Parenting is hard…but does it have to be this hard? Wouldn’t it be better if your kids would stop pressing your buttons quite as often, and if there was a little more of you to go around (with maybe even some left over for yourself)? On the Your Parenting Mojo podcast, Jen Lumanlan M.S., M.Ed…
One day Iris took her daughter to the park, with enough snacks with for both of them. When Iris got hungry, she asked her daughter to share some of the food - but her daughter refused. Iris knows that hunger is a factor that dramatically narrows her Window of Tolerance and makes it more likely that she’ll snap at her child’s behavior, so she asked again for food and again her daughter refused. Then out of nowhere a crow swooped down and tried to steal some of the food, causing the whole lot to fall on the ground - and Iris exploded. She was so angry that she felt a hot energy coming from her…
Last year I hosted a panel event in Vancouver where four people who have been active in helping us to navigate toward an anti-racist, post-patriarchal, post-capitalist future came together to share their ideas in front of a live audience. It was a beautiful event (eventually we'll process the video of it to share with you!), and I really hit it off with Moms Against Racism Canada founder Kerry Cavers so we got together afterward to chat. This is a much more personal episode than many. I actually didn't know it was going to be an episode beforehand - I thought we were going to record…
You did everything right today, and it still wasn't enough. Your kid melted down over something small, you lost your patience faster than you wanted to, and now you're lying in bed wondering if today's hard moment left a mark. In this episode, I get into why some days with our kids are harder than others, and it's rarely just about what happened in that one moment. Temperament mismatch (or a temperament match that causes its own friction), the attachment patterns we picked up long before we had kids, unresolved hurt from our own childhoods, we're carrying more into these interactions than we…
You promised yourself you wouldn't become your mother. Then your kid won't put their shoes on for the third time, and the voice that comes out isn't really yours. In this episode, I talk with Terese, a parent who grew up walking on eggshells around a mother who yelled often. She would yell because Terese had her school books on the dinner table - and then after dinner, she would yell because the books were in the living room. Terese knew she wanted to raise her own kids differently, but she didn’t have a model for what that would look like. She shares what it took to finally stop hearing her…
Before my daughter was born, I made a book split into two halves. One cover said 'me.' The other said 'you.' I filled the 'you' side with a list of hopes for who she'd become. I had a lot of ideas about the person she should be before I'd ever met her. This episode marks ten years of the podcast, and I'm using it to walk through ten things I got wrong along the way. Because if you're in the middle of any of these yourself, I want you to know exactly where I started. I'll cover what I misunderstood about the RIE approach and Magda Gerber's work, how I mixed up authoritative and authoritarian…
Your child's preschool number shows up on your caller ID, and your stomach drops before you even answer. Preschool never calls with good news. Your kid hit someone at the sand table, or kicked a friend in line for the bathroom, and now you're standing there wondering if you have to call another parent and apologize, and whether this is the start of your kid becoming the one nobody wants to play with. The conversation you have that night probably isn't the first one. You remind your child that we keep our hands to ourselves. Maybe there's an early bedtime attached this time, to show them you…
Sara's four-year-old started asking permission for things he used to just do on his own, like grabbing the markers off his own shelf. It was a small request, but it worried her, since nothing about her home had ever required asking first. This episode follows what she did next. Sara gets specific about creative problem-solving in action: a drone in the sky and a line of dump trucks waiting outside a construction site. She talks through the exact question that became her compass whenever self-doubt crept back in, and the moment she realized a pattern from her own childhood was at risk of…
When my daughter Carys was 10, she started a pet-sitting business. She opened a Roth IRA with the income, built a client base of dog walkers and cat owners in our neighborhood, and figured out a system for remembering security codes only after a couple of alarms went off by accident. This episode is about that decision. Skills needed for entrepreneurship come from real clients and real consequences. A kid learns to be reliable because someone is counting on her. She learns to communicate clearly, and to recognize her own capacity before she hits the edge of it. That kind of learning comes…
Many mothers go to the doctor because they feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and they aren’t sleeping - and leave with a depression diagnosis and a prescription. The message is: your brain isn't working right, and medication will help you cope. But what if the problem isn't your brain at all? In this episode, I talk with journalist Bob Whitaker, who has spent decades investigating psychiatric treatment in the U.S. We look at how women's distress has been medicalized instead of taken seriously as a response to impossible circumstances. We look at how antidepressants work, which is quite different…
If you listened to our first episode on ADHD , you already know that the story most parents get about the diagnosis has some significant gaps - in the diagnostic criteria, in the research funding, and in the case for lifelong stimulant medication. This episode goes deeper on the topic of medication for kids. Most parents medicating their child with ADHD in the U.S. are doing it because they want their child to learn and succeed in school (social concerns are seen as more important to parents in the U.K.). But the largest ADHD treatment study ever conducted followed 538 children for six to…
Most parents have heard that play is how children learn. But in a world full of educational toys (even for babies, preschoolers, and kindergarteners!), enrichment classes, structured activities, and apps designed to make babies smarter, making time for play is harder than it sounds. The pressure to get kids ahead earlier keeps building - and the research that's supposed to reassure us often gets buried under the noise. Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek has spent more than 20 years studying how children learn. She's a psychology professor at Temple University, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings…
If your child has been diagnosed with ADHD, stimulant medication is probably the first thing their doctor mentioned. And if you're trying to figure out whether it's the right choice for your family, you deserve more than a pamphlet published by a drug company. You deserve the full picture - including what the research really shows, who funded it, and the questions the medical model of ADHD hasn't answered. The story most parents get is a tidy one: ADHD is a chronic brain disorder, it's highly heritable, and stimulant medication is the most effective treatment. That story comes mostly from…
If your child holds it together all day at preschool or daycare and then completely unravels the moment they get home - melting down over dinner, refusing to use the potty, making every transition a battle - you're watching afterschool restraint collapse in action. It's exhausting. And it can bring up some painful feelings for parents too, including wondering whether your presence is making things harder, not easier. In this coaching call I worked with Kathleen, parent of a three-year-old who just started full-time preschool. By the end of every day, her daughter is struggling with dinner,…
If your morning routine for preschool looks less like a smooth routine and more like 21 rounds of "no", "stop", and "not like that" before 8 am, then things aren’t working well for either of you. In this episode, we walk through one ordinary preschool morning minute by minute, from the cereal bowl to the car seat buckle. We also learn how to move from: "how do I get my child to cooperate" to: what is going on inside my child's body right now, and what are they trying to communicate through the flopping, dawdling, silliness, and defiance ? Because when you understand that, you can find…
If your kids are fighting constantly, you're probably exhausted from playing referee. Maybe they're arguing over whose toy is whose, poking and teasing each other until someone cries, or telling you two completely different stories about what happened. And when you step in to help, nothing seems to work. In this free Beyond the Behavior group coaching call, parent Stacey’s 12-year-old and 7-year-old are caught in a cycle of constant sibling conflict - poking, teasing, hitting, and yes, even lying to get each other in trouble. We might think that sibling fighting is about mean-ness, but…
If you've been watching the news and feeling despair because you can’t do anything about it, this episode is for you. The Epstein files, revealing how powerful men think about, talk about, and treat women. ICE raids tearing families apart. Strikes on Iranian cities - and schools full of children! In this episode, I make a direct connection between these social issues and what happens inside our homes every day. The patterns playing out on a global scale - where the person with more power decides whose feelings count - show up in our families too, often in moments we don't even notice, and…
When a doctor hands your child a diagnosis, it can be a relief - finally, an explanation for their behavior! But sociologist Dr. Allan Horwitz has spent decades studying how psychiatric diagnoses are made, and what he's found raises serious questions about how much weight that label should carry. In this episode, Dr. Horwitz walks through how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) - the manual that defines every mental health diagnosis - was built less on scientific research than on professional politics, institutional pressure, and the practical needs of insurance companies. He traces…
When your three-year-old hits you, their sibling, or another child, it's easy to feel frustrated, embarrassed, or even angry. You might wonder if this challenging behavior means something is wrong with your child or your parenting. In this episode, I help you see hitting in a completely different way. Instead of viewing it as a problem to eliminate, we'll explore what your child is trying to communicate through their actions. You'll discover how hitting is often your child's attempt to meet important needs when they don't yet have the words or skills to do it differently. This shift in…
Are you exhausted in a way that sleep doesn't fix? Do you find yourself more irritable with your children than you ever imagined possible? You might be experiencing parental burnout and you're far from alone. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Moïra Mikolajczak, one of the world's leading researchers on parental burnout, along with listener Kelly, who shares her raw, honest experience of burning out while raising her young daughter. Dr. Mikolajczak reveals groundbreaking research showing that parents in burnout have cortisol levels twice as high as other parents - even higher than people…
When you started parenting, you probably had ideas about the kind of parent you wanted to be. Maybe you imagined patient bedtimes and peaceful mornings. Then reality hit, and you found yourself doing things you swore you'd never do. Parent Maile Grace knows this feeling well. In this conversation, she shares how her parenting values have shifted since her daughter was born. She talks about moving away from strategies like timeouts that seemed to work in the moment but didn't align with what she truly wanted for her relationship with her child. You'll hear how she supports her kids when…
When your child struggles with behavior or attention, doctors might suggest ADHD medication. Before you move forward, you should know what a psychiatric diagnosis actually is - and what it isn't. This episode examines how psychiatric diagnoses actually work - and what they don't tell you. Dr. Sami Timimi, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in the UK, explains how the mental health system has become an industrial complex that profits from turning distress into diagnoses. You'll learn why a diagnosis doesn't mean doctors have found something wrong with your child's brain, and why the…
Welcome to 2026! In this episode, we're looking back at what we covered in 2025 and sharing what's coming in the year ahead. A Year of Growth 2025 was a year of evolution for the podcast. We covered topics you've been asking about - parenting triggers, rage, overwhelm, boundaries, and breaking family trauma cycles. We also did a deep dive across four episodes into Dr. Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation (which likely overstates the harm of social media on kids). There’s also a summary episode that covers all the main ideas from the four deep dives in just 17 minutes. Based on…
Have you ever opened a gift from your parent and felt your stomach drop? You've tried everything - wishlists, clear conversations, explicit boundaries about gift giving. But the packages keep arriving, filled with things that feel totally opposite from your values. And then you're stuck in this awful place where you're simultaneously angry at them for not respecting your boundaries AND judging yourself for not just being grateful. In this episode, I'm sharing part of a powerful co aching conversation with Sam, who's spent years trying to set gift giving boundaries with her mom. What we…
You've told your parents you're not available during work hours. They keep calling anyway. You've asked them not to comment on your weight. They bring it up again on the next visit. You've said no to those random Amazon gifts. Another package arrives at your door. Many parents know how to set boundaries, but get stuck when someone won't respect them. In this summary episode, therapist Nedra Glover Tawwab shares practical strategies for enforcing boundaries when people repeatedly ignore or dismiss them. You'll learn about the "fire extinguisher method" for stopping uncomfortable conversations…
Do you ever wake up with tension in your body because you know your child will want to play the moment you walk out of your bedroom? Do you spend time with your child but think about all the chores you should be doing instead? Parent Aija came to a (FREE!) Beyond The Behavior coaching call with exactly this challenge. She plays with her four-and-a-half-year-old son a lot. But she doesn't enjoy it. And she has big feelings of guilt and shame about that. What starts as a question about setting boundaries and making time for herself becomes something much deeper. We discover that Aija's…
Are you tired of feeling guilty every time you get angry as a parent? What if your anger actually contains valuable information about what needs to change in your family systems? Most parental anger management approaches treat all anger the same way - as a problem that requires control. But research shows there are actually two distinct types of parental anger, and understanding this difference changes everything about how you respond. Instead of suppressing your emotions or exploding at your kids, you can learn to use your anger constructively to create positive change for your family. In…
Do you find yourself going from zero to a hundred in seconds when your child spills something, refuses to cooperate, or has a meltdown? If you're constantly asking yourself, "Why do I keep snapping at my child?" or "Why am I so angry as a parent?" - you're definitely not alone. Many parents struggle with parenting triggers that seem to come out of nowhere, leaving them wondering how such small incidents can create such big reactions. What if your childhood "wasn't that bad" but you're still dealing with parenting anger? In this episode, we explore the connection between unknown childhood…
Every parent knows that harsh inner voice that whispers "You're a terrible parent" when you lose your patience, or "You've ruined your kids forever" after a difficult moment. This episode reveals a simple "magic trick" that can instantly create space between you and those critical thoughts - and it's something anyone can learn. Discover how one powerful phrase can transform your reactions from triggered explosions to curious responses. You'll learn where your inner critic actually comes from (hint: it's often an echo from your own childhood), and how reparenting yourself can break…
Does your child's behavior sometimes trigger such an instant, overwhelming reaction that you find yourself yelling before you even realize what happened? That moment when your jaw clenches, your shoulders tense, and suddenly you're saying things you wish you could take back? You're experiencing what millions of parents face daily - a nervous system response that happens faster than conscious thought. This episode reveals the science behind why willpower alone isn't enough to stop yelling, and introduces you to specific, learnable skills that can transform how you respond to your child's most…
If you've been scrolling TikTok or parenting forums lately, you've probably encountered FAFO parenting - the trending approach that's being positioned as the antidote to ‘overly permissive’ gentle parenting. Standing for ‘F*** Around and Find Out,’ this parenting style centers on letting children experience harsh consequences without parental intervention, even when parents could easily prevent those consequences. But is FAFO parenting actually effective, or does it create more problems than it solves? In this comprehensive episode, we explore what FAFO parenting really looks like in…
About Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive
Parenting is hard…but does it have to be this hard? Wouldn’t it be better if your kids would stop pressing your buttons quite as often, and if there was a little more of you to go around (with maybe even some left over for yourself)? On the Your Parenting Mojo podcast, Jen Lumanlan M.S., M.Ed explores academic research on parenting and child development. But she doesn’t just tell you the results of the latest study - she interviews researchers at the top of their fields, and puts current information in the context of the decades of work that have come before it. An average episode reviews ~30 peer-reviewed sources, and analyzes how the research fits into our culture and values - she does all the work, so you don’t have to! Jen is the author of Parenting Beyond Power: How to Use Connection & Collaboration to Transform Your Family - and the World (Sasquatch/Penguin Random House). The podcast draws on the ideas from the book to give you practical, realistic strategies to get beyond today’s whack-a-mole of issues. Your Parenting Mojo also offers workshops and memberships to give you more support in implementing the ideas you hear on the show. The single idea that underlies all of the episodes is that our behavior is our best attempt to meet our needs. Your Parenting Mojo will help you to see through the confusing messages your child’s behavior is sending so you can parent with confidence: You’ll go from: “I don’t want to yell at you!” to “I’ve got a plan.” New episodes are…
Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive is a English kids & family podcast from Jen Lumanlan. 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.
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