Today’s guest Colin Beavan appeared on The Colbert Report, The Today Show, and many other talk shows when he first started on a quest to live a good life while limiting the amount of Earth’s resources he and his family used, a year-long journey documented in his No Impact Man blog, book, and later documentary.
If you’ve ever felt unsure of how to approach finding happiness, if you’ve ever worried about the condition of the world we are leaving for our children, if you – like me – are unclear on the definition of the word agency and how it relates to your life, you are going to love today’s’s episode.
Colin has a new book out, How to Be Alive, a guide to finding happiness while advocating for our world, our communities, and our families. My favorite section – dog-eared and with my written notes all over the place – is called Who to Parent, and we have a great conversation in today’s episode about what those words really mean.
We also talk about how Colin and his family do not have chickens; I learn the definition of the word “agency;” and Colin helps you figure out how to surmount the challenges you may be facing in your life as a parent.
Click here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/078 to listen and for key links in this episode!
Key Links:
For Colin’s No Impact Man blog and book, click here.
Click here to check out his latest book, How to Be Alive, and click here to check out an older book of Colin’s, OperationJedburgh, about American spies behind enemy lines in World War II (and which I’m reading at this very moment.)
You can read – for FREE – the introduction to Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics, the recently-published book I wrote for you if you are struggling to enjoy life as the parent of a young child! Click here or go to Amazon.com to check it out.
Today’s episode centers on a part of every human’s innate personality: the trait of introversion or extroversion. (Click here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/074 to listen to part one, about parenting introverts – today is about parenting extroverts.)
Where are you happiest – among people, in a noisy, large group, or quietly, in solitude or hanging with just a few people? Does one of the above situations drain you, while the other seems absolutely perfect?
When you think about your young child – does she prefer noisy, loud fun, or is she more quiet and contemplative? Does he get his energy from the same place as you?
Everyone falls somewhere on this introvert/extrovert scale, and figuring out where we fall – and, where our children fall – on the scale can mean coexisting more peacefully and enjoyably with our kids.
Click here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/077 for key links from this episode!
Key Links:
Today, we discuss parenting extroverts in great detail; click here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/074 for the detailed discussion on parenting introverts.
Head over to Amazon.com by clicking this link to check out Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics: Key Tools to Handle Every Temper Tantrum, Keep Your Cool, and Enjoy Life With Your Young Child. You can read the table of contents and introduction for free, and decide if you think this book I wrote for you, if you are raising young children right now, will help you worry less and enjoy more.
I think it will help – I’m realizing that I kind of wrote it to myself, when my kids were younger and I struggled to enjoy their early childhood. The tools and mindset I share helped me turn that around – I hope they’ll help you too!
When I interviewed Erik Wagter for episode 75, Tuesday’s guest episode, I’d just finished reading an article about a man named Matthias Buchinger, who despite having no hands or feet, despite missing parts of his legs, danced, performed magic in front of large audiences and heads of state, created amazing art, married four times and was the dad of fourteen children.
My conversation with Erik, which centered on fostering a great relationship with our children, and largely on Erik and his family’s relationship with their autistic son, seemed to me to relate an awful lot to this article about Matthias (click here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/075 to listen).
Author Beverly Beckham shares about her grandchild, born with Down’s syndrome, and how the vast majority of their friends and family were “full of sorrow and sighs.” Nearly everyone’s expectations for this new life was that it would be compromised, not a full life – and Beverly eloquently writes about all that Matthias accomplished, relating it to our expectations for our children and how these expectations can shape their lives.
Click here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/076 to listen, and for key links from today’s episode!
Key Links:
Beverly Beckham writes for the Boston Globe; read her amazing article, “How did he dance without legs?” here.
Listen to Tuesday’s conversation with dad, trainer, and educator Erik Wagter by clicking here or going to weturnedoutokay.com/075.
Check out the introduction of my book, Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics – written for you, if you struggle to enjoy the days with your young child – for FREE at Amazon.com! Click here to go to the book’s page in Amazon.com.
I knew my conversation with today’s guest, a trainer of educators and social workers, would help you become skilled at resolving conflicts in your home. What I didn’t expect – and was so joyfully surprised about – was how forthcoming this father of two would be in sharing his family’s story of helping their oldest son, diagnosed with autism at a very young age, connect with his family in a meaningful way.
Erik Wagter and his wife Sally took son Tim’s education and well-being into their hands, choosing to homeschool starting from when Tim was in primary school. I had goosebumps as Erik share the rewards of all their hard work (and, the hard work itself.)
Whether you have a child with a special need or not, you’re going to love this episode. Erik shares his family’s terrific story, and how you can resolve conflicts and have a better relationship with your young child.
Click here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/075 to listen, and for the key links Erik shares in today’s’s episode!
Key Links:
Go to inspiringsolutionsforautism.com to learn more about Erik and Sally’s son, Tim, and the journey the entire Wagter family has been on in helping Tim connect meaningfully with the world.
Today, Erik shares how helpful one particular organization was in helping Tim connect: go to son-rise.org to find out more about them!
To learn more about Erik’s work as a trainer of educators and social workers, and to connect with him, go to solutionfocused.co.uk.
Click this link to check out Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics: Key Tools to Handle Every Temper Tantrum, Keep Your Cool, and Enjoy Life With Your Young Child, the book I wrote for you if you need some concrete tools to use in the tough moments in parenting your young child. Back when I struggled to enjoy Max and Jay’s early childhoods, these tools really helped me maintain my sanity and do a lot less yelling. I hope they’ll help you as well!
Today’s episode centers on a part of every human’s innate personality: the trait of introversion or extroversion. (Today, we focus on the parenting of introverts; coming up in episode 77 – the next Just You And Me episode – we dive into parenting extroverts.)
Where are you happiest – among people, in a noisy, large group, or quietly, in solitude or hanging with just a few people? Does one of the above situations drain you, while the other seems absolutely perfect?
When you think about your young child – does she prefer noisy, loud fun, or is she more quiet and contemplative? Does he get his energy from the same place as you?
Everyone falls somewhere on this introvert/extrovert scale, and figuring out where we fall – and, where our children fall – on the scale can mean coexisting more peacefully and enjoyably with our kids.
Click here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/074 for key links from this episode!
Key Links:
Click here for the greatest Disney app ever, the one that helped us navigate the parks with minimal lines and maximum fun, touringplans.com!
To check out Susan Cain’s books, podcast, and TED talk on the power of introverts, click here.
Head over to Amazon.com by clicking this link to check out Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics: Key Tools to Handle Every Temper Tantrum, Keep Your Cool, and Enjoy Life With Your Young Child. You can read the table of contents and introduction for free, and decide if you think this book I wrote for you, if you are raising young children right now, will help you worry less and enjoy more.
I think it will help – I’m realizing that I kind of wrote it to myself, when my kids were younger and I struggled to enjoy their early childhood. The tools and mindset I share helped me turn that around – I hope they’ll help you too!
Today Robin Abrahams, author of the weekly Miss Conduct advice column in Boston Globe Magazine, returns for her second hangout on We Turned Out Okay! (Robin and I first spoke last fall, in episode 42, so click here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/042 to hear our first conversation together.)
In honor of Mother’s Day Robin has a special article coming out in this Sunday’s Globe Magazine, “A letter to moms from a woman without children;” in it she makes some very kind and wonderful promises to her friends with kids, such as “I will take the lead in scheduling social events, because you’re managing more social calendars than I am.” We start today’s conversation talking about Robin’s article – and then move on to her delightful book, Miss Conduct’s Mind over Manners: Master the Slippery Rules of Modern Ethics and Etiquette.
In this guidebook for modern living – for getting along with other humans – is a tiny, wonderful few pages about breast-feeding in public; Robin and I talk about the perils of both breast-feeding and formula feeding in public, since both leave parents equally open to beratings from strangers! Robin shares great advice with us about how to deflect criticism, from strangers and friends and family.
Next, Robin answers some listener questions:
Anne asks “I’m considering homeschooling my preschooler next year, and I’m getting major pushback from my husband’s family. (My husband is on board, just not his parents and siblings.) They live nearby and we do see his parents a lot, how can I keep family relations positive in the event that we homeschool their grandson in the fall?”
MJ, who is planning a family trip involving traveling in the same car with her estranged mother-in-law for ten days, asks “please help me with easy situation diffusers and ways I may not have thought about to keep this trip as conflict free as possible…”
I wonder “what happens if you’re at the playground and a parent scolds your child – for doing something perfectly within his rights, in your opinion?”, a situation which I found myself in a few years ago.
Robin shares great advice for each of these situations, so you’re sure of some great takeaways from our conversation!
Today’s show is sponsored by Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics: Key Tools to Handle Every Temper Tantrum, Keep Your Cool, and Enjoy Life With Your Young Child, the book I wrote for you if you are the parent of young children!
It’s getting some great reviews, including this one from Heidi de los Andes: “I really enjoyed this quick, clear and caring parenting book. Just like the author advocates in dealing with children, she couches her advice from a position of empathy. The book draws from the same general philosophy of instilling self-reliance as the Free Range Kids book by Lenore Skenazy… I also appreciated that it was a quick read (about an hour) and had lots of tricks and techniques you can start using right away.”
It’s available as an E-book in Amazon right now… To check out Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics click here or go to Amazon.com and search the name. I hope it helps you in your everyday parenting!
“Wait a minute” – I hear you thinking – “aren’t Your Child Explained episodes a Thursday thing?”
You are absolutely right, ordinarily the Your Child Explained airs on the Thursday after a guest episode. But this is an unusual week because I’m interviewing the guest tomorrow, Wednesday, May 4, so that you can get your questions to her and she can answer them for Thursday’s show…
Which you’ll want to do, because returning champion Robin Abrahams, whose weekly “Miss Conduct” column in the Boston Globe Magazine answers etiquette questions with her own brand of caring-yet- Seinfeld-ish, humor, is an expert in the rules that allow us to all get along together.
Go to weturnedoutokay.com/contact to ask your toughest questions about confusing social situations. Miss Conduct fields thorny questions all the time and is a wonderful resource for you if:
while investigating homeschooling your young child, your mother-in-law informs you: “no grandchild of mine will ever homeschool”
a friend chooses your daughter’s first birthday party as the perfect venue to persuade everyone attending that her candidate in the upcoming national election is the best candidate
you think a coworker might be pregnant, and you want to congratulate her, but you’re not sure if she is or not; should you speak up?
In today’s Your Child Explained episode – a precursor to my conversation with Miss Conduct – we consider manners and etiquette from the perspective of our young kids.
I share an embarrassing situation in which, at age four, one of my boys “congratulated” an overweight pizza restaurant employee, enthusiastically telling her “wow – you’re really fat!”
Kids just don’t have a filter, for better or for worse.
Everyone who hears my four-year-old gasps in astonishment. The employee to whom my son directs his remark flushes; tears come to her eyes.
What do I do at this moment?
Click here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/072 to find out – and if you haven’t gotten it yet, click here or go to Amazon.com to download my e-book, Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics: Key Tools to Handle Every Temper Tantrum, Keep Your Cool, and Enjoy Life With Your Young Child. It’s finally launched and ready for you to start learning the tools that will make every day as a parent calmer and happier!
Back in the pizza restaurant, I thought about how, as parents, we’re not raising young kids – we are hosting ambassadors from another planet. Our kids are aliens, just learning how the world works here on earth. When my boys were quite young I read an essay describing kids in this way; ever since, remembering that essay has helped me stay calm when, whether through their words or their actions, my kids commit a mortifying error.
So rather than shouting at my child to apologize, rather than embarrassing him more than he already was (for, as soon as the words were out of his mouth he knew he had committed a grave mistake, although he didn’t know why the words were such a problem), I apologized as sincerely as I possibly could, led my boy to our table, and answered his inevitable questions about why what he said was so bad. I helped him understand that it’s not he himself who was bad – it was his words, and they could be changed to reflect his truly good heart.
What story do you have about the lack-of-filter on your young child? Let me know! Go to weturnedoutokay.com/contact (also, send in your questions for Miss Conduct)!
Key Links
Miss Conduct’s Mind Over Manners: Master the Slippery Rules of Modern Ethics and Etiquette, the book that will help you navigate today’s social rules, is available in Amazon.
Ask Miss Conduct a question over at the Boston Globe Magazine by clicking here; ask her a question for the Thursday, May 5 edition of We Turned Out Okay by going to weturnedoutokay.com/contact
Grab your copy of Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics, my e-book helps parents of young children maintain their sanity and do a lot less yelling, by clicking here; learn more about the book by clicking here or going to positivedisciplineninjatactics.com.
Today’s guest Colin Beavan appeared on The Colbert Report, The Today Show, and many other talk shows when he first started on a quest to live a good life while limiting the amount of Earth’s resources he and his family used, a year-long journey documented in his No Impact Man blog, book, and later documentary.