Podcast · Kids & Family

Dam Parenting

by Dam Parenting Podcast · English · Kids & Family

Nobody hands you a map when you have a baby in a country that isn't your own. DAM Parenting is a weekly English-language podcast for international parents in the Netherlands: pregnancy and birth in the Dutch system, kraamzorg, postpartum, matrescence, relationships after kids, bilingual families, A

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 28 min
Latest: 14 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

14 Oct 2026 · 40 minNew

Is It ADHD or Just Adjusting? Spotting ADHD in our Third Culture Kids

Is it ADHD, or is your child just exhausted from a new school, a new language and a new country? It's #ADHDAwarenessMonth. Child psychologist Kate Berger from the Expat Kids Club on why some kids hold it together all day and fall apart at the front door, what a Dutch teacher really means by "druk", and how to get from a first worry to an assessment. Plus the one thing she says parents nearly always know first. Guest: Kate Berger, child psychologist and founder of The Expat Kids Club , supporting families in the Netherlands for over 18 years. Mentioned on the episode: -…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

S2 · 7 Oct 2026 · 28 min
ADHD and Sex: Why 'Not Tonight' Feels Like Rejection
Does ADHD affect your sex life? If you or your partner has ADHD, "not tonight" can land like a door slamming, and nobody has told either of you why. It's ADHD Awareness Month, and DAM ex goes there. Sex and intimacy counsellor Debby Poort explains why the intense early spark shifts, what rejection sensitivity does in the bedroom, and why so many couples end up feeling more like parent and child than partners. Plus the medication conversation almost nobody has with their doctor. For the partner with ADHD and the one who loves them. Neither of you is the problem. Guest: Debby Poort, sex and…
S2 · 1 Oct 2026 · 10 min
ADHD Awareness Month: (Recorded Nine Hours Before It Airing)
Kicking off ADHD Awareness Month with the least polished episode I've ever made. Recorded nine hours before it went out, at my kitchen table, in one take. The deadline is the only thing that has ever made me do anything. I was diagnosed in my forties — the same month this podcast launched. Three medications in three months, none of which worked, and then I was told I'd maxed out my dose. And what I felt wasn't "the system failed me." It was "I've failed. Again." In this one: – What a late ADHD diagnosis actually feels like as a parent – Why ADHD medication not working can feel like a…
S2 · 30 Sep 2026 · 29 min
My Child Understands My Language but Only Answers in Dutch
Your child understands every word of your home language, and answers you in Dutch. Every time. If it started when school or daycare went back, you're not imagining it. Why does my bilingual child only answer in Dutch? Mimi from Growing Up Multilingual explains why the school language takes over so fast, whether you should insist on a reply in your language, and why she'd retire one very popular piece of bilingual parenting advice. We also get into the child who seems embarrassed by the home language, one easy thing to try this week, and what to do if you feel you've already lost ground. For…
S2 · 28 Sep 2026 · 17 min
Taalparade: A Free Multilingual Family Event in Amstelveen on 7 November
The Dutch and English langauges are everywhere. The language your child speaks with their grandmother? Almost nowhere outside your front door. And kids notice. Mimi joins me for a short one about Taalparade , a free multilingual family day for children aged 0–12. We talk about why seeing your home language out in the world matters more than any lesson about diversity, and why asking a bilingual child to "say something" in their language can backfire. For international families raising multilingual children in the Netherlands. Taalparade: Saturday 7 November, 11:00–16:00, Library Amstelveen…
S2 · 26 Sep 2026 · 32 min
The Shame of Asking: From the Boardroom to Food Delivery Driver
Camila moved here for love straight out of university, spent sixteen years climbing at a big media company, and quickly built Joy In Organizing a business with 77,000 followers and a book deal. Then came burnout, a divorce that ate €45,000 in legal fees, and nine months of job applications that went nowhere. This summer she got on a bike with an Uber Eats bag. The reel she made about it has over a million views now. This episode is about shame. The kind that makes you go quiet instead of asking for help — and what happened the day she messaged every single person she knew, including a man…
S2 · 23 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
Can't Relax No Matter What You Try? Nervous System Regulation Explained
Tried breathwork, silent retreats, sound baths and every calming app going, and still can't relax? You're not bad at it. Your nervous system might just need something different. In episode 3 of DAM Trauma, trauma therapist Adina Petre explains nervous system regulation in plain English. No Latin, no diagrams, no pressure. In this episode: – What regulation actually means (it isn't feeling calm all the time) – The window of tolerance, hyperarousal and hypoarousal, for parents running on empty – Why fight, flight and freeze are automatic, not a willpower problem – Co-regulation when your…
S2 · 16 Sep 2026 · 50 min
Living In A Diverse City Isn't Enough | Raising Anti-Racist Kids In The Netherlands
Living in a diverse city does not teach a child about race. Parents have to do that on purpose. A four-year-old on a playdate in Utrecht told her friend's mother that the girl's dad was scary because he has a brown face. An hour later, outside a supermarket, she asked whether he steals money too. Her parents are not racist. Maya was born and raised in the Netherlands. Mo is biracial — a Malian father, a French mother, a childhood between Abidjan and Paris, fifteen years in the Netherlands. They are raising a four-year-old daughter here in the Netherlands. In this episode: — What to say when…
S2 · 12 Sep 2026 · 52 min
The Dutch School Year, Month by Month — A Chat With Liam
Schools back in session and nobody's ready. The alarms are back, the shoes are missing, and somewhere in your inbox is a school calendar you haven't properly looked at yet. So Eva sat down with Liam — also known as Dad Do Art, self-declared Vulnerable Dad number Two — got the calendar out, and went through the whole Dutch school year. Month by month. Not a masterclass. Two parents, two coffees, and nine months of what's actually coming. What's in it: studiedagen and why you mark every single one this week, while you're still an optimist. School apps. What happens when there's no substitute…
S2 · 9 Sep 2026 · 34 min
Why Your Child Fell Apart in Week Three of School — Transition Fatigue in Expat Kids, with Kate Berger
📬 Get the monthly email: damparenting.nl — everything from the podcast, in four minutes. Your child went back to school and seemed fine. Then week two happened. For internationally mobile children, September isn't just a new school year. It's a re-entry. They've come back from a summer in a country that might feel more like home than this one, said goodbye to grandparents again, and walked into a classroom where they have to switch languages at the door. The tiredness doesn't show up on day one. It shows up when the adrenaline runs out. Kate Berger is a child psychologist and the founder of…
S2 · 2 Sep 2026 · 27 min
Mismatched Libido: One Wants Sex To Feel Close, One Needs To Feel Close First | DAMSex
One of you reaches for sex to feel close. The other needs to feel close before sex is even on the table. Nobody is wrong, nobody is broken, and most couples never say a word of it out loud. In Episode 5 of the DAM Sex series, sex and intimacy counsellor Debby Poort joins DAM to unpack what happens when two people in the same relationship have completely different starting points for desire — and why so much of the disconnection around sex turns out not to be about sex at all. What we get into: What responsive desire and spontaneous desire actually mean, and why one of them is so consistently…
S2 · 26 Aug 2026 · 22 min
Language Loss vs Reduced Activation: Returning to School in the Netherlands After Summer
The school bag is back out. The new lunch box is ready. And somewhere between the airport and the front door, your child tried to say something in Dutch — and it didn't come as easily as it did before you left. Does that mean something has gone wrong? Did six weeks speaking your home language undo years of work? In this episode of Dam Parenting, Eva sits down with multilingualism specialist Mimi - from Growing Up Multilingual — back for another episode of their ongoing multilingualism series — to talk through one of the most common end-of-summer anxieties in international families: the…
S2 · 19 Aug 2026 · 56 min
7 Types of Trauma That Show Up When Living Abroad — With Trauma Therapist Adina Petre
You moved here. You built a life. And somewhere along the way, you started carrying something you couldn't quite name. In this episode, clinical psychologist and trauma therapist Adina Petre joins us to break down 7 types of trauma that show up specifically in expat and international family life — the ones that don't look like trauma from the outside, but quietly shape everything. We cover: relocation grief, cultural identity loss, generational trauma, birth trauma in a foreign healthcare system, parenting without your support network, the psychological cost of living in a second language,…
S2 · 15 Aug 2026 · 23 min
Dutch School Starter Pack: Groep 1, Gym Days, BSO and the Summer Slide
After Wednesdays school lunch episodes, i have recieved several DM's asking for hints and tips about schools - and without asking everyone to go back listeniing to the numerous episodes we already have in our archive - I decided to magpie this episode, and grab a selection of learnings from previous episodes and also add in a few of my own. In the Netherlands children start basisschool the day after their fourth birthday, so your child may walk into a class that's already formed. This episode covers what to expect in groep 1 and 2, what to send them in, and what to do in those first…
S2 · 12 Aug 2026 · 45 min
What to Put in Your Child's Lunch Box for a Dutch School — With a Children's Nutritionist
What do you actually put in a Dutch school lunch box? Parents at an Amsterdam school sent in 11 photos of their children's real lunch and snack boxes, and children's nutritionist Mélody goes through three of them with us — what's working, what a child's body genuinely needs to get through a school day, and what she'd change. This one is for you whether your child starts school next week starts next month, or next year. We cover what balance actually means across a week rather than in a single box, why the Dutch fruitpauze does more work than parents realise, why the water-only rule at most…
S2 · 5 Aug 2026 · 19 min
Why Your Desire Disappeared — And How to Find It Again (With Science)
DAM Parenting says the stuff out loud that you might be thinking — just in your headphones, on your own time, when you're not quite ready to say it to anyone else yet. In episode 4 of DAM Sex, Eva is back with sex and intimacy counsellor Debby Poort to talk about something that doesn't get said enough — and not in the way it usually gets said. Sex is good for you. Not as a favour to your partner. Not because it's been a while. For you. Your sleep. Your cortisol. Your sense of yourself as a person who exists in a body that belongs to you. They get into the actual science — cardiovascular…
S2 · 1 Aug 2026 · 15 min
They Couldn't Find the Right School. So They Built One.
What do you do when the school you want for your child simply doesn't exist? If you're Tim and Camilla, co-founders of Seeker — you build it. Seeker is a brand new private bilingual Dutch-English Montessori primary school opening in Eindhoven this September. And the children starting now? They are the founding class — the ones who will set the tone, the culture, and the standard for every child who comes after them. In this episode, Eva talks to Tim about what was missing in Eindhoven for international families, what it actually takes to open a private school inside the Dutch education…
S2 · 29 Jul 2026 · 28 min
Is My Child's Dutch Getting Worse Over Summer? What Multilingual Families in the Netherlands Need to Know
You're away for the six weeks of school holiday in your home country. Maybe you dropped your children off and came back to work. Or you're staring down the new school year starting soon with a child who has barely spoken Dutch all summer — and a quiet worry that something has slipped.This episode is for all of it. Eva sits down with multilingualism specialist Mimi from Growing up Mulltilingual for a wide-ranging conversation about the language anxiety that follows multilingual families through summer — whether that's a child who goes quiet in the home language when they arrive at the…
S2 · 22 Jul 2026 · 7 min
You're Allowed to Be Exhausted: A Reality Check Before the Summer Holidays
Feeling like an exhausted parent before the summer holidays have even started? You're allowed to be. This short, one-take episode — no editing, no polish, on purpose — is a reality check on parent burnout, the mental load, and why holidays with young kids are not actually holidays (they're taking the show on the road). Recorded at the start of the Dutch summer break, this episode gives you permission to rest before you crash — because burnout doesn't send a calendar invite, and the signs of parental exhaustion are easy to miss until someone points them out. Consider this that someone.…
S2 · 15 Jul 2026 · 26 min
Why Does a Hand Lotion Calm Me Down? Nervous System Regulation with Elif Durgel
You catch a smell. A lotion, a tea, something cooking. And in under a second — before you've even thought about it — you're home. That's not nostalgia. That's not weakness. That is your nervous system doing something remarkable. This week we're joined by psychologist and cross-cultural specialist Elif Durgel, founder of Roots and Wings Academy in Eindhoven, for a warm, science-light conversation about why smell bypasses the thinking brain entirely and connects directly to memory, identity and emotion — and what that means for international parents living far from where they started. We talk…
S2 · 8 Jul 2026 · 31 min
What Is Trauma? Big T, Little T, and Why It Might Be You
Have you ever reacted to something and thought — why did I react like that? Or carried a weight you couldn't quite name? Today we're breaking down what trauma actually is — plainly, warmly, and without the jargon. Because if you're living in the Netherlands as an expat or immigrant, building a life far from home, navigating a foreign healthcare system, raising children in a second language — this conversation is for you. We're joined by Adina Petre , clinical psychologist and trauma therapist , who will be joining us monthly to help us understand ourselves a little better, one episode at a…
S2 · 1 Jul 2026 · 24 min
Obligation Sex Is More Common Than You Think — Here's What It's Really Costing Your Relationship
This episode is brought to you by MamaSocial , who connect mums across the Netherlands so you actually have a community to lean on. Brunches, mingles, networking, whatever you need — MamaSocial will be hosting something near you. Check out their website and Instagram to find your nearest one now. Have you ever had sex because saying no felt harder than just getting it over with? In episode 3 of DAMSex, Eva sits down again with sex and intimacy counsellor Debby Poort to talk about obligation — or "duty" — sex, and what it quietly does to you, your partner, and your relationship over time.…
S2 · 27 Jun 2026 · 28 min
Queer Parenting in the Netherlands: Why One Dad Built a 250-Family Community From Scratch
When Aldo's daughter arrived via surrogacy in Canada, he looked around and realised he'd spent 10 years focused on becoming a dad — and forgotten to build a community for her. So he started a WhatsApp group for four or five families. Within months, it had grown to 250 members from every corner of the Netherlands. In this episode, Aldo — founder of Queer Families NL — talks about what it actually takes to raise a child in a rainbow family here, the gap between the Netherlands' progressive reputation and the lived reality for queer parents, and the moment his two-year-old daughter came home…
S2 · 24 Jun 2026 · 25 min
Raising Bilingual Children in the Netherlands: What Summer Travel Really Does for Heritage Language Development
Your child speaks the school language all year without thinking. Your language — the one you grew up in, the one your parents use, the one you hoped would just stick — has to fight for space. And then summer comes. You get on a plane. And suddenly the whole dynamic shifts. In this episode, Eva talks to multilingualism specialist Mimi about what really happens to language development when families travel home — and why most parents underestimate how significant that window actually is. They talk about the child who understands everything but answers in the wrong language, why love of family…
S2 · 20 Jun 2026 · 29 min
Coparenting After Separation in the Netherlands: One Dad's Honest Story
What actually happens after a relationship ends — when you have children together, you're living in the Netherlands, and your village is far away? Niko, a German dad, joins us this week to talk honestly about something most men never say out loud: the grief, the guilt, the fear of what separation would do to his kids — and how he came out the other side. They talk about growing apart after years together, the question he had to ask himself when staying felt like slowly disappearing, why he believes ending a marriage and ending a family are not the same thing, and how he and his ex built a…
S2 · 17 Jun 2026 · 35 min
Why Becoming a Dad Made Me Finally Realise I Had ADD - Mens Mental Health Week
If you became a father and suddenly felt like you couldn't keep up — with the admin, the overwhelm, the switching, the forgetting — this episode is for you. Liam, founder of Dads Do Art and familiar Dam Parenting voice, joins Eva to talk about his late ADD diagnosis. What fatherhood revealed that decades of coping had hidden. How he navigated the Dutch healthcare system — the huisarts, the waiting lists, the private vs public route. Why he initially thought he'd fooled the professionals. What medication actually changed, and what it didn't. And the moment his mum arrived at the diagnostic…
S2 · 13 Jun 2026 · 16 min
Buying a House in the Netherlands: What No One Tells You
The Dutch housing market is fast, opaque, and genuinely unforgiving if you don't know the rules — and most of us didn't get the rulebook. In this episode, Eva is joined by Nic, co-founder of Buy Home Helper , who built a platform specifically for internationals navigating the Dutch home buying process after his own experience of lost bids, hidden costs, surprise neighbours, and a final invoice that came out of nowhere. We get into what the market actually looks like right now, why more internationals are being pushed into buying whether they're ready or not, and how Buy Home Helper guides…
S2 · 10 Jun 2026 · 33 min
Vaccinations in the Netherlands: Everything International Parents Need to Know
Confused about vaccinations in the Netherlands? You're not alone — it's one of the most asked questions in every expat parenting group. This week I'm joined by Youth Healthcare physician Dr. Marenne van Hengel Budde for a complete, plain-English guide to the Dutch vaccination system — from pregnancy through to age 14, and everything in between. We cover the full Dutch National Immunisation Programme (RVP), why chickenpox isn't on the Dutch schedule, the BCG tuberculosis vaccination that surprises many international families, meningitis B, travel vaccinations, and how to check your child's…
S2 · 3 Jun 2026 · 19 min
‘We’re Housemates Who Share a Bed’ — How Can Emotionally Focused Therapy Help You?
‘We used to be so passionate. Now we’re housemates who just happen to share a bed. I’m scared we’ve lost something we can’t get back.’ IIn this episode, sex and intimacy counsellor Debby Poort answers it. This month on DAM SEX, Eva and Debby go into Emotionally Focused Therapy — the attachment-based model that reframes ‘we have a sex problem’ as ‘we have a connection problem.’ They talk about the pursue–withdraw cycle, what it looks like in real couples, and why both people in the cycle are doing the exact same thing: trying to get their needs met. Plus: the A.R.E. framework (Accessible,…
S2 · E56 · 31 May 2026 · 22 min
The Word They Used to Silence Women — And How We're Taking It Back
Gossip. Gossib. Godsib. The same word — and the meaning was changed on purpose. Before gossip became something shameful, it meant godsib: God's sibling. Your circle. The women who gathered around you when you gave birth, who cooked and held and stayed. That tradition was deliberately dismantled — and we are reclaiming it. In this final episode of the Maternal Mental Health Month series, I sit down with artist Sanne Freijdag, whose project the Gossib Gathering is doing exactly that: bringing women together over fabric, stitching, and the kind of honest conversation that happens when your…

About Dam Parenting

Dam Parenting is a English kids & family podcast from Dam Parenting Podcast. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Dam Parenting Podcast
Language: English
Category: Kids & Family
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 28 min
Latest episode: 14 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1714151581
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