Ground Control Parenting with Carol Sutton Lewis Carol Sutton Lewis

Diana Napier shares her journey with her daughter Emerson Davis, one of the young stars of the Tony award winning Broadway show, Once Upon an Island.  Diana, a corporate executive turned writer, found herself in unfamiliar parenting territory as she put her writing career on pause in order to figure out how to best help young Emerson pursue her growing passions in music and theater.  When Emerson joins the conversation at the end of the episode, she talks about the importance of her parents’ support, which includes following her lead as she pursued her various interests, helping her deal with the inevitable rejection that comes with auditioning, and so much more.   
Also in this episode, Diana and Carol engage in a candid and revealing discussion of postpartum depression, a topic not discussed often enough among young parents.   Diana shares her struggle with this illness in Emerson’s infancy, and how with help she was able to move through and beyond it.
And, for the first time, a mother/daughter team plays the #GCP Bonus Round!
Parents who want to help their children explore their talents and passions—more seriously or just for fun—will appreciate the many lessons shared in this episode.

How did the first Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company manage to balance her skyrocketing career and her growing family? In this refreshingly candid and thought-provoking conversation, Ursula Burns, former CEO of Xerox Corporation, tells us why this is NOT the question on which young women  should be focused.  She reveals how she was able to stay true to herself and her parenting goals, and explains how modern-day parents need to redefine parenting models.  But first, Ursula recalls the “masterful parenting” of her single mother and explains how her mother’s wise counsel and great parenting instincts guided Ursula’s own parenting journey. 

With COVID restrictions lifting we can finally begin our return to life as we knew it. How are our children coping with moving out of the cocoons they’ve been in for the past year? There are likely to be some stressful moments for them (and us) for a while, whether they are inclined to rush back into their pre-Covid lives or would prefer to remain in semi solitude.   Pediatric stress expert Dr. Victor Carrión returns to the podcast to talk with Carol about how to help our children through this transition period. He offers an age-specific guide to recognizing signs of stress overload, and advice on how to manage it.  

How much do your children know about money?  Sure, they may know how to spend it, but what about how to invest it and watch it grow? How can you help them learn more and plant the seeds of financial literacy that will serve them well for life?  Carol talks with Tanya Van Court, Founder and CEO of Goalsetter, a family saving and smart spending app, about her mission to make kids (and parents!) more financially savvy and have fun while doing it. Tanya offers advice on helping your family develop smart spending and saving habits.

With the pandemic requiring our children to rely heavily on tech these days, it feels as if we are losing the battle to manage their device usage. As we move towards a post-pandemic world, the question looms large: how do we help our children balance their tech use when they need their devices now more than ever?  In this week’s episode, Carol talks with top kids and tech expert Jim Steyer, the Founder and CEO of Common Sense, the nationwide organization dedicated to helping kids thrive in a world of media and technology. Jim offers lots of helpful ways for parents to address this urgent question.   

Jim also candidly talks about the challenges he faces as a white father raising a Black son in the era of Black Lives Matter and the fight for social justice in our country.  




 

As we parent through this pandemic, who has the greater challenge: parents of toddlers and little ones, trying to help them make sense of it all, or parents of older children who have to help them keep it together as their academic, personal and work lives threaten to fall apart? And what can these different generations of parents learn from each other?  Carol poses these questions to three dynamic women––Monique Péan, who is raising her young children in NYC, Lady Ashley Adjaye, a native Californian who moved her young son and daughter from London to Accra, Ghana to raise them in a more supportive racial environment, and Anne Williams-Isom, who, like Carol, has children in college and beyond.
You’ll hear them talk about their unique and shared experiences in the world of pandemic parenting, what a family move to “the continent” is like, how to talk about Black Lives Matter and social justice with children little and grown, and much more.