What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood | Parenting Tips From Funny Moms

Each week Margaret or Amy tackles a listener's most pressing question.This week Margaret answers the question, "How can I get my kids to care about things I think are important?"Submit your questions at questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of our very favorite things to say on this podcast, “back to one," is a term you'll hear dozens of times a day on any television or film set. It means resetting everything about a scene-- the cameras, the actors, the extras, the dollar bill that gets handed over, the coffee cup that gets picked up-- in order to do another take of that same scene. There's never any sense of disappointment or whose-fault-was-it judgment involved in doing a "back to one." It's just a reset so you can try it all again.We apply "back to one" to all areas of our parenting lives that need a reset, whether it's twice a month or once every ninety seconds (take that deep, cleansing breath). And as we look to a new decade, we're making this new year's goals "back to ones" as well. We're skipping the part where we feel bad that we didn't read all the books we said we would last year. We're just saying "back to one" and resetting that intention for the coming year.Here are what our listeners told us their "back to ones" for the new year are, plus a few of our own. We'll be resetting a lot, including what it means to have resolutions and goals for the new year in the first place. A reset is not a failure. It’s just what happens next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Each week Margaret or Amy tackles a listener's most pressing question.This week Amy answers the question, "How can we teach our three-year-old son that he has to share his toys with his soon-to-crawl baby sister?"Amy mentions this article by Sarah S. MacLaughlin for Zero to Three- it's full of great suggestions on this topic:http://https://www.zerotothree.org/resources/1964-helping-young-children-with-sharingSubmit your questions at questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Each week Amy or Margaret tackles a listener's most pressing question.This week Margaret answers, "How do I handle splitting time between my parents and my husband's parents at the holidays?"Submit your questions to info@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Experts say happiness is often purer in the anticipation of an event. The reality can be a little more messy. And at no time of year is that sentiment more true than during the holiday season.We asked our listeners to tell us their holiday worsts, and in this episode we discuss them all, plus a few of our own. Hams glazed with norovirus! Toddlers sleeping in airports! And of course, everyone's favorite Yuletide treat: The Vomiting Christmas Baby!And yet those are the holidays we remember best. Which makes it (almost) all worth it.Think your holiday season has been a little crazy? Hold our eggnog. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

FOMO, or the “fear of missing out,” was a term coined around 2011 to describe the feeling you get when you see friends on social media posting about lives just a little more exciting than your own. Behavioral researcher Dan Ariely calls it "the worry that tugs at the corners of our minds, set off by the fear of regret."It's a feeling definitely made worse by the constant ability we all have to check in on what other people are doing. According to a 2016 survey, three-quarters of parents use Facebook; 61% of those parents check it several times a day. "We get online to check on what everyone else is doing on a wonderful summer afternoon," writer Susan Narjala explains, "and it takes about ten seconds to feel worse about ourselves and our lives."But even when we succeed in unplugging, FOMO can rear its head in real life. And once we become parents, the FOMO we feel on our kids' behalf-- the party invites that don't come, the Disney World vacations we can't afford right now-- can seriously interfere with our happiness.In this episode, we discuss when we've felt FOMO in our own lives, why we tend to feel more envious of our neighbor's house than, say, Beyoncé's, and how to stop the compare-and-despair when it all gets to be a little too much.Here are links to research and other writing on the topic that we discuss in this episode:Jason Goldman for Scientific American: Why Bronze Medalists Are Happier Than Silver WinnersSusan Narjala for Motherly: Five Ways To FOMO-Proof Your ParentingJenny Evans for Scary Mommy: We Have FOMO For Our Children, And We Need To Get Over It ASAPJenna Wortham for The New York Times: Feel Like a Wallflower? Maybe It's Your Facebook Wall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Do you respond to the idea of "practicing" gratitude with a heavy dose of nope?In this episode we discuss the science behind the gratitude>>happiness>>more gratitude>>more happiness loop.Studies have proven that regularly expressing gratitude actually changes the structures of our brains to make us healthier and happier, thanks to something called "positive recall bias." In other words, if you start looking out for yellow cars, you'll suddenly see them wherever you go.Wouldn't we all be better off living in a happier, yellowier-car world? And what if getting to that point was 1) not that hard and 2) kind of fun also?Our guest this week is Nancy Davis Kho, author of the new book The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. Nancy's book is a lovely meditation on gratitude, and also a how-to guide to starting your own thank-you-letter-writing project. We loved this book!If you'd like to hear more about raising grateful kids , we've got an episode for that too! Just click the link- or if you're not seeing a link, go to bit.ly/WFHgratefulkids. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Whining is what experts call a “low-power strategy of dominance.” Kids do it because it’s what’s available to them. Since it drives parents bonkers, it’s remarkably effective. And it turns out whining really is as annoying as we think it is. A recent study tested whether adults (non-parents and parents both) were more distracted by whining than other sounds. The result? Everyone in the study, whether they had kids or not, found the sound of a whining toddler twice as distracting as the sound of a table saw screeching at full volume.As effective as this "auditory sensitivity" is, no wonder most humans between the ages of two and four learn to take full advantage. Still, there are things we can do to make the whining bother us less, which will make it less effective, which will make our kids do it less, and look who's got a strategy of dominance now?In this episode, we discuss the best ways to deal with whiners, and how to perhaps greet it with a bit more generosity. We might as well; we're probably stuck with it. As parenting specialist Bonnie Harris puts it:"Whining is as developmental and normal in a toddler’s life as discovering the pleasure of saying “no." Don’t think about teaching your child not to do it. Do think about ways you can help yourself deal with it calmly and perhaps shorten its duration."Here are links to research on whining that we discuss in this episode: Bonnie Harris for Christian Science Monitor: Five parenting tips to put a stop to your child's whining Dr. Guy Winch for Psychology Today: A Simple Trick to Get Your Kid to Stop Whining Erin Leyba for Motherly: It’s science: Kids whine for a (very good) reason Jonathan Allen for Reuters: Study: Child's whining one of life's most distracting sounds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Each week Amy or Margaret answers a listener's most pressing parenting question. Today Margaret tackles the question, "Should I throw away the diapers to encourage my kiddo to commit to potty training?"Submit yours! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's hard not to be a little nervous when your kid is the only one still crying at preschool dropoff. Or the only one still spelling everything wrong in third grade. Sometimes it turns out to be a late bloomer situation, nothing to worry about. Sometimes it's an early indicator of something your kid might struggle with for a long time.How do we move beyond our own stress about what our kids are and aren't doing like the rest of the bunch? How do we adjust our demands to meet what our kids are actually capable of? How do we set our parental expectations so that our kids will be motivated to try harder without feeling bad about themselves?It's a tricky balance, best summed up by parent coach Sarah Wayland:"If we never had expectations that were beyond our children’s current abilities, we wouldn’t teach them anything.... But I’m at my absolute worst as a parent when my expectations are far beyond my kids’ abilities."Here are links to research and other writing on the topic that we discuss in this episode:Joanna Faber: Manage Your Expectations, Not Your ChildTerri Mauro for Very Well Family: Backward Chaining for Special-Needs ChildrenDr. Sarah C. Wayland for Guiding Exceptional Parents: Meet Your Kids Where They AreElaine Taylor-Klaus for Impact ADHD: Shift Your Expectations to Manage Complex Kids Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices