How to Use Connection & Collaboration to Transform Your Family - and the World

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Latest Episodes & Transcripts

172: You Are Not A Sh*tty Parent with Carla Naumburg

By Jen Lumanlan | Nov 20, 2022

Are you a shitty parent?   Or do you ever think you might be?   Parenting today is so hard, and there are so many models of ‘perfect parenting’ available on social media that we can compare ourselves against that provide ‘evidence’ that we’re not doing it right.   Things can get even more difficult…

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171: How Good People Can Create A More Just Future with Dr. Dolly Chugh

By Jen Lumanlan | Nov 6, 2022

Did you read Little House on the Prairie when you were a child? I didn’t, but I know it’s a common American rite of passage. My guest in this new episode, Dr. Dolly Chugh, got entirely immersed in the story with her two young daughters – so much so that they took a vacation to…

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170: How to stop procrastinating with Dr. Fuschia Sirois

By Jen Lumanlan | Oct 23, 2022

Our culture says that people procrastinate because they’re disorganized and lazy. After all, how hard can it really be to do a task you’ve committed to doing, and one that you even know will benefit you?!   But I learned through this episode that procrastination isn’t about disorganization or laziness at all – it’s much…

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169: How to take care of yourself first with Liann Jensen

By Jen Lumanlan | Oct 9, 2022

Liann did not have an easy entry into motherhood.  Her first child’s birth was pretty traumatic; it was followed by a miscarriage and then very quickly by another pregnancy.   And then by COVID.   She was already overwhelmed and then everyone was isolated…and suddenly Liann had a whole lot of anger that she hadn’t…

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168: Feeling Triggered by Current Events

By Jen Lumanlan | Oct 2, 2022

I know it can be really difficult to navigate all the events happening in the world today.  It seems like things are falling apart, with wars, climate change-caused drought and wildfires in some areas and flooding in others, with hunger not following far behind.  And things aren’t any better on the political front either.  …

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167: Healing and Helping with Mutual Aid with Dean Spade

By Jen Lumanlan | Sep 25, 2022

In this conversation with Dean Spade we resolve a long-running challenge in my understanding: when we talked with Dr. john powell on the topic of Othering and Belonging a couple of years ago we discussed how volunteering promotes othering, because it perpetuates the idea that the volunteer is a person with resources to give, and…

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166: Learning to trust your child – and yourself

By Jen Lumanlan | Sep 11, 2022

Claire had used respectful parenting methods since her children were babies, so child-led learning seemed like a natural fit for her.  She protected her toddler’s free play time and involved her in household chores and nature walks.   Claire attended school as a child (just like I did!); she even enjoyed elementary school. By high…

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165: How grit helps (and how it doesn’t)

By Jen Lumanlan | Aug 26, 2022

At the beginning of our stay at a friend’s house in Oregon six weeks ago, my eight-year-old daughter Carys had biked a flat mile on a mountain biking trail; when we got to a very slight incline she made it 20 feet further and then it all fell apart. She whined; she cried; she refused…

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164: Supporting Neurodivergent Children with Dr. Hanna Bertilsdotter-Rosqvist

By Jen Lumanlan | Aug 21, 2022

Parents have been asking me for episodes on neurodivergence for a while now so I’m hoping this episode will become the start of a mini-series. In this first conversation I talk with Dr. Hanna Bertilsdotter-Rosqvist, co-author of the new book Neurodiveristy Studies: A New Critical Paradigm. We look at this topic through the lens of…

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163: Should children vote? with Dr. John Wall

By Jen Lumanlan | Aug 14, 2022

Every once in a while a blog post about ‘childism’ makes the rounds on social media, which is described as being a “prejudice against young people” that’s on par with sexism, racism, and homophobia. But the Director of the Childism Institute, Dr. John Wall, argues that that definition implies children are simply victims of whatever…

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162: Supporting children through grief with Katie Lear

By Jen Lumanlan | Jul 31, 2022

This episode builds on our conversation with Dr. Atle Dyregrov on the topic of talking with children about death, where we focused mainly on death as a general concept and navigating the first few days after the death. Grief therapist Katie Lear has a new book called A Parent’s Guide to Managing Childhood Grief and…

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161: New masculinites for older boys with Dr. Michael Kehler & Caroline Brunet

By Jen Lumanlan | Jul 17, 2022

We’ve covered a number of episodes in the past that feed into this one, including Raising Emotionally Healthy Boys with Dr. Judy Chu (which focused on boys’ understanding of masculinity in the preschool years), and Playing to Win with Dr. Hilary Levy Friedman (which looked at the lessons children learn from sports…which aren’t really related…

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