I hear you:-)

Here’s the thing. Yes, it takes work to be in this membership. You’ll probably spend a couple of hours reading, watching, or listening to each module - perhaps less if you’re a skimmer rather than a reader.

You might take a couple more to discuss them with your partner.

And there are (optional) super tightly focused 40 minute small group calls each week to help you keep taking the next tiny step forward.

So that’s perhaps six hours a month, if you’re fully engaged in all the steps.

I calculated how much time you might save if you’re currently arguing with and yelling at your child on a regular basis to try to get things done, with inevitable explosions following. By the time you count up all those hassles related to breakfast, getting dressed, brushing teeth, transitions, lunch, screen time, dinner, bath time, brushing teeth (again!) and shortening your bedtime routine so it no longer involves 5+ visits to your child’s room, you are going to conservatively save about 96 hours a month. And that’s even after you factor in the six hours you’ll spend on the content.

Hmmmm….could you use an extra 96 hours a month?

Please do forgive me for being blunt, but if what you had learned from all those books and in all those parenting groups was actually working, would you have read this far down this page?

The gap between reading something in a book or a parenting group once (even if you completely agree with it!) and actually being able to implement it can be deceptively vast. It’s like the distance between your vomiting child and the open toilet: just a few feet in reality with the right support, but tantalizingly out of reach in the moment.

The membership provides the three critical components you need to make actual change happen: the right (research-based!) information, a supportive community, and (this is the really critical part) help when you get stuck.

Because you will get stuck. We all do. And when that happens you can either drop back into your old habits or figure out what didn’t go the way you’d hoped and why, and how to come back and try again differently next time. That’s why this is going to be different for you.

I hear you. Mine wasn’t at first either. We were both raised using traditional parenting methods and he has had a hard time using approaches that don’t rely on bribery and implied or actual punishments.

If this is happening in your house, I would find a time when you’re not (especially) stressed about something else - so not right after a time when your child has refused to do something your partner asked them to do, but maybe later that day.

You could say something like: “Hey; I love you and it’s really important to me that we feel like a team in parenting. It seemed like you were having a hard time when [describe difficult event] happened. Can you tell me how that looked from your perspective? [Listen. Summarize and reflect your understanding back to your partner.]

It seems like we’ve both been having a hard time with the kids lately. It doesn’t feel like we’re a team as a family. I’ve been learning about some new methods to work with the kids that would invite them to work with us more, without us totally giving in to everything they demand. I’d like to give it a try. Would you be willing to learn more about it with me?”

If cost is an issue, then the holidays are coming up - could there be a better holiday gift to each other than a more smoothly-running family life?

I get it. It might seem like this is a lot of money to spend on yourself (while your parenting partner and other caregivers are welcome to join under your membership, the person who signs up is usually the one who participates the most). And it can be doubly difficult when you see the value and promise of parenting methods that are grounded in peer-reviewed research and respectful parenting but your partner doesn’t.

I would say two things in response to this. Firstly, you are worth it. It’s so common for women, particularly, to not feel as though they can or should buy something for themselves. After all, are we really worth this much? Shouldn’t we save the money and spend it on something for our child? Will we really get enough out of it to justify the price (and couldn’t we figure this stuff out for free by ourselves anyway)?

You’re here reading this because you sense that there’s a gap between the relationship you have with your child right now, and the potential for what this relationship could be. You really could spend thousands of hours like I’ve done reading books and peer-reviewed research over the last six years and come develop these tools yourself. But starting down that path hasn’t yielded tools that work for you yet.

In these years while your child is young, ruptures in your relationship are more easily healed because your child doesn’t have a choice: they need your love. As they mature they will seek out support in other places if they aren’t getting it at home, setting the stage for some very difficult teenage years. The investment you’re about to make in this membership will lay the groundwork for a relationship based on mutual respect that will help you maintain your own connection with your child as they age, as well as teach them how to treat others and how they want to be treated by other people for the rest of their lives. This is an investment in you, for sure.

And so my second response is that this is also an investment in your child. In fact, it might be the most important thing you ever buy for them.

I experimented with offering hardship discounts when I opened the group last year and the one thing that I have learned since then is that the people who pay a deeply discounted rate rarely participate in a way that allows them to really get the benefits that the group offers if you are fully engaged. I think you need some ‘skin in the game’ to see the value that doing this kind of work can bring.

That said, having studied inequality for a couple of years now, I do now offer sliding scale pricing for this very reasy. I would never want the group to be truly inaccessible to someone who feels it will really benefit them. If joining the group would strongly benefit you but the price would take meals out of your children’s mouths, then please email me at support@yourparentingmojo.com to (briefly) explain your situation and I’ll do what I can to accommodate you.

The membership is geared toward parents of children who are between 12 months-7 years old. If you’re on the earlier side but like to feel prepared, come on in! If your child is on the older side but you don’t have a vision for parenting (and you’d like one), and you’re struggling with tantrums, power struggles, setting boundaries, and the like – you’ll definitely find a home here.

No! The monthly fee covers you and any other member of your family/caregiving team who regularly interacts with your child/ren. After you sign up, please send an email to support@yourparentingmojo.com giving me the names and email addresses of the additional individual(s) who will need access and I will set up user accounts for them, which will also get them access to the community group.

Great question! My approach is grounded in scientific research (although I’m not afraid to question its assumptions) and principles of respectful parenting. This means that I read all the research on a particular topic related to parenting and child development and try to understand what it says as a body of work (not just what the latest study with the clickbait title says).

But I also look to anthropological literature to understand how parents and children in other cultures deal with these issues to see whether our problems are of our own making (and thus we can also look to other cultures for potential solutions) or whether parents and children everywhere face this particular issue.

I view everything through a lens of respectful parenting. In general, I find that the research tends to support respectful parenting methods (e.g. not using rewards to try to motivate children; modeling emotional regulation rather than saying “You’re OK!”, not forcing a child to eat vegetables...). But I don’t get hung up on whether I’m perfectly aligned with any particular philosophy – I pick and choose what works for my family.

Finally, I view learning and development as interconnected. If we ask a child to do something they aren’t yet developmentally ready to do, we’re setting ourselves up for trouble. But sometimes we can scaffold their learning, and thus their development, if we decide that’s something we want to do. This intertwined push/pull is part of the dance of parenting.

If you were my coaching client, I’d encourage you to take these steps to help you make the decision:

Ask your logical left brain: What are the benefits I would get from joining?

Ask your intuitive right brain and your body: Do I want to join? Do you feel a sense of longing or anticipation in your body as you imagine creating a different relationship with your child? Does it ‘feel’ like a fit, even if you can’t fully articulate why in words? We are taught to ignore our intuition in favor of rational arguments, but our physical sensations can tell us a lot about our experience if we know how to listen.

Ask both your logical left brain and intuitive right brain/body: What’s holding me back? Are you wondering how this could work when so many other tools you’ve tried have failed? Are you worried about needing to interact with other parents as you do this work? What’s behind these fears? Are these voices the ones that should make the decisions about your relationship with your child? Cast your mind forward just three short months. What would you like your relationship with your child to be like by then? When you hear their feet pattering down the hallway and they enter the room you’re in, how do you feel right now? How would you like to feel when you see them? What would you do with the time you weren’t spending arguing with them? The membership comes with a 90 day guarantee. If you aren’t on track to making your vision a reality at the end of that period, I’ll insist on giving you your money back. (I’m completely confident in this because nobody has ever invoked the guarantee since I’ve been running the memberships.) Have more questions? Just email jen@yourparentingmojo.com and I’ll get right back to you.