopefully Chris and some other guests as well in the future, looking at how our children learn about this and what our children are learning and what we want to be teaching them about this. So to formally introduce them, Chris who wishes she were here and Charlotte who is here have very similar bios. Reading through their bios, they both studied Sociology as undergrads, then Sexological Bodywork and then Somatic Sexology and then erotic massage and they've been creating online resources on erotic education since 2006. The internet was a thing in 2006. And they're also parents of a six-year-old so welcome Charlotte today and welcome in spirit to Chris as well.   Charlotte Rose  06:04 Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here and yes...   Charlotte Rose  06:06 Chris is so sorry not to be here but hopefully you will chat another moment. Yeah.   Jen  06:06 Yeah.   Jen  06:09 Yeah I hope so too. Awesome! Well we are really glad to have you here and we're wondering if maybe we can kind of ease into this topic with something that I’m guessing affects a lot of parents and maybe you're not immune from this either despite all of your training and that is that sex probably isn't what it used to be before we became parents. And we actually use the term kind of broadly in our lives B.C. to mean Before Carys which is our daughter's name and so we might say something like "Oh, we used to do X like mountain biking Before Carys - B.C. -  and of course sex is one of those things that can fit into that framework as well. And so I’m curious with all the people that you work with I’m sure many of them are parents, how common is this in among the people that you work with?   Charlotte Rose  06:52 It is so common and I really want people to know that that it is so normal and it makes so much sense that it is harder to prioritize sex in these early years of having kids especially some experts say that up to kind of when your youngest kid is four or five that your life just is so different in this area and it makes sense like our focus of attention is so on this little being all of a sudden and that changes the relational dynamics entirely in your family, in your relationship. We just don't have enough time to take care of ourselves to rest to sleep. Our hormones have changed our experience of our body has changed. Even for non-carrying parents which is also interesting to think about like the oxytocin levels we're getting from looking at our baby is nourishing in a way and we sometimes don't need it as much from our partner and somebody can feel left out because of that. There are just hundreds of dynamics going on depending on your specific family but the similarities are that it is extremely hard to create time and have the energy to be able to really cultivate this part of our life. And we really like to remember that there are seasons of sexuality in our lifetime and that this one is a harder one and partly if we can go at it knowing that that's normal and that we want to stay connected as much as possible so when we get to the other side of that we still want to be having sex with this person and that we feel connected and supported enough that we are interested and want to keep our sexual relationship going. I also want to tell people that like I cannot tell you how many like late 50s, 60s, 70-year-olds report they're having the best sex of our lives. So also just want to know that there is hope ahead because I found that really like surprising and interesting when I first kept hearing this message.   Charlotte Rose  08:39 But one of the important things I want people to know to be able to shift this slowly and to try and increase the amount of connection and intimate connection we can be having is to really know about this idea of responsive desire versus spontaneous desire because this is something that has been studied and it's so important to know. So we have this cultural idea that we experience desire first and then arousal. And often that is how men experience arousal but that's not even always true. But in reality there is this whole... so it's sort of like a lightning bolt hits you...   Jen  09:14 Yeah like how it happens in the movies.   Charlotte Rose  09:17 That's how we think of right like what happens in Hollywood films so we've been trained like that is what sex is and anyone who deviates from that is broken or not normal and there's something wrong with you. But in reality there's this whole other way of being with our desire and arousal where we're not that