Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive Jen Lumanlan

Video games can be tough.

Our kids enjoy them so much…but can’t tear their eyes away from them when time’s up without a meltdown.

Some games, like Fortnite and Roblox, can be really violent, and aren’t our kids learning bad messages when they play?

Plus even if they aren’t playing something violent, they aren’t really learning anything beneficial, right?

In this episode with @TheGamerEducator Ash Brandin and co-interviewer parent Nicole, we talk about common struggles parents have with kids who are playing games, including:

How to address dysregulation at the end of screen time
How to ‘scaffold’ the child’s ability to manage their own screen time
The links between screen time and intrinsic motivation
Why we can feel OK using screen time to give ourselves a break
How to model appropriate screen time use in front of our children

If summer is rolling on by and you’ve seen your kids do a lot of playing (whether that’s video games or not) and not a lot of activities that look like learning, I’d love to see you in the FREE You Are Your Child’s Best Teacher workshop that’s coming up soon.


We’ll start together on Wednesday August 7 - you’ll get a short email on each of the five following weekdays with an idea to consider and a short homework to think about, write about, or do with your child.


The weekend in the middle of the workshop offers an ideal opportunity for you to begin your child’s first Learning Exploration where they are leading the process rather than you!


Sign-up for the FREE workshop now: www.yourparentingmojo.com/bestteacher

A few months ago a member in the Parenting Membership shared a whole bunch of symptoms she'd had, from fatigue to rage to dry eyes. She'd been on a four year journey to figure out what was going on before finding out that she was in perimenopause, and wanted to save other members from the same experience she'd had.

That sparked a huge discussion in the community, with other members wondering whether the symptoms they were experiencing were also related to menopause - and whether this was going to be yet another thing they were going to have to educate their doctors about to get appropriate treatment.

In this episode we answer questions about:
What roles do hormones like estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone play in our bodies?
What is menopause, and what is perimenopause?
What are some of the most common symptoms of perimenopause? (Hint - it isn't hot flashes)
What are the benefits of Hormone Replacement Therapy, and who should consider it?
Is HRT dangerous?
What impacts does culture have on the experience of menopause?

In our next episode on this topic we'll look at a non-medical, holistic approach to menopause.

Does your child have big emotional blow-ups in social situations?

Are they a wallflower who doesn't know how to make friends?

Do they struggle to understand when it's appropriate to interrupt, tell the truth, and follow the rules vs. let things go?

I've been interested in neurodivergence for a while - I'm hoping to do an episode soon on parenting with ADHD, and in the course of research for that a parent in the Parenting Membership recommended the book Why Will No-One Play With Me.

The book is designed to help parents teach their children social skills - and I do think it has some useful ideas in it, but there are some pretty big caveats.

This episode takes a look at the broader set of research on teaching children social skills to ask whether we CAN do it and if we can, whether we SHOULD do it and if we should, what kinds of tools should we use? The popular Social Stories method? Role plays? Peer coaching?

This episode answers questions like:
What types of teaching are likely to be beneficial?
How can we teach social skills to Autistic children and children with ADHD, as well as neurotypical children?
What are the potential later-life impacts of lagging social skills (and do what we miss when we look at it from this perspective)?
At what age range is teaching social skills is most likely to succeed?
How can we know
whether we should teach a child social skills?

Want to know how my autism self-diagnosis has affected my relationship with my husband? (I will apologize to autistic listeners here as an ableist perspective is still something we're working on, and he also uses some outdated terminology probably from an old book he's started twice - but not yet finished - on supporting partners with Asperger's Syndrome.)


Curious about whether he identifies as Filipino-American... or not? And how his perspective on race differs from mine?


Want to hear how he sent a chicken up into space...and then found out what the two pink lines of a pregnancy test mean?


Last year, when we were coming up on our 200th podcast episode, I asked my husband Alvin if he would be willing to record a podcast episode. I had envisioned listeners asking the questions and him answering - but he wanted me to join as well!


One of the first things we learned was that Alvin cannot be succinct. (Well, technically speaking, this was not a new lesson for me - and interviewer Iris had tried really hard to prepare him for succinctness by asking for his 'elevator pitch' - but he just couldn't do it!)


So we ended up cutting the episode when it was already over an hour and we hadn't covered half of the questions listeners had submitted...and interviewers Iris and Corrine graciously agreed to return for a Part 2. So here it is!

Do you hate punishing (with Time Outs, withdrawing privileges, or even yelling at) your child?

Do you feel guilty after you punish them, wishing there was a way to just get them to listen?

And do bribes ("If you brush your teeth now, you can have 5 minutes of screen time...") feel just as awful?

But what other choice do you have? Your kids don't listen now, so how could not rewarding and punishing them possibly help?

That's what parent Dr. Houri Parsi thought when I first met her. (Houri's doctorate is in clinical psychology, focused on behaviorist-based reward and punishment systems.) She wasn't ready to believe that abandoning the tools she'd been trained in would create a better outcome, when she measured her success as a parent by whether she got immediate compliance from her children.

She ended up not completely abandoning these tools - because they still fit within her vision and values for her family (her vision is a bit different from mine, which is OK! The important thing is that she is living in alignment with her values!).

But Houri's relationship with her children is profoundly different today than it was a couple of years ago. Her children have deep insight into their feelings and needs, and most of the time they're able to find ways to meet all of their needs. She no longer uses her power over them to get their immediate compliance - and that doesn't mean she gets walked all over either.

Houri sees that this approach has built a deep reservoir of trust in their relationship - but occasionally a parent will slip, and will force the children to do something they aren't ready for. When you hear Houri describe how her daughter punished her husband for forcing an injection before she was ready, you might never look at your own child's misbehavior the same way again.

You'll even find a new way to approach the age-old struggle of tooth brushing in this conversation that gets Houri's childrens' teeth brushed every morning without a fight!

If you'd like to ditch the rewards and punishments (and also know that the teeth will still get brushed!) then I'd love to help you make that happen.

You'll get:
A new module of content every month
Access to an amazing community of supportive parents, in what they've described as "the least judgmental corner of the internet"
I'll answer your questions in the community, via a video, or a 1:1 consult for especially thorny issues (recorded to share with the community; there's a library of these available for you to watch as well)
Group coaching calls where I'll coach you live on your specific challenges (or you can lurk if you prefer...)
ACTion groups: Up to five parents and an experienced peer coach meet weekly to help you plan how you'll achieve your vision
A 20 minute 1:1 call with community manager Denise right after you sign up, so she can direct you to the resources that will help you most!

It's gentle parenting that's also gentle on you (and isn't permissive!). Enrollment is only open for a few more days, until midnight Pacific on Wednesday May 15. We have sliding scale pricing and a 100% money back guarantee.

Here's a little thought exercise: think back to what you were doing this time last year, right around Mother's Day (in the U.S...I know it has already passed in other places!).

What kinds of things were your children doing that were really endearing?

What kinds of things were they doing that drove you up the wall?

What kinds of fights (resistance, back-talk, stalling, tantrums, etc.) were you having with them a year ago?

Are you still having those same fights now (or variations on them)?

Do you wish you weren't still having those fights? That you could get out of the endless cycle of trying an idea you saw on Instagram, seeing a small change, and backsliding to where you were before?

Do you have all the tools you need so that a year from now you can look back and know, without any shadow of a doubt, that things are different now?

Today I'm going to introduce you to several parents who have made exactly this shift, and a framework you can use to make it for yourself.

It's not complicated. There are only five elements to it, and when they're all in place you can make sustainable change in parenting, as well as your own personal issues, work, and anything else you like.

It really is very possible to make sustainable change in parenting happen by yourself. But all of the five elements have to be in place, and operating consistently, to make it work.

Losing focus on each one of the elements creates a different outcome, none of which are good:
Confusion
Anxiety
Making slow progress
Frustration
Being on a treadmill
If you can see already that one or more of these things are happening for you, the Parenting Membership will help you make the kind of sustainable change you want to see in your family.

The first thing you'll do after you join is have a 20-minute private call with my community manager, Denise, who will see which element you're struggling with the most right now, and connect you to specific resources to help.

Many of the parents who signed up this time last year are now in an entirely different place. Things like this are happening:
Their preschoolers can use a picture-based list to accurately identify their own feelings and needs;
Parents are recognizing how their own actions are creating shame in their children, and are working to address this;
Parents see which parts of their co-parenting struggles are theirs to own, instead of blaming their difficulties on their co-parents;
They can also see which parts are not theirs to own, make requests to get their needs met, and practice accepting their co-parent for who they are;
Siblings are fighting less, because they understand each other's needs and can find strategies to meet both of their needs.

Of course these parents still have hard days...but none of them looks back on who they were a year ago and thinks: "Aside from the fact that my kids are older, I don't really know what's different now from what it was a year ago."

I want this kind of sustainable change for you, too. It's so much more than taking a short course to learn a new skill. It's a fundamentally different way of being in the world.

Enrollment for the Parenting Membership is open right now, but only until midnight Pacific on Wednesday May 15th.