In this short episode I reflect on where we’ve been over the past year, my plans to slow down a bit at the end of the year (as well as a super exciting project I’m working on!), and what episodes we have lined up for the new year.
In this episode I also mention something I haven’t done for a while, which is that it’s possible to donate to support the show. You might know that it takes 20-40 hours to do the research for each episode (although my record is about 80 hours for the show on Self-Reg, because the research was in such a mess and I had to check what I was reading with several developmental psychologists who tempered the claims of the person who created the concept of Self-Reg!).
A core group of listeners (shout out to: Jacqueline B., Rebekah S., Elizabeth M., Kelsey B., Jessica S., Crystian M., Megan P., Alison O., and Cristin B.) have helped to sustain the show over the last months and years.
If the show has helped you, would you consider making a donation to support it?
You can now do this from any episode page. If a particular episode has given you an insight or a tool that resonated with you and/or your child, I’d be really grateful if you would make a one-time donation to acknowledge that, or consider a recurring donation to help me keep making more episodes for you. I know there’s always the temptation to say that “eh; I don’t have time right now and it probably doesn’t make that much of a difference and someone else will do it anyway.” And maybe they will, but as we all know, if everyone thinks like that then the work doesn’t get supported….
I mention in the episode that I’m writing a book! And the e-book will be available for a sliding scale price on this website, to help everyone who wants to read it be able to read it, no matter what their financial constraints. I also now make every course and membership I offer over a $100 threshold available with sliding scale pricing, and invite folks who can’t afford even the minimum price to get in touch to figure out a price that works for both of us. I’m doing everything I can to live my values to make my work available to as many people as possible. If this resonates with you, I’d be grateful if you would consider donating to support me in continuing to do this work. You can now donate from any episode page (including this week’s episode!). Just look for the Support Jen’s Work button on the right side.
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Jen Lumanlan 00:02
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 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 00:56
Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. I just have a short episode lined up for you today with a few updates about the podcast and the Your Parenting Mojo world more broadly, we're coming to the end of what has been a pretty amazing year. I finally feel as though we have a really complete set of memberships and courses to help parents at all stages of their parenting journey. I run the Right From The Start course with Hannah and Kelty of upbringing to help expecting parents and those with a child under a year old to get it right from the start. And of course, we mean figuring out what's right for you and your family. We've had so many people sign up because they found that it's the only course for parents of very young children that doesn't focus entirely on the baby and instead looks at both babies and the parents needs and how to meet both of those as you negotiate your new relationship. That course has actually opened registration right now for a couple more days until midnight Pacific on November 3rd. Later on, the parenting membership helps parents who are struggling with their child's behavior to understand what's going on when their child is resisting them and what to do about it. Not just by changing their child's behavior, but by meeting their child's needs and also meeting their needs. Then we cover every other topic that parents want to know about from raising healthy eaters to screentime to supporting anxious children. If the parents are finding they're having a hard time with their own reactions to their child's behavior, the parents exploding or mentally shutting down, or doing anything they can to placate the child and get them to stop crying or screaming or hitting, then the taming your triggers workshop allows them to see where those feelings are coming from and gives them concrete tools to navigate them more effectively. And then once things are on a more solid footing the Supporting Your Child's Learning Membership helps parents to support their child's intrinsic love of learning. So the child can retain their motivation for learning and gain new skills on how to learn which they will carry for the rest of their lives. Of course, all of that is grounded by the podcast where I interview the who's who of academic researchers in parenting and child development to use scientific research to help us understand how to guide our children's development and learning based on principles of respectful parenting. Increasingly, over the last couple of years, I've also begun to look beyond the scientific research, not to just question the methodology of an individual study, but to look at the context that a body of work sits within, and understand how the studies fit with what we believe about capitalism and patriarchy, and racism that some people hear about on the show and then give me a one-star review on iTunes because they don't appreciate discussions of these topics alongside information on parenting. This year, I particularly enjoyed the episodes we covered on the topic of sex, both talking with children about it, and also teaching them about respect-based pleasurable relationships, through the ways that we interact with them. We also looked at how to use tools like Mindfulness and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to live in a way that's more aligned with our values. We started a series of episodes on food and I have more to come on that topic. And we did a series on How Children Learn. Early in the year, there was an episode on whether you should hold your child back a year when entering school, which is called Redshirting in the US. Then later, we looked at How Children Learn with their Bodies as well as their Brains and How to Support Gifted Children. The thing that keeps me going in all of this work is hearing from parents who are in the courses and memberships and who listen to the podcast who tell me what an impact these have had on them and their families. I was talking with my husband about it recently, he does a lot of the editing of the testimonial videos that go on the information pages for the courses and memberships. So he gets to watch the multiple times and look for the rich stories that members are telling that illustrate these transformations they've made. And he said, You know, I just edit the videos. I'm not the target audience and even I can see how your work is impacting so many people. I can only imagine what it must be like to see it from your perspective. And he's right. It's what I love about this. Might be a parent or a caregiver coming into Taming Your Triggers and realizing by the end that they have a whole lot more issues to deal with that are the reasons why they exploit their children all the time. So they sign up for therapy, or another parent who reports having conversations with their partner and children that they could never have imagined possible, where each person expresses their needs and together they come up with a solution to the problem that actually works for everyone, so the parent doesn't need to nag or be frustrated or explode. And then they go deeper into the parenting membership and expand their learning to all the other topics or they have another baby and they realize they need right from the start to navigate these uncharted waters with multiple children, or they see their child's love of learning as a precious resource to be nurtured rather than squashed so they joined the learning membership. It's really truly my privilege and honor to work with parents who are so committed not only to their children but to children everywhere. Also, this year, a racially diverse team of listeners helped me to develop anti-racist policies, I'd been on my own anti-racist journey for a couple of years, and by then after I learned that I do actually have White privilege. And it shows up in all kinds of ways in my parenting. My critical exploration through a series of podcasts episodes, and blog posts and other resources that you can find at yourparentingmojo.com/race. I knew there was a lot more to do. But I didn't really know where to start uncovering issues related to race that touch a podcast and a business related to parenting and child development. How to develop a narrative on exactly how we did that at some point, so anyone who wants to replicate this kind of work or build on it and improve it doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. But...
