Joyful Courage - A Conscious Parenting Podcast

This throwback solo show takes a closer look at how parenting with Positive Discipline does NOT equal avoiding the hard stuff, instead, it is about leaning into relationship WHEN the hard stuff shows up. Being brave is something we are invited into over and over again as we parent through the seasons of adolescence. Listen in as I explore what that looks like internally, as well as externally.  Find more show notes and info about sponsors at: https://www.besproutable.com/podcasts/eps-361-finding-courage-parent-teens-differently/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s a tough topic this week - parental grief. Sascha Demerjian is here from The Grief House and beautifully intertwines personal stories with information.   We don’t only grieve for people that we’ve lost. Sascha explains that we also grieve for expectations, narratives, & ideas - sometimes beliefs we didn’t even realize we were holding. We talk about how meaningful it is to have somewhere safe for the messiness of grieving and how we can resist wanting to jump in and fix things when others are hurting. It comes back to trusting the process. Remember that when our adolescents “launch,” they aren’t done growing & learning - they keep growing all through adulthood, just like we do. Grief doesn’t end, but bringing it to light & sharing with a community makes a big difference. Takeaways from the show We get to witness our teens’ stories & narratives, not create them  Letting go of some beliefs in favor of a better relationship We grieve for ideas & expectations, not just people we lose  Holding deep faith

Today's Throwback episode highlights shifting our thinking about how we are showing up for Gen Z and why this is crucial as we move through the adolescent years with our kids. I share three essential tools for making this shift in a way that strengthens relationship and provides space for our kids to discover who they’re meant to be. Find all the show notes and info about our sponsors at: https://www.besproutable.com/podcasts/eps-357-radical-moves-for-parenting-gen-z/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guest today is Susie Pettit. Grab some popcorn for this one! Susie helps people with boundaries, codependency, emotional intelligence, and people-pleasing using a lifetime of experience, and today she’s here to talk about her awesome parenting tool.   You know one of my favorite mantras is “Fiercely committed, lovingly detached.” We’re good at the fiercely committed part of parenting, but the detachment part is hard! It’s hard to be with our kids when tough things are happening to them, and the urge to rescue doesn’t go away, but we have to let them make mistakes & learn. I ask Susie when we cross the line from empathy to codependency, and we agree on how important it is to trust the process & believe that everything’s going to be alright.  Takeaways from the show “Fiercely committed, lovingly detached”  Responding with empathy instead of codependency  Mom guilt is a waste of brain power  Detached means we respond differently, not that we don’t respond at all  Doing things for our kids sends the mes

This week's throwback is a reminder that we get to show up for our teens in a way that is helpful, not hurtful. They are navigating all the things and they need to know that we see them, they need to be believed and to experience validation around what is real for them. For more show notes go to: https://www.besproutable.com/podcasts/eps-329-being-with-whats-coming-up-for-your-teen/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Devorah Heitner is a new friend from The Zen Parenting Conference. I really appreciated what she had to say about doing more mentoring and less monitoring with our kids and their screens. This feels like a really hard time to be raising teens and dealing with all the tech. Cutting off access to technology isn’t reasonable, so how can we engage with our teens about how they use tech? How can we resist over-monitoring with school portals and Find my iPhone at our disposal? How can we teach teens self-regulation with their own screen time? Devorah shares ways we can help our adolescents notice how tech makes them feel so they can better self-regulate. She shares thoughts on the difference between a mistake and a chronic problem, seeing our kid’s posts, and what she’s hearing from teens about their experience right now. We discuss how we can make sure our kids know we’re really there for them when things go wrong, when kids want to be influencers, and how to manage it if we find our teens are doing harm online. 

Back for another relisten - this is one I send to people regularly! Appreciating you tuning back in. And even if pot smoking isn't a challenge that is currently in your household, be sure that there are tons of nuggets in this episode for you to be taking away and integrate into your parenting. For full show notes and info about our sponsors, go to: https://www.besproutable.com/podcasts/eps-309-solo-show-paradox-parenting-pot-smoking/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guest today is my returning friend, Yolanda Williams! We’re getting a little meta this week as we focus on what white parent educators can be doing better, but believe me, this episode is full of great content for all parents.   After catching-up on how Yolanda, Parenting Decolonized, and her daughter are doing, Yolanda jumps in and explains who takes on the emotional, physical, and spiritual labor of what’s going on in our world and why it’s such a huge deal for white parent educators to choose silence in order to not offend their clients. The labor, racism, and speaking out about hot topics that parent educators who are people of color are doing take so much time and effort that white parent educators may not even think of. I get vulnerable with Yolanda and ask about what I can do when I feel uninformed and uncomfortable about topics that I know are important to call out (spoiler: you don’t need to have all the answers to start speaking out). I ask Yolanda specifically what I can do to make Joyful Coura

Firmness tends to be challenging when we are focused on centering relationship with our kids... AND it is super important that we flex into connected firmness as we raise teens. Critical thinking, setting boundaries, health and well-being - these are all dependent on a certain level of firmness in our homes... Find all the show notes and info about our sponsors at https://www.besproutable.com/podcasts/eps-275-solo-show-how-does-firmness-show-up-for-you/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guest today is Mark Daley, and he’s here today to talk about all-things foster care.  Mark shares the path that led to him writing his new book, “Safe,” gives us ideas on ways that people can help support foster kids, and explains what foster kids need. I bring up how scary it can be thinking about opening your home to a stranger and ask what upstream interventions are in place to improve the foster care system. Mark leaves us on a happy note when he brings up the amazing people he works with and a first step if you’re interested in learning more about fostering children.   Takeaways from the show Hear about Mark’s new book, “Safe: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks We Take for Family”  Why do people choose to foster?  There’s a critical shortage of foster parents There are many ways to help foster children besides fostering  “These aren’t bad kids; these are kids in a bad situation.”  How and where can foster kids pick up the life skills they need to be successful?   What’s a star

Join me this week as we get into how to tighten things up and find the same page with our teens during the long days of summer. I talk about being explicit with our communication, agreements, and the power of collaboration. Check it out! Find more show notes and information about our sponsors at https://www.besproutable.com/podcasts/Eps-500-Finding-common-ground-during-the-summertime-with-your-teen/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guest today is our returning friend, Ed Center.   I kick off our conversation asking Ed what Pride month means to him, and he shares his thoughts: we want to celebrate our families, the history of our community, and acknowledge that we weren't always able to have these rights & privileges. It’s a celebration of family. I ask what we can do to get out of our bubble, and Ed shares simple, do-able ideas around how to talk to your kids and how to grow as a better advocate, while giving yourself grace. We dig into how not letting discomfort or not knowing the exactly right thing to do can stop us from helping others and why we have to lean into that discomfort.  Takeaways from the show Pride month is an opportunity to share with our kids that they live in a family with a different arrangement than other families There are many family-friendly Pride events  How do you talk to your kids? What’s your default language around family, class, race?   Pushing assumptions and changing your language to expand your

Join me this week as I share about the layers of scaffolding that come with building a home environment steeped in Positive Discipline. Starting with a foundation of parental personal growth and development, and building on top of that by focusing on relationships, creating systems and routines so that everyone is on the same page, and finally, mutually respectful, in-the-moment tools. Join me and consider how you can bring your takeaways into YOUR home and YOUR relationship with YOUR adolescents. Find all show notes and information about our sponsors at: https://www.besproutable.com/podcasts/eps-498-building-the-house-of-positive-discipline-as-parents-of-teens/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guest today is Elizabeth Brunner, the founder of StereoType Kids, a gender-inclusive fashion brand inspired by her boy/girl twins. Elizabeth shares her story, what gender-inclusivity means to her, and what blended fashion is. We talk on unlearning social norms & gender stereotypes, and I share a surprising story of a time this came up for me personally when Ian was young. Elizabeth shares the difference between how people react when her daughter dresses more traditionally-masculine versus when her son dresses in more traditionally-feminine clothes and how she coached her son to reply when someone tells him what he “can’t wear.” I bring up the dance between encouraging our daughters to express and wear whatever they want while still keeping them safe from dangerous people.   Takeways from the show Get to know StereoType Kids, a gender-inclusive fashion brand  What is gender-inclusivity? What is blended fashion?  “We try to fit into society and society norms, and that’s not actually normal. We’re meant t

What if everything is going to be fine? What if we decide to live in the uncertainty of parenting teens from a place of faith and possibility? How would that change right now for you? Join me this week as we explore the qualities that are driving us crazy as we parent our kids WHILE ALSO knowing these exact same qualities are going to serve them one day... Stretch your mind, grow your perspective, listen in. Check out all the show notes and more info about our sponsors at: https://www.besproutable.com/podcasts/eps-496-fortune-telling-and-considering-that-our-teens-lives-are-unfolding-for-them/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guests today are Ed Center and Jaimie Kelton, and they’re answering questions from YOU! This is a juicy one - we get into how to react when your LGBTQIA+ teen comes out, whose news that is to share with others, and what to do when people who don’t treat our adolescent(s) the way we’d like (cue Mama Bear). The latter half of the episode gets into online safety & pornography, the importance of knowing queer role models in real life, using TV & books as teaching tools, and talking about sex with our queer kids. Takeaways from the show What’s the preferred and most up-to-date language and acronym? Do we say queer?  What can straight parents do to best support their questioning or queer teen?  Coming out stories and reactions - whose news is this to share?  Coming out is an ongoing process. It is hard & scary!  We all hold internalized homophobia How do we handle family or friends who don’t support our queer teen?  “Choose love, choose love, choose love.”  Online safety  The importance of knowing real

Join me today and consider how we can better be with the unfolding. So many in the Joyful Courage community are moving through big things with their adolescents right now - end of school year, transition into summer, teen risk taking, having a tough time with relationship - it is all real and relevent. AND, what if the contrast and discomfort we're feeling is an indicator that we can expand our mindset and try and see things in a new way? For show notes and info about sponsors, go to https://www.besproutable.com/podcasts/eps-494-having-faith-when-we-feel-out-of-control/ Join the Joyful Courage for Parents of Teens FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/jcforparentsofteens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guest today is my dear friend and the cofounder & managing director at Sproutable, Alanna Beebe! You’ll recognize Alanna from the Art of Connected Parenting series we did earlier this year.   I’m so excited that Alanna is here to kick off Pride! Alanna is an amazing parent, and she’s here to share some of her child’s gender journey with us. Alanna’s child, was born male, transitioned to female around age 3, and more recently has transitioned to nonbinary. I have so many questions for Alanna, and although her child is still an elementary-schooler, we can still learn from so much Alanna does and how she holds space for her own child. I ask how a 3 or 4 year old knows their gender, what going through this process was like for her as a mother, and where her fears & hopes are.   We hit on a lot this week: inclusive conversations & language, the political aspects that play in, how to best support your kiddo when unkind or unsafe things happen, how to make sure your message of love is getting through, using gen

Alright... We are going a bit sideways today. Or are we? Maybe we are going in the perfect direction... You'll have to let me know. I am sharing about our personal practice of dropping in with what is real and relevant for me as I work to drop into the present moment and be who I need to be for myself and others. Having a practice is what keeps me focused in on what matters most to me, it helps me to keep my inner compass pointed in the direction I live towards... We get a bit woo woo this week but I trust you to hear the takeaways you need. Find more about the episode and sponsors at https://www.besproutable.com/podcasts/eps-492-exploring-inspiration-and-soul-care-on-the-journey-of-parenting-teens/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guests today are Maren Goerss and Angela Sizer - two former school teachers who both chose homeschooling for their families (and created an awesome podcast & book about it!). We get right into it today, jumping into collaborating with your teen around their learning, lasting effects to the homeschool community post-Covid, and what to do if you don’t mesh well with the homeschool community in your area.  We hit on a lot during this episode: school refusal, “optimally” scheduled days, trusting our children to know what’s best for them, disinterested (discouraged) learners, who teens are earning their grades for, leaning into your strengths as a parent and home educator, and saying no to things that don’t matter to your family.   We wrap up this week on homeschooling our kids with learning differences or who are neurodivergent. Check out Maren and Angela’s new book, “Think Differently about Learning,” to dig in even further to Homeschool Unrefined!  Takeaways from the show Collaborating with your child on