What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood

Each week Amy or Margaret answers a listener's most pressing parenting question. Today Amy tackles the question, "When do you start letting kids have sleepovers?" Submit yours! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are a lot of reasons that one of our kids might end up getting most of our attention. Some are positive: Sophia is the best 12-year-old pitcher in the state! Some are decidedly negative: another hospital stay. Some bandwidth-hogging choices are freely made; some are obligations. Sometimes focusing on just one of our kids is temporary, and sometimes it's the sort of “new normal” that can radically reshape family dynamics. In this episode, we talk about the times in our own parenting...

Each week Amy or Margaret answers a listener's most pressing parenting question. Today Margaret tackles the question, "What do I do with my child who hates taking baths?" Submit yours! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What should we as parents do when the well-meaning grandparents in our lives are overindulgent of their grandchildren? Or undermine our parenting choices? And what do we do with our own hurt feelings when our parents don't seem very interested in our kids at all? In this episode we talk about how to create a grandparent relationship that works for everyone. It's worth the effort. Take it from our friend Belinda Luscombe, who when it comes to navigating this relationship, reminds us of the...

Each week Amy or Margaret answers a listener's most pressing parenting question. Today Amy tackles the question, "What do I do with my child who is terrified of bugs?" Submit yours! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kids don't usually seek to lose their dependence on us as parents- and why should they? Doesn’t a grilled cheese taste so much better when Mom makes it? So it’s up to us to teach our kids independence, and that means showing them how an ATM works sometime before they leave for college. How do we start the nest-leaving process early and often? Our guest is Lisa Heffernan, co-creator of the parenting-older-kids website Grown and Flown. She and Lisa Heffernan are the co-authors of the new...

Each week Amy or Margaret answers a listener's most pressing parenting question. Today Margaret tackles the question, "What are reasonable rules for when our parents visit?" Submit yours! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Each week Amy or Margaret answers a listener's most pressing parenting question. Today Amy tackles the question "How Do I Deal with Meltdowns at School Drop-Off?" Submit yours! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Helicopter moms, snowplow moms, tiger moms, free-range moms… we usually define all of these parenting types in the negative: well, at least I’m not THAT. But are there useful takeaways from each of these parenting styles that we can combine cafeteria-style to create our own? Can we reject some of the judginess of free-range parenting, or the tyranny of tiger momming, and still find things to love? What do we miss when we reject other moms' ways of doing things full-stop? Here are links to...

Each week Amy or Margaret answers a listener's most pressing parenting question. Today Margaret tackles the question, "Do We Need a Landline for Emergencies?" Submit yours! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We asked you to tell us your spouses’ most unacceptable-- and also extremely minor-- household infractions. 356 of you responded. Whether it’s turning off the AC because it's "too cold" at 75 degrees, creating a Sock Mountain of not-quite-dirty-enough laundry, or pausing Netflix to point out plot holes, this episode explores everything spouses do that is trivially horrible. It must also be said: while these offenses are most often properly termed as Husband Crimes, this episode proves...

Each week Amy or Margaret answers a listener's most pressing parenting question. Today Amy tackles the question "How Can I Keep My Cool With My Spouse Who Actually Sleeps at Night?" Submit yours! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most little kids have an ironclad sense of right and wrong and are most happy to report on whoever might not be sharing in the dress-up corner. But as they get older, the stakes get a lot higher- for them, for us, and for the kid being "told on." When should kids tell? In this episode we discuss: the difference between "tattling" and telling, and whether telling kids "no tattling" is causing other problems; the difference between surprises and secrets; what to do when kids say, "I'm not...

Each week Amy or Margaret answers a listener's most pressing parenting question. Today Margaret tackles the question, "How Can I Stop Repeating Myself?" Submit yours! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is there such a thing as a too-imaginative kid? Parenting experts say no. Dr. Paul Harris, professor of education at Harvard and author of The Work of the Imagination, says that kids’ active imaginations are “essentially positive” and represent cognitive work, the way that children make sense of the world. But if you’ve got a kid who prefers her imaginary friend to making real ones— or who terrorizes the first grade by explaining how zombies can get into one’s home through the radiator— you...

Each week Amy or Margaret answers a listener's most pressing parenting question. Today Amy tackles the question "How Do I Get My Kid to Stop With the Self-Touching?" Submit yours! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most of us have been (for better and for worse) recipients of the “only Mommy” level of attention from our little ones-- the sort of singular devotion that leaves our partners decidedly out in the cold. Many of us have also been on the outside looking in, with "Daddy’s girl" giving us none of the love, just eye rolls and the distinct impression that we rank not only second, but dead last. Why do kids prefer one parent over the other? Why do those allegiances shift? Are we supposed to ignore...

Each week Amy or Margaret answers a listener's most pressing parenting question. Today Margaret tackles the question, "How do you handle a kid who's a runner?" Submit yours! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to the US Department of Labor, more than a third of college-educated women pause their careers for some amount of time to raise their children. But the jobs we leave behind aren't usually waiting for us with open arms. How do we own the time we've spent out of the workforce raising kids without apologizing for it? How do we re-enter careers that have shifted in our absence- or create entirely new opportunities for ourselves? We talk it all out with guest Christina Geist, a brand...

Each week Amy or Margaret answers a listener's most pressing parenting question. Today Amy tackles the question "How Should I Prepare to Fly With My Toddlers?" Submit yours! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices