Scratch That: Parenting & ReParenting Off Script

What do we do when our parenting strategies aren't working out the way we expected? Or we stumble into a hard parenting fail? On today's episode, we share parenting stories we recorded several months ago on the CosmoParenting podcast. Then we reflect on those stories, honestly naming the ways our strategies are evolving (or not) with time. This is an episode all about the messy, unresolved, ever-shifting work of parenting and peopling.Tune in to hear us talk about:📜 Disrupting old narratives through adaptation.⚖️ The tricky balance of acknowledging pain and also pushing past discomfort.👥 Modeling behavior versus exercising power.⛓️‍💥 Understanding our past to break patterns.☀️ Bring our parenting fails into the sunlight to move forward and evolve.Mentioned In Today's Episode:If you're looking for a parenting podcast full of bite size practical tools, the CosmoParenting podcast is for you!And if you missed our earlier episode interviewing the host of CosmoParenting, Abbie VanMeter, you can listen to it here - "What paradigms are we building? (Part 2) with Abbie VanMeter"As Always:Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.We would love to hear from you! What parenting scripts are you revising in real time? What moments are you coming back to again and again as parents and people?Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Lucy and James Catchpole, both disabled parents and children's authors, share their compelling journeys navigating disability. They discuss how their experiences shape their parenting and creative work, challenging societal norms about disability. From James's joy in physical movement to Lucy's unique perspective on dignified representation, they emphasize finding liberation in limitations. The conversation delves into the importance of honest narratives in children's literature and the need for more authentic depictions of disability, fostering community and understanding.

On today's Show-and-Tell episode, we gush about some of our favorite creators: Lucy and James Catchpole (disabled parents and children's book authors, with "more children than working legs") and Andy J Pizza (New York Times bestselling author / illustrator / podcaster). And we want to hear from you, too! Who are the creators lighting up your world these days?Tune in to hear us talk about:🛝 Being a disabled kid on the playground.📝 Subversive representation that flips the script of disability storytelling.🧰 Children's books that give our kids agency🎨 ADHD + art + parentingMentioned In Today's Episode:Pre-Order the forthcoming collection Owning It: Tales From Our Disabled Childhoods, edited by Jen Campbell, Lucy and James Catchpole, and illustrated by Sophie Kamlish. (You can read an essay by Rebekah in this collection, too!) (All orders from Blackwell include free shipping to the US!)As Always:Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.We would love to hear from you! Who are the creators lighting up your world these days? Let fill up the comments with a big ol' show and tell!Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Join Amelia Hruby, founder of the feminist podcast studio Softer Sounds, as she delves into the tangled web of social media. She discusses how platforms can create the very isolation they claim to alleviate and reflects on the challenge of building meaningful connections without them. Amelia also distinguishes between the casual use of social media and creating content for business while advocating for a return to local communities. Explore her insights on the shift from artist to content creator in today’s digital landscape!

On today's episode, we get to chat with the creative powerhouses, Esther Huybreghts and Melissa Cash. Driven by the need for good alternatives to overwhelming, addictive children's apps saturating the market, they set out to create an experience that parents could feel good about handing to their kids. They made the thing they needed, and Pok Pok was born — the Apple Design Award-winning preschool app. We are obsessed.If you are also obsessed after listening to Esther and Melissa talk about Pok Pok, use this link to get a 25% discount for a subscription: https://my.playpokpok.com/checkout?promocode=25SCRATCHTHATTune in to hear us talk about:🌀 Esther's and Melissa's early experiences with play and creativity.🛝 The origins of Pok Pok - making the thing you want to see in the world.❤️ Creativity as a tool for surviving post-partum depression.🔎 Naming the concerns and stigmas around screen time.🐣👵 The importance of play from infancy to adulthood.🥱 The value of boredom.🪄 Striving for access and inclusion in design.🪀 The difference between a toy and a game.📱 Escaping the dopamine cycle we get from screens.We would love to hear from you! What are your screen time woes and triumphs? How has play evolved for you over the course of your life?Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

This week on SCRATCH THAT, we grapple with some of our inner Boomer-parenting instincts. What if our kids don't "have it as hard as we did"? How do we make sure we raise them to have scrappy, resilient, creative, trickster energy for the inevitable struggles ahead?Tune in to hear us:⛈️ Name our particular parenting triggers.🧳 Unpack the actual legacy of some of our early childhood struggles.💪 Uncover the deep, troubling belief that struggling makes you real and valid.🧶 Describe the difficulty in watching our kids struggle without intervening.⚙️ Imagine building resilience in ordinary moments of friction and frustration.🪡 Recognizing the moments we feel triggered as places that need tending within us.We would love to hear from you! What are the stories you tell yourself about your own difficult childhoods? How does that story shape the way you show up to the world/your own children now? What ways do you find the most effective for building resilience/scrappiness now?Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Maria Bowler, author and creative coach, shares her journey from magazine editing to exploring spirituality with nuns. She discusses redefining productivity and embracing a life of creativity. Maria emphasizes seeing schedules as supportive tools, rather than constraints, and encourages parents to embrace early emotional struggles with compassion. The conversation also touches on our complex relationship with social media and the importance of nurturing tiny moments of joy in a challenging world. A fascinating exploration of being versus doing awaits!

A growing goal for SCRATCH THAT is to find ways for this community to know and connect with each other, so this week, we have a special invitation for our listeners. What is a song that has held you — as a parent and/or a person? A song that has brought you back to the ground/yourself/your values. A song that gave you the thing you needed when you needed it? Would you drop it in the comments below? We'll turn all our songs into a group playlist — a way to feel each other's presence as we go about this windy journey of peopling and parenting.And we'll go first! On this episode, we each share about a song that has meant something big to us over the course of our lives.

Last week, we swirled around the impossible questions of paradigms – What stories did we inherit? What stories are we passing on (intentionally & unintentionally)? Enter – Abbie VanMeter. Abbie is the executive director of the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution, the host of the Stories Lived. Stories Told. podcast, the host of the CosmoParenting Podcast, and an incredibly insightful and curious communicator. On this episode, Abbie meets us in the chaotic center of our swirls and offers us new frameworks and tools for the messy work of re/building paradigms as parents and people. We hope you enjoy our sprawling, juicy conversation!Tune in to hear us talk about:💭 What it looks like to embody a communications perspective (hint: communication is more than what is being said).🧰 Instead of a script or map, building a toolbox we/our kids can carry into the unknown future.🛠️ Good tools for the box, like resilience, curiosity, improvisation, and repair.🌱 Taking good care of ourselves as good parenting (and the scripts that make us feel selfish for doing it).❓ Questioning the common phrase "My parents did their best."🌀 Leaning in, not pulling away from, complexity.📚 Building paradigms that leave room for multiple stories.📝 Empowering ourselves/our kids to be meaning makers in our worlds.We would love to hear from you! What tools do you have in your toolbox? What tools are you trying to pass along?

This week on SCRATCH THAT, we process the great and ambiguous responsibility of creating paradigms for our kids — the context for what they will understand as "normal" — the scripts/stories they have about themselves, the world, and their relationship to it. Holding our curiosity in the forefront and never tying any tidy bows, we swirl around our own inheritances and the ones we're passing along. And if you would like some actual tools for navigating this wobbly territory, we can't wait to share next week's very special interview with you!Tune in to hear us talk about:🧳 The "cargo bay of baggage" we're bringing into this conversation.☃️ The great allure & potential harms of creating cozy-snow-globe paradigms.🌿 The desire to build flexible/stretchy paradigms that grow & evolve with us.🎢 The uncomfy lack of control we have over the paradigms our kids are forming.📆 The unspoken values we are teaching our kids through our deeply engrained daily actions.🎞️ Trusting the process of long-arc relationships & human development.🤸 Playing with new frameworks for paradigm building (e.g. Relationship over rules, or curiosity & openness over mandates & prescriptions. ) 🌱 The importance of tending to our own deep beliefs and lasting paradigms.We would love to hear from you! How are paradigms manifesting for you in your parenting and/or re-parenting experiences? What kind of paradigms are you wanting to build? What ones were built for you? How are you reshaping them?Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨