How to Talk about the 13 Things Mentally Strong Women and Girls Don’t Do with Amy Morin, LCSW – ReRelease

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In the wake of the very public emergence of the #MeToo, #TimesUp and #girlstoo movements, the latter that we discussed with our Girls Inc Team, Lara Kaufmann and Dr. Christina Spears, a few weeks back– women and girls have encouraged to find their voice, claim their power, come out of the shadows and not back down. But with a history of messages that tell women and girls that they need to be perfect, they shouldn’t break the rules, they should be quiet and look pretty, take a backseat and downplay their own success to avoid making others feel uncomfortable or be seen as “full of herself,” it’s a challenge for many to reinvent what it means to be a woman in 2019. It takes mental strength. We must build mental muscle and get out of our own way if we are going to change along with these important empowerment movements. How does mental strength in women make a difference? What areas, specifically, should we work on? And how does embracing and practicing mental strength as women translate to encouraging mental strength in the girls we love, teach and guide? For these questions and more, we will be interviewing the fabulous Amy Morin, for the 3rd time in the history of the show.

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How to Talk to Kids about the Gifts, Tools and Rituals of the ADHD Brain with Peter Shankman – ReRelease

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Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you find the best traits of ADHD and work really hard to make them benefit you. Diagnosed at seven years old with “sit down, you’re disrupting the class” disease, Peter wasn’t formally diagnosed with ADHD until his mid-30s. By that time, however, he’d started and sold two companies, and realized that all the differences that formerly labeled him as a troublemaker were actually his greatest assets. After Peter sold his third company, (Help a Reporter Out,) he decided to focus on really understanding this “faster brain” of his, and learning exactly what it could do. From that, the Faster Than Normal podcast and bestselling book were born.

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How to Help Kids Build Healthy Technology Habits with Diana Graber

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Special guest: Diana Graber.

Are you concerned with how much screen time your kids are using? What kind of digital reputation they are creating or how their self-esteem in being impacted by certain apps, cyberbullying, sexting or exposure to possible predators? How about clickbait, deep fakes, fake news or the like? There’s a lot of information out there and it’s here to stay. We can’t stick our heads in the sand and simply say, “I wish all of this technology didn’t exist” or “I remember when I was young and didn’t have to contend with that- can’t we just go back?” This is when and where our children live. The cyber world is just “their world.” We need to know how to navigate it and help our children navigate it with confidence, responsibility and knowledge. They need to learn how to become tech savvy and cyberwise. For this discussion, we are going to talk to our friend, Diana Graber, for a second time. There’s been a lot since last we talked!

Diana is the author of “Raising Humans in a Digital World: Helping Kids Build a Healthy Relationship with Technology”(HarperCollins Leadership ’19), co-founder of CyberWise (aka, No Grownup Left Behind!) and founder of Cyber Civics, the popular middle school digital literacy curriculum. Today Cyber Civics is taught in schools in 48 US states and internationally, and it was honored as an “Innovation in Education” finalist by Project Tomorrow and the O.C. Tech Alliance. Graber is a regular contributor on digital media topics for Psychology Today and others, and is regularly interviewed by the media regarding tech topics. She’s been an Adjunct Professor of Media Psychology teaching “Media Psychology for the 21st Century” and she presents regularly (virtually since COVID) to schools and community organizations across the US and she also conducts teacher workshops.

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How to Parent the Danish Way with Jessica Alexander – ReRelease

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Special guest: Jessica Alexander. Denmark has been voted as having the happiest people in the world by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) almost every year since 1973. That’s more than 40 years of happiness! It begs the question—is it the parenting? I mean, is there a Danish Way of parenting? It turns out, there is, and while the Danish Way of parenting is not the only reason Danes are the happiest, it does play a very important role—and the success of it all seems to be tied to the ways they educate children far beyond academics—focusing on play, empathy and social skills. It’s important to delve into it, I hope you would agree, since happy kids tend to grow up to be happy adults who raise happy kids—and the seasons go ‘round and round again. And while in the United States and in other areas of the world, we are seeing an increase of anti-depressants, suicides among young people and mental health diagnoses, as well as a great deal of competition between parents and we have a lot to learn from the Danes. Best-selling Author, Journalist, Danish Parenting Expert & Cultural Researcher, Jessica Alexander’s book “The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know about Raising Confident Capable Kids” has been published in over 25 countries. Her work has been featured in TIME, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, Huffington Post, NPR, NY Times, and many more. She regularly does talks and workshops for parents, schools and organizations like Google, The Women’s Network of the United Nations, The World Parenting Forum and many more. She has also worked as a spokesperson for LEGO on the Power of play.

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How to Parent Teens to Become Young Adults Who Have Grown & Flown with Lisa Heffernan

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Special guest: Lisa Heffernan. This podcast will focus on raising independent teens so that they can become young adults who can take care of themselves and make good, wise choices on their own. What skills do they need? What must they learn? Dr. Robyn Silverman interviews Lisa Heffernan from Grown and Flown on the How to Talk to Kids about Anything podcast.

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How to Talk to Kids about Body Image and Self Care with Charlotte Markey, PhD

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Special guest: Charlotte Markey, PhD. This podcast will focus on how to talk to kids about body image, puberty and self care. Myths about weight, size, puberty and bodies are highlighted and little conversations about these somewhat “uncomfortable” topics are explored. Dr. Robyn Silverman interviews Charlotte Markey, Ph.D, who wrote both The Body Image Book for Girls and The Body Image Book for Boys!

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How to Talk to Kids about Being Critical Thinkers with Julie Bogart

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Special guests:Julie Bogart. This podcast will focus on how to talk to kids about how to raise critical thinkers who ask “who says?” when taking in new information, doing their own research and asking questions from different perspectives. We discuss how to spark curiosity and challenge the norms so that our kids don’t just take in what they see and hear as fact—but rather, as opinions or facts filtered through a specific lens. Dr. Robyn Silverman interviews Julie Bogart, author of the new book, Raising Critical Thinkers, and founder of the writing program, Brave Writer.

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How to Practice Unconditional Parenting Using Love and Reason with Alfie Kohn – ReRelease

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Special guest: Alfie Kohn.

Many parenting books offer countless tips for dealing with kids when they misbehave in the eyes of their parents—refusing to go to bed, rejecting the vegetables they’ve been told to eat, talking back, yelling in the restaurant, badgering their sibling or resisting doing the tasks it takes to get to school on time. But the way parents cope with these challenging behaviors might be backfiring even if they work in the short term. My next guest asks many thought-provoking questions in his book, Unconditional Parenting- but two seem to be at the forefront. First; “What are your long-term objectives for your children?” and second, given those long term goals, which are likely for your child to be some version of a kind, independent, confident, competent, happy and fulfilled person—are the ways in which you are parenting lending themselves to creating that type of person IN the long run—or not? It’s time to take a hard look at some of the parenting practices that have become so common that they are accepted as the acceptable norm- time outs, positive re-enforcement, consequences, withdrawal of attention, punishment—and start taking a hard look at UNCONDITIONAL parenting- a parenting philosophy and practice in which parental love and attention is not in a push-pull relationship with how our children behave. On top of that, UNCONDITIONAL parenting puts to rest the notion that children are trying to make trouble—and instead, assumesthe best of the child and looks at the child as a whole person not a compilation of good and bad behaviors.Alfie Kohn is the author of 14 books on education, parenting, and human behavior, including PUNISHED BY REWARDS (1993), THE SCHOOLS OUR CHILDREN DESERVE (1999), UNCONDITIONAL PARENTING (2005), THE HOMEWORK MYTH (2006), and THE MYTH OF THE SPOILED CHILD (2014).  He has appeared twice on “Oprah,” as well as on “The Today Show” and many other TV and radio programs. His articles include: “Five Reasons to Stop Saying ‘Good Job!’”, “How Not to Teach Values,” and “Atrocious Advice from ‘Supernanny.’ ” Kohn works with educators and parents across the country and speaks regularly at national conferences. He lives (actually) in the Boston area and (virtually) at www.alfiekohn.org. 

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How to Talk to Kids about Labels and Diversity with Irshad Manji

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Special guests: Irshad Manji. This podcast will focus on how to talk to kids about how to open up conversation about labels and diversity in a way that empowers us to hear different perspectives rather than limit people and fan the flames of culture wars. Dr. Robyn Silverman interviews author and educator, Irshad Manji.

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How to Use Positive Discipline to Stop Power Struggles and Raise Empowered Capable Kids with Jane Nelsen – ReRelease

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Special guest: Dr. Jane Nelsen.
Children are always learning- and yes, they also make a lot of mistakes. Whether they are fighting with their siblings, tantruming about bedtime, missing the bus, forgetting their homework or talking back to you, it seems like there is a constant need for correction, apologies and do-overs. At the same time, there are all kinds of parents and teachers out there who witness such mistakes—from people who watch children act out or mess up and punish them or deliver punitive consequences immediately—to those who are incredibly permissive—who see children do something undesired and simply turn the other cheek and say; “kids will be kids.” Many parents and educators fall somewhere in between or vacillate between the two extremes of punitive and permissive.

Of course, most parents and teachers are just trying to figure out how to raise children who are kind, responsible, cooperative and self-disciplined. But what if I told you that there are many parenting and teaching skills that we can talk about right now that are non-punitive and not permissive—but would help children learn self-discipline, responsibility, and problem-solving skills—helping them to grow up into adults who can use these skills throughout their lives? Whether you are trying to get the kids to school on time, get everyone to agree on a movie for movie night or get from place to place without someone yelling or kicking or needling someone else in the car, we all deal with power struggles and frustration. Today, we’ve got positive discipline expert, Jane Nelsen on the show—and she’s going to help us learn how to be both kind and firm, connect with our children, give them a sense of belonging and significance—while helping them choose right from wrong.

Dr. Jane Nelsen is the mother of 7, grandmother of 22, and great grandmother of 13. She is also the author and co-author of many best-selling Positive Discipline books including Positive Discipline: The Classic Guide to Helping Children Develop Self-Discipline, Responsibility, Cooperation and Problem-Solving Skills and Positive Discipline Parenting Tools. An internationally known speaker and parenting expert, Jane is a California licensed marriage, family and child therapist, and received her doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of San Francisco.

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