Art Creativity & Wellbeing

I'm so excited about this episode, part of our Summer Camp series in which we are setting aside our usual four themes (3R's, Unplanned Adventures, Kids through the Ages, and Risky Business), pouring a nice tall glass of iced tea – or Long Island Ice Tea, depending on your age and what time of day it is – and going on vacation! We will return to our regularly scheduled programming in September, but for now… Let's just enjoy summer!Today's guest spends her work days helping her clients love their outdoor spaces – and then along with her husband and their three young children, she spends her free time loving and improving their own outdoor space. Jill Brown of mylandscapecoach.com really practices what she preaches, cultivating not just plants but community in all areas of her life.And she has some great tips for us to do exactly the same! Listen for:the value of hanging out, not in your backyard, but in your front yard – this is where friendships are made, trust and community are built, and fun is hadthree fabulous ways to interact with your neighbors: putting a Little Library into your neighborhood, basically a small waterproof hut in which people leave books that they're done with, or take books they're interested in; putting in a Magazine Box similar to the Little Library; and using a utility pole as a Poetry Pole, a place for neighborhood poets of all ages to have their stuff exhibitedfun and inexpensive yard play equipment that you can build, like a simple disc swing or a fence made of electrical conduitJill's blog at mylandscapecoach.com has examples and ideas for customizing these concepts for your own yard, plus it's just a fun place to look for inspiration! I know you're going to love our conversation today because Jill has many great ideas that you can use immediately to enjoy life more outside with your young children.If you love something that we talked about in this episode, and went out and built something based on it, please let us know! Email me at Karen@weturnedoutokay.com, or just go to the contact page, weturnedoutokay.com/contact, and drop me a line. I'm going to be shouting about my favorites on the show, I hope yours is one of them :-) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaylockkolp.substack.com/subscribe

This week, we take a temporary break from We Turned Out Okay's Summer Camp series so that I can help you know how to talk with your children when a challenge arises.Sometimes, even in beautiful summer, bad things happen, and today I share about the tough situation my family and I have found ourselves in over the last several weeks. But rest assured – we've still got three lovely, golden August weeks left to enjoy summer and we will do so!One last thing before we get into the notes, this show has an epilogue, so after I have said "thanks for listening, see you next time" you still want to keep listening – I have something to share about both the Q&A, and about our dogs.… Not exactly a Hollywood ending, but a better one then I had ever thought could happen!A Breakdown of Today's ShowToday's show is split into two parts, but before I get to those there is a really neat thing I wanted to share – friend-of-the-podcast Muttaqi Ismael, an amazing whiteboard video artist, has turned a favorite part of We Turned Out Okay: episode 5 – Four Risks That We Take With Our Children's Well-Being Every Day into a fantastic whiteboard video! He's a very talented guy, and to see the video just go to weturnedoutokay.com/017, where it is embedded… My plan is to give the video its own blog post during this month of August. Meantime, enjoy! And thank you Muttaqi – you did a great job!Our First Q&A!And now on to the Q&A – Jill asks: "why are my three kids awesome at swim lessons when daycare brings them, but when mommy brings them I'm practically holding their hand in the water (and that's if they actually get in the water) – we've been doing swim lesson since March BTW"We've all noticed this at some point in our parenting lives, haven't we? Why do they behave incredibly well for somebody else, and freak out for us? Jill, I'm so glad you asked this question because it is such a common concern. My answer dives (pun totally intended) into my experiences with how my kids behaved when they were small at Grandma's versus how they behaved with me – and I recorded the epilogue because, almost as soon as I hit stop recording this episode, I realized that I had been in a very similar situation to yours!I hope you find my answer helpful, and that it helps you think of other questions to ask. I love Q&A's, I think they're so helpful and also they help us know we are not alone. To submit a question, you can email Karen@weturnedoutokay.com, go to weturnedoutokay.com/contact, friend me on Facebook, find me on twitter@StoneAgeTechie, on instagram@weturnedoutokay… Heck, you can even snail mail me! My address is PO Box 61, Bellingham, MA, 02019.4 Ways to Help Your Child Cope with Challenging SituationsThe main part of this show focuses on the four ways you can help your child cope with challenging situations. This came up because my family has been in a very challenging situation: about six weeks before this episode aired for the first time, we adopted two amazing, awesome dogs… And then the stress of caring for them caused a relapse in tendinosis, this condition that I live with that, at times, has left me unable to walk (which I've since relearned) and with extremely limited upper body and hand use.Long story short, these wonderful dogs entered our lives and within a very short time, we had to give them up. Truly, it was either them or my health and sanity.In this episode, I share about how heartbreaking and difficult this has been. But I also share about how grateful I am to have had them in our lives, and how amazed I am by the strength and gentleness of both my husband and our two boys.Most importantly for you, I share about how we got through this. Because when you are in a tough situation and you don't know how to help your kids get through it as well, it's really helpful to have a guide. I hope you will think of this podcast as your guide!Here are my four steps to coping with challenging situations, and helping your kids cope as well:1) communicate with your kids; they WILL know that something is wrong, and consequently you will notice, if you try to keep everything from them, an uptick in bad behavior, anxiety, and tears; sharing with them what you can on their level reassures your kids and helps them trust you2) help them understand that you are all in this together; be there for tears, questions, reassurances3) find a way for them to help; children need to be needed, and when you give them a job – a truly meaningful job that truly helps you, however small – they become part of the solution4) cherish the time we have with our loved ones; because challenging situations often include the absence of a person that they used to see a lot – whether through divorce, or death, or a cross-country move – it is really helpful to talk with our kids about how people come in and out of our lives; sometimes, people are not meant to be with us for long, or not without long intervals between seeing them, and the most important thing is to appreciate the time we have with our loved ones, and cherish the memory of them when we are not with themGiving up our dogs due to my illness is one of the hardest things we've faced as a family. I'm sharing this experience with you today because I really hope it will help you with the challenges that inevitably come up in your life. Kids are amazingly resilient, and cope well with life's challenges, especially when we grown-ups take the time to communicate with them, share in grief together, find meaningful ways for them to help, and above all teach them to enjoy the time we have with the people we love. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaylockkolp.substack.com/subscribe

I'm so excited about this episode, part of our Summer Camp series in which we are setting aside our usual four themes (3R's, Unplanned Adventures, Kids through the Ages, and Risky Business), pouring a nice tall glass of iced tea – or Long Island Ice Tea, depending on your age and what time of day it is – and going on vacation! We will return to our regularly scheduled programming in September, but for now… Let's just enjoy summer!Though you may not know it, you have heard the voice of today's guest. Anna Vocino can be heard on networks like CBS and Fox Sports, in commercial campaigns for Canada dry, Disney Princess bikes, on The Young and The Restless and Jimmy Kimmel Live! and in many other places… but my favorite place to hear her voice is at the beginning and ending of my very own podcast!Also an accomplished comedic actor, Anna was a series regular on Free Radio on Comedy Central and performs sketch and improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and at FunnyorDie.com. In today's show, we learn that, along with a group that includes her now-husband, Anna started a theater company in Atlanta, Georgia which is still going strong 18 years later.In addition to all of the above, my guest today has celiac disease, and as a result has relearned how to feed herself and her family, created GlutenFreeAnna.com to share her learning, and has a cookbook coming out soon.Listen for:her inspiring perseverance through the many obstacles that have been tossed in her path; from the "surprise" pregnancy and birth of their daughter while starting the theater company all those years ago, to cultivating the super thick skin required to make it in Hollywood and right on up to how Anna dealt with the autoimmune disease known as celiac, she has cheerfully taken on every unplanned adventure – and wongreat summer memories (this show airs during We Turned Out Okay's visit to Summer Camp, when we set aside our usual themes and just enjoy summertime) that Anna has, from going to Methodist Camp as the daughter of a minister, to attending a really great arts summer camp in Michigan with a delicious mystery dessert that she remembers well, even if she can't recall exactly what it is now :-)the importance of a strong family bond, both in the family she was raised in and the one she is building with her husband and daughter, in Anna's life; while she never comes out and says "family is and always has been super important to me," this love comes through in every memory she shares, every situation she describesIf you take one idea away from today's show, I hope it is this: autoimmune diseases come in many varieties, and if you or someone you love has peculiar symptoms that are painful and debilitating, yet no one can place, the problem might be autoimmune based, or possibly food -related. But as Anna Vocino shares with us, these problems do not have to be the end of your world; instead, they could be the beginning of a new and better existence! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaylockkolp.substack.com/subscribe

015: Top 11 Ways to Tire Out Your KidsFor This Summer Camp episode of We Turned Out Okay, I asked you about your favorite ways to tire out your kids… And you sure responded! Special thanks to Doug Gray, Aisha Newton, Nancy Marsh, Miriam Ortiz y Pino, De Osborne, Shannon Criscola, Amy Blake, Erica Chick, John Winchenbach, my own Jason Kolp, and Deb Petrella for coming up with our most popular ways to tire out your kids.Here they are!Number 11: Go take a hikeNumber 10: Dance Party!Number 9: Have a field dayNumber 8: Flashlight tagNumber 7: Indoor and rainy day gamesNumber 6: Ride bikesNumber 5: Noncompetitive gamesNumber 4: Obstacle courseNumber 3: Wacky golfNumber 2: Nerf wars(drumroll please…) Number 1: SwimmingDid we miss any of your favorites? Tell me about it! Tweet me@StoneAgeTechie or post to twitter at #oldschoolsummervaca, shout about it in the We Turned Out Okay group on Facebook, or just get in touch with good old-fashioned email to Karen@Weturnedoutokay.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaylockkolp.substack.com/subscribe

I'm so excited about this episode, part of our Summer Camp series in which we are setting aside our usual four themes (3R's, Unplanned Adventures, Kids through the Ages, and Risky Business), pouring a nice tall glass of iced tea – or Long Island Ice Tea, depending on your age and what time of day it is – and going on vacation! We will return to our regularly scheduled programming in September, but for now… Let's just enjoy summer!Great news! During our interview today iPhoneography teacher Andre Ngyen offers you a week's free coaching by email! You can find out how to get this bonus by listening to the episode. Speaking as a student of his I know you're not going to want to miss out; his great ideas will help you take fantastic family vacation pictures!If you want to see the pictures I took with Andre's guidance, click here – that will take you to last week's blog post in which I previewed the pictures we talk about in today's episode. Enjoy!If you have any desire at all to capture great summer memories, great photographs of your kids and family – and pets – using just your iPhone, then you are going to love today's guest. Andre Nguyen of iPhoneographyinsiders.com is first and foremost a talented photographer, but most importantly he really wants to help the rest of us take great pictures.Today's conversation includes lots of fun stuff: summer memories, dog stories, my excitement about sharing when I got to go see this amazing art installation in Boston on the Rose Kennedy Greenway… and because Andre gave us so many tips and apps, I'm going to list them here:the first, easy and fun, is to simply tap the light source on your phone to completely change the amount of light in the picture; in other words, if you want a picture of your husband kissing the top of your baby's head with his son in the background, tap the sun – you'll end up with a silhouette picture! Really, really coolnext, be playful – take a variety of pictures of the same scene, in which you have tapped different places on the screen (which left in different amounts of light), try different poses, see if you can capture your kids jumping in the picture, use your imaginationwhen indoors, capturing enough light can be tough for the iPhone which results in grainy photographs where you literally see many pixels; Andre recommends using a strong light source and once again tapping on that light source on the iPhone screena great app: photographer's ephemerist, which tells you the angle of the sun, and exactly where it will be setting in the sky, on any given day; Andre uses this to plan his sunset photography, knowing exactly where and when the sun will be passing specific buildings, and then he can pull out his iPhone and playanother great app, Slow Shutter Cam,which allows you to let more light in and thus get cool blurry effects – if you take Andre's suggestion of doing a selfie on a merry-go-round with your children, please send it along! This sounds like the coolest idea in the world, my boys are too old for merry-go-rounds, I gotta see this in action :-)Andre's favorite website for getting prints of his photos is called artifactuprising.com, where he's gotten beautiful print of his pictures at decent priceson instagram, Andre goes by@AndreHarrison, and I just know you're going to want to head over to instagram and check out his artwork, which is amazing! You can also find it at his two websites: techminimalist.com and iPhoneographyinsiders.comOnce you start taking amazing pictures using Andre's tips, please email me some pictures! You can do that by going to weturnedoutokay.com/contact, or just emailing Karen@weturnedoutokay.com. I can't wait to see what you come up with! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaylockkolp.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the first episode of Summer Camp at We Turned Out Okay! For the summer months of July and August, we are setting aside our usual four themes (Risky Business, 3R's, Kids Through the Ages, and Unplanned Adventures) and kicking back. We are recognizing that in summer, time moves somewhat differently, and we can set aside our usual schedules at least a little bit – so pour yourself a frosty drink and stick your toes in the virtual sand as you press play.In this episode I share about four fantastic books that should be on your summer reading list:The Night Before Summer Vacation by Natasha Wing; I kick off the episode reading this book, an obvious and wonderful play on The Night Before Christmas, a picture book that we read at the beginning of every summer, even now that the boys are 14 and 10, because it is just that awesomeHow To Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell; a great book involving a bet about eating live worms, the fallout from that, and the summer in which it all takes placeTime Sweep by Valerie Weldrick, in which a modern Australian boy discovers a way to travel through time and space, befriending a young London street sweeper living in the late 1800s; I read and loved this book as a young girl and it just evokes summertime for meHarry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling; I love rereading the Harry Potter books in summer, and every time I do something new comes up for me… This reread has me thinking of the big ideas that literature can bring up for us, and there's a special kind of magic when you combine big ideas and summertimeIf you take just one thing from this episode, I hope it is this: as parents, it's our responsibility to instill a love of reading in our children. Reading is how humans make sense of the world, and there are lots of other platitudes to be said about it – but it's summer click publish, and platitudes are out! Reading, however, is still in, because not only is it our responsibility – it's fun! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaylockkolp.substack.com/subscribe

Today's guest is an early intervention therapist by trade, and has such an interesting perspective on life that I just know you are going to love our conversation! Mariana Sanford Maynard has a background in equine massage, is bilingual, raised for part of her life in Brazil (even though she has no accent), and the divorced mom of two kids. Her gentle, loving demeanor permeates our whole conversation, and I felt like I had the knowledge to be a better parent after we were done talking.Listen for:similarities between horses and children – you'll be surprisedthinking about the system in which our kids live, and how understanding that system can help us be better parents for themhow to keep the idea of "family" alive, even after a divorceIf you take just one thing away from our conversation today, I hope it is this: there is real value in apologizing to our kids when we mess up. It helps them know that we are human, we make mistakes, and when we do we atone for them.I know you're going to get so much out of this episode, please drop me a line – Karen@weturnedoutokay.com – and let me know what really resonated with you! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaylockkolp.substack.com/subscribe

We are headed into summer as I record today, a classic time for parents to worry about kids' academic work slipping. Is this a thing that you worry about? If so, you are going to love today's's show – all about six steps to creating young, happy readers!No matter when you listen, whether in the middle of an extended summer vacation or in deepest winter, you will love it, because here is where I share my six steps to having happy readers.Listen for:How to bond with your kids over books, no matter how young or old the kids are, no matter how simple or complex the books areStrategies to stop the scourge of trying to be perfect; one of my favorite quotes is from Henry Winkler, a.k.a. the Fonz from Happy Days: "perfectionism is destructive… Beating the sh*t out of yourself is a killer"Why reading aloud is the single most important thing you can do with your childrenWe cover an awful lot today, so I knew you were going to want to write all this down – that's why I created a guide, Six Ways to Help Your Kids Love Reading, which you can get just by going to weturnedoutokay.com and clicking the button! As a bonus, I've got a resource section of awesome books included with the guide… Between these six steps and the resource section of awesome books, you will soon have some really happy readers in your home. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaylockkolp.substack.com/subscribe

Today I share a great conversation that I had recently with my Dad. After climbing his way out of a working class neighborhood in Montréal, Canada, Dad became a very well-educated, high-powered executive at a large insurance company.But as his daughter, I knew about that part of his life only peripherally. To me, Dad was and still is a great example of how to achieve your dreams, and especially how to live your life: Dad has an unshakable moral compass and an amazing capacity to reduce the most complex problems down to their simplest form.Along with my Mom, whom we hear from in the Mother's Day 2015 Bonus Episode, Dad has spent the last 17 years (after retiring from the insurance company as Vice President of Customer Service) in Breckenridge, Colorado. Out there, he became a contractor to remodel their home, was a Breckenridge ski instructor for 15 years and continues to teach his grandchildren how to ski.Together, they've traveled extensively, circling the globe in a six-month trip in 2010 and spending six months of 2014 traveling through Europe – they were using AirBnB before I knew what it was!Mom and Dad have spent much of the last two years RVing around the US and Canada together; they hike, grill out, make friends on the road – even make and preserve jam in their camper! – always keeping in touch and illustrating the kind of fun you can have in life.Our conversation today ranges from work, to parenthood, and into grand parenthood. I know you'll love it because, no matter where you are on the parenting timeline, or if you're a mom or a dad, you'll hear a great example of how to live your life. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaylockkolp.substack.com/subscribe

Do you have a young child, especially a daughter, who desperately wants to dance – but is totally uncoordinated, or whose body doesn't look like a dancer's? If so, then you probably know already how cutthroat the world of dance studios can be.Today's guest teaches dance in a unique studio, one where the focus is on dance as a fun way of expressing yourself, and where it doesn't matter what you look like for if you're a good dancer or not.In addition to spending her days with tutu-clad young girls, my guest is Mom to very active tween-and teenage boys… As a result, evenings and weekends are all about cheering them on at sports, supporting them in their academic work, and enjoying a great relationship with her husband Rob (a guy who happens to be my brother :-)Listen for:some really great tips for choosing a dance studio; how to know you've got the right one, when to keep lookingSue's take on raising children with special needs, and how important it is to work closely with their other parent – you both need to be on the same page to give kids with extra challenges the support they needhow to truly enjoy life, even when it's super busy or throwing challenges at you; for Sue, teaching dance has helped her care for herself, so she can be a more supportive Mom and spouseIf you take just one thing away from this episode, I hope it is this: knowing yourself and what you need to enjoy life makes everything better. And not just for you – but for your loved ones and the people you care for. My awesome sister-in-law is really hitting her stride with this, and as you listen you can hear the enthusiasm and love in her voice… She is a great example to follow, and I know you're going to love this episode! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaylockkolp.substack.com/subscribe