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

You’re a few weeks away from seeing family, maybe for the first time since last year, and you already have hopes for how it will go. Then you remember how it went last time. Your sensitive kid wouldn’t try the green beans and grandma took offense, and being around your parents brought up old comments about your weight and how kids should just do what they’re told.



We want our kids to have a good relationship with their grandparents, but so much sits underneath that many of us spend the visit gritting our teeth, just surviving the holidays.



In this episode, I coach Samuel, whose mother is coming to stay for Christmas. His family doesn’t see her often, so he wants this visit to go well, and he’s already dreading a repeat of the last one. We look at what he’s hoping they’ll get from their time together, what he might try differently to meet more of everyone’s needs, including his own, and whether all of that connection has to happen during this one visit. Your situation won’t be exactly like Samuel’s, but listen for the common elements, because you may find tools you can use this holiday season.


Questions this episode will answer

Is it true that holidays are stressful? Yes, holidays are stressful for many parents. The stress comes from what we hope the visit will be and from old family patterns that show up as soon as everyone is in the same room. The more expectations we have about the visit, the more pressure there is.



What do you do when holiday expectations and reality don’t match? Start by naming what you hope will happen.  How much of that is within your power to change, and how much relies on other people changing?  It’s difficult to change ourselves; it’s much more difficult to change another person. Changing how you show up can give others the space to show up differently too.



How to deal with a disappointing holiday? Look at what you were hoping the visit would give you, and sort what you could influence from what depended on other people. Then find ways to build that connection outside the one visit, such as small contacts through the year on your kids’ terms, so the next visit doesn’t have to make up for this one. 



How to get past holiday anxiety? Pay attention to where the anxiety sits in your body, such as tight hands or legs.  Then ask: what is this trying to tell me? Often it’s a hope for the visit or a memory of how the last one went. You can’t change how other people show up.  Shifting your perception of the situation, and/or setting a boundary, are effective strategies to manage holiday anxiety.



How to deal with anxiety caused by family? Part of the anxiety can come from trying to make a relationship between two other people go well, such as your parent and your kids. Consider what it would be like to stop managing that, for example by leaving them to spend time together without you. 



How can I maintain my mental health during the holidays? Name the needs you’re trying to meet, like rest and mental space, and plan for them ahead of the visit. Planning breaks before you reach the end of your rope is one way to manage holiday stress, by finding other things to do in the house or getting out for a well-deserved break.



How to keep grandparents involved? Build the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren through the year, so it doesn’t depend on one visit. Come toward kids on their terms, with a shared interest or a story they love. A grandparent could record stories for a child who loves being read to.


What you’ll learn in this episode

Why the holidays are so stressful when we most want them to go well
What Samuel noticed in his body when he talked about his mother’s visit, and why family stress at the holidays starts so long beforehand
How managing a relationship between grandparents and grandkids can consume a lot of energy, which depletes you when you most need resources
How a strategy that meets needs for Samuel and his wife can also leave his mother and his children space to build their own relationship
Why a grandparent’s relationship with a grandchild doesn’t have to depend on one visit, and how a shared interest can keep it going all year
Two questions to ask yourself before any family visit, and what to settle ahead of time so you can plan breaks before you reach the end of your rope



Get support with your own holiday situation

Your holiday situation won’t match Samuel’s exactly. You might be trying to figure out how to not host, how to navigate comments about your eating and weight, and how to get the kids out of holiday parties without a meltdown.



When you join the Parenting Membership, you also get our Holiday Support Bundle. It will help you to check your capacity before saying yes, identify your needs (remember, this is not: “I need you to stop doing X,” set boundaries with family, and find simple ways to reconnect that don’t require everyone to get dressed up in uncomfortable clothes. 



The guides are short, so you can find something useful and try it without spending a lot of time reading.



If you want support working through your own situation, that’s what we do in the Parenting Membership, with coaching calls where we work through whatever situations are difficult in your life right now.



Join before end of day December 23 to receive the Holiday Support Bundle.



Click the banner to learn more.





Jump to highlights

01:48 Introduction: a thought experiment about holiday family visits and the stress underneath them

04:12 Why these few days feel so important to Samuel: a small family, few grandparents, and a short window

07:13 What would it be like to stop "managing" the relationship between his mother and his kids

09:35 Naming the needs in play: rest, ease, mental space, competence, and a relationship between his mother and his kids

11:59 Easing the pressure on the visit itself by creating more points of connection through the year

15:43 A concrete idea: the grandmother recording stories for his son's Yoto cards

18:09 Jen's takeaways: building on what already works, and questions to ask before your own holiday visit

19:39 How to hear more of the conversation, and where to find the Parenting Membership and its holiday resources

A while back I sat through an hour of Dr. Russ Barkley, a global expert on ADHD, walking through the statistics: more car accidents, more health problems, and a life expectancy he says is 7 to 13 years shorter, driven mainly by a lack of impulse control. When the hour was over, I remember thinking that if I had a kid with ADHD, I would be absolutely terrified.



Right after that, I took a second training, Becoming a Neuro-Affirming Clinician, hosted by B. Lourenco. The difference between the two couldn’t have been more profound. Barkley starts with executive function and asks how to fix it. B. Lourenco  asks why executive function is hard in the first place, and what we can do to support people with ADHD that might involve medication, but might not.



In this conversation, B. Lourenco  explains why she thinks ADHD starts with attention regulation, and what she says to Dr. Russ Barkley’s claim that impulse control drives that shorter life expectancy. We talk about Dr. Russ Barkley’s view that kids shouldn’t get any say in whether they take medication, and what a parent who desperately longs for quiet and predictability can do when their kid wants noise and novelty all day long. 


Questions this episode will answer

What does neuroaffirming mean? Neuroaffirming approaches start from the idea that ADHD is one of the ways brains work, and that it has been around about as long as humans have. It takes out the shame, then looks for ways to adapt that fit how you work and for the strengths that come with ADHD.



Does ADHD shorten life expectancy? Dr. Russ Barkley says it does, by 7 to 13 years, driven mainly by poor impulse control. B. Lourenco agrees that health outcomes differ but disputes the explanation, because a doctor who sees only impulse control can miss co-occurring conditions that affect health. 



Are kids with ADHD overmedicated? B. Lourenco says over-medication was real for a generation of kids: too many were medicated, and many were given too much. She also says medication helps a lot, but it doesn’t have to be the first or only tool.



Should kids get a say in whether they take ADHD medication? Dr. Russ Barkley says no; the decision is the parent’s alone. B. Lourenco points out that this denies children’s autonomy.



How can parents help children with ADHD? B. Lourenco shares two important ideas for a parent who is just starting to wonder: stop blaming and shaming yourself, because nothing is fundamentally wrong with you or your child.  Secondly, build connections with people who will support you without the shame and judgment of the wider culture.


What you'll learn in this episode

Why B. Lourenco thinks ADHD starts with attention regulation in a nervous and sensory system that works differently, and why executive function struggles follow from that
Why ADHD traits were useful for most of human history, and what changed in the last few hundred years
What B. Lourenco says to Dr. Russ Barkley’s claim that impulse control drives a shorter life expectancy, and the co-occurring conditions a doctor can miss when that’s the only explanation
Why over-medication was real for a generation of kids, and where medication fits as one tool among several
What it can look like when a parent who wants calm and a child who wants noise and novelty both get to exist, including a mom break scaled to your child’s age
Two things B. Lourenco would tell a parent who is just starting to wonder about ADHD for themselves or their child


Want to hear the full conversation?

The full conversation with B. Lourenco is available to Sustaining Supporters of the show and to Parenting Membership members. In it, B. Lourenco walks us through PINCH, a practical model for motivating a person with ADHD to do things like getting out the door and doing homework, and why leaving things until the last minute can be a strategy, even if it doesn’t have to be your only one.



We also look at the homework fight from a different angle, asking whether you value it or just think you’re supposed to, and why high school doesn’t have to take four years. B. Lourenco explains the social model of disability with her glasses analogy, and we get into how decisions our society has made about cars and the tax code create challenges for people with ADHD that have nothing to do with impulse control. And we talk about the risks of getting a diagnosis compared with the risks of going without one.



The whole episode is available in a private podcast feed immediately after you become a supporter of the show.



As a Sustaining Supporter, you’ll hear extended conversations like this one with the experts I bring onto the show, plus occasional bonus episodes with my own analysis that aren’t released anywhere else.



If you’ve been told the problem is your child’s brain, and something in this episode made you wonder whether that’s the whole story, this is where you hear the rest of it.



Click the banner to learn more.





Jump to highlights

01:34 Introduction: Jen's contrasting experiences with Dr. Russ Barkley's ADHD training and B. Lourenco's neuroaffirming one

03:59 What's in the full conversation for sustaining supporters, and the start of the interview with B. Lourenco

04:31 What the dominant "executive function deficit" framing of ADHD misses

07:35 Why ADHD traits were adaptive for most of human history and fit less well in today's world

09:24 Responding to Dr. Russ Barkley's claim that impulse control drives reduced life expectancy

13:09 Does more control ever help? Driving, rules, and why structure people will actually use beats control

15:02 Jen's explanation of what "neuroaffirming" means, and how this shapes an approach to medication

17:44 Medication as a tool that doesn't have to be the first or only support

19:05 When a parent who needs calm and predictability has a child who craves novelty and noise: neither is wrong

23:21 B. Lourenco's advice for newly identified parents and parents of kids with ADHD: drop the shame and blame, and build connection

26:28 Jen's wrap-up: mom breaks, the missing village, and changes for the margins helping everyone

This is the third and final episode in our series on Dr. Russ Barkley's approach to ADHD. In the first episode, we looked at how ADHD gets diagnosed and why diagnosis rates keep climbing. In the second episode, we covered the medication research - including the largest ADHD treatment study ever conducted, and why most kids stop taking medication within a few years. This episode zooms out to ask a bigger question about whether the medical model has misunderstood ADHD from the start.



This excerpt covers two sections from the full episode: the bell curve Barkley uses to define who has a disorder and who doesn't, and why that framing itself is the problem. And the causal pathway behind the outcomes Barkley warns about - because when you look at the wider body of research, the path from ADHD to reduced life expectancy has a lot more steps in it than Barkley acknowledges, including the peer rejection and teacher stigma kids with ADHD face. The full episode goes further into the evolutionary history behind ADHD traits, the history of how ADHD became a diagnosis, and researcher Andrew Ivan Brown's concept of "misrecognition" - available to members.


Questions this episode will answer

Is ADHD a disability? The answer depends on which definition of disability you're using. Under a strictly medical definition, ADHD is often treated as a brain-based disorder. But under other frameworks, ADHD looks like a mismatch between a person and their environment. 



Is ADHD not a disorder? Some researchers argue ADHD fails to meet the two standards a mental disorder is supposed to meet, once you account for the environment ADHD traits evolved in. This episode walks through that argument step by step.



Do people with ADHD struggle with friendships? Yes. Kids with ADHD are far more likely to be rejected by their peers than other kids, and a large share experience ongoing, chronic exclusion.



Why does ADHD still have a negative stigma, and are people with ADHD discriminated against? Teachers and peers often hold negative assumptions about kids with ADHD, and this episode looks at research showing how those assumptions shape the way kids get treated in the classroom, and what can be done to shift that.


What you'll learn in this episode

Why Barkley's bell curve, which labels one tail "gifted" and the other "disordered," leaves out some important questions
Why some researchers argue ADHD doesn't meet the standard definition of a disorder
Why kids with ADHD face so much higher rates of peer rejection, and what that rejection does to their long-term wellbeing
What classroom accommodations and peer-focused programs reduce ADHD stigma and improve how kids with ADHD are treated by classmates
Why the outcomes Barkley warns about - reduced life expectancy, failed relationships, substance use - have a lot more steps in the causal chain than his model accounts for 


Click Here To Download The Infographic: What Helps Kids With ADHD Thrive - School, Friends, and Framing



Jump to highlights

01:32 Introduction: this is an excerpt from part three of the series on Dr. Russell Barkley's approach to ADHD

02:13 How Barkley uses a bell curve of executive function to define who has a disorder and who doesn't

05:40 Why labeling one tail "gifted" and the other "disordered" is questionable: over-control and conditions like anorexia

09:33 The causal pathway behind the scary outcomes: peer rejection, bullying, and their links to depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation

11:34 Wakefield's criteria for a mental disorder, and the case that the pathway from difference to harm is longer than Barkley suggests

12:20 Peer-mediated programs and classroom interventions that reduce rejection

14:00 Teacher attitudes and how punitive, pessimistic responses can amplify a child's difficulties

16:25 Gaming and "internet addiction" reframed as escape from stressful environments

20:13 Where to find the full episode, and a preview of the next episode with B. Lourenco on neuroaffirming tools

One day Iris took her daughter to the park, with enough snacks with for both of them.  When Iris got hungry, she asked her daughter to share some of the food - but her daughter refused.  Iris knows that hunger is a factor that dramatically narrows her Window of Tolerance and makes it more likely that she’ll snap at her child’s behavior, so she asked again for food and again her daughter refused.



Then out of nowhere a crow swooped down and tried to steal some of the food, causing the whole lot to fall on the ground - and Iris exploded.  She was so angry that she felt a hot energy coming from her gut, and her daughter is standing in the park with tears flooding down her face, because Iris yelled at her.



And then, of course, the guilt and shame spiral begins: “What am I doing?  Why am I so angry?  And why can’t I stop?”



Now, Iris is in a very different place.  She’s not perfect, of course - none of us are.  But even Iris, the raised-Catholic-and-prone-to-unworthiness-and-guilt-tripping specialist, has found a different path.  



She no longer has to convince herself that she’s worthy of having her needs met - she knows she is, and she holds her own needs with equal care as her daughter’s needs.



Because her needs are met on a regular basis, she’s able to respond to her daughter’s age-appropriate difficult behavior with compassion and empathy.



And because she’s able to do this most of the time, she doesn’t need to get into the guilt and shame spiral nearly as often.  (And on the few occasions when it does still happen, she knows how to treat herself with compassion as well, instead of beating herself up for screwing up.)



Do you want to make this kind of shift in your own life?  Do you often feel triggered by your child’s behavior?  My Taming Your Triggers workshop, which has helped thousands of parents to not just remember a new script for the difficult moments, but to truly take on a new way of being in their relationships with their children - just like Iris has done.



Click the banner to sign up!








Jump to highlights

01:43 Introduction about the guest

08:00 Iris’ childhood impression

15:15 What would Iris say to a person experiencing extreme anger

20:40 Iris’ experience in taking the workshop

26:45 What Iris learned in the workshop

33:56 How was it different today than before for Iris

40:59 Transformations that Iris experienced

Last year I hosted a panel event in Vancouver where four people who have been active in helping us to navigate toward an anti-racist, post-patriarchal, post-capitalist future came together to share their ideas in front of a live audience.



It was a beautiful event (eventually we'll process the video of it to share with you!), and I really hit it off with Moms Against Racism Canada founder Kerry Cavers so we got together afterward to chat.



This is a much more personal episode than many. I actually didn't know it was going to be an episode beforehand - I thought we were going to record something that would be mostly for Kerry to use to explain her work to potential funders. But when I realized what gold we had, I decided to release the video as an episode.



I did realize that we were lacking in some specific take-home messages for listeners, so I asked whether Kerry would be willing to share some ideas for ways to take action on anti-racism with us. She has a lot going on at the moment so she wasn't able to record something for us, but she did put together a VERY comprehensive list of actions that I recorded at the end of the episode.



I've also created a PDF of her ideas that you can print and refer back to more easily - click the button below to download it.



Enjoy the conversation!



Ready to break free from the cycle of triggered reactions and conflict in your parenting journey?

If you want to:

😟 Be triggered less often by your child’s behavior,

😐 React from a place of compassion and empathy instead of anger and frustration,

😊 Respond to your child from a place that’s aligned with your values rather than reacting in the heat of the moment,



the Taming Your Triggers workshop will help you make this shift.



Join us to transform conflict into connection and reclaim peace in your parenting journey.



Click the banner to learn more!





Jump to highlights

00:53 Introducing this episode’s topic and guest

03:31 Kerry's insights into her role within Mom's Against Racism and discusses the organization's mission and initiatives

05:49 MAR’s origin and founding motivations

13:54 The various forms and manifestations of racism in Canadian society

18:50 How members of Moms Against Racism are guided in unlearning racism

24:49 Kerry reflects on her upbringing, sharing how her mother's personal challenges and disconnection from her cultural identity left a void in her understanding of her own heritage

28:00 Kerry’s thoughts on Parenting Beyond Power

31:14 Kerry talks about which tools from the book resonated with her and if she's been able to use them

43:02 Why Kerry agreed to join the Culture Talks Panel Event

47:22 Jen’s commitment to addressing issues like White privilege and patriarchy, striving to make a positive impact

50:38 Kerry’s Ideas for Anti-Racist Actions for Parents