Inspiration from this Episode 

“Because remember, our communication is 85% nonverbal, meaning it's what your face looks like when you're asking that question.” 

“Now this takes patience in the ask, but it also takes patience in formulating your answer.”

“As we grow and mature, we learn how to accurately listen, speak clearly, and manage our own emotions.”

109 | Us & Kids: Pithy Tidbits to End 2021

Intro  

Finally - or fastly - 2021 is almost done! We are into our 3rd year of bringing you bi-weekly podcasts to help you be married forever while you enjoy parenting your kiddos together! So, today, we’re going to round out the year with just some pithy thoughts and sentences that make sense but don’t take long enough to each make a whole podcast.

You know, it’s sort of like cleaning out your fridge - not enough leftover to make a meal, but some tasty tidbits that you can just eat with your...

Inspiration from this Episode 

“These skills let us realize that things might change - and that we will be okay.” 

“Evaluating and determining the best course of action is not easy when there are so many new and unpredictable moving parts.” 

“Part of calming down was knowing how to reset my emotions and thoughts as I got new information.”

108 | Us & Kids: Christmas Chaos

Intro  

So it's December. Do you feel a little bit crazy? Like maybe the world is always spinning and you try to jump on, but tumble off, embarrassingly. Or maybe from time to time you secretly bumble and jump off. Or do you thrive under the chaos? Or does the chaos thrive inside of you - eating your brain, your sanity, yourself, and your relationships? 

Well, it's often called National Chaos Day. Not particularly this specific day, but a day in November is National Chaos Day. And I think we could do better by calling it just...

Inspiration from this Episode 

“When we loosen up, lots of good things can happen and our worlds will not fall apart.” 

“We know that your brain changes when you force a little smile upon your face. So begin with a smile.” 

“Faith in themselves that they could do this, that things would be okay in the end.”

107 | Us & Kids: Loosen Up Day 

Intro  

Let me ask you, are you ready? For what you might ask. For learning about how to loosen up and lighten up, even in the midst of November and December. What do you think when you hear those words loosen up, lighten up? Do you just get angry, like, well, who has time for that? 

This day was made to help us find our lighter side while locking up our serious side for a few hours. When we loosen up, lots of good things can happen and our worlds will not fall apart. They might in fact, even improve a bit.

What You’ll Learn in Today’s...

Inspiration from this Episode 

“As we nap, it reduces the fatigue, not just the physical fatigue but also that mental fatigue.” 

“It's not a bad idea to consider a nap when you're overwhelmed, because it gets you out of the way and lets your body naturally do the reset that it needs.” 

“You demonstrate to your kiddos as well, that taking good care of themselves is an important thing to do.”

106 | Us & Kids: Naps

Intro  

On today’s show, we're going to talk about napping. Now you can have all sorts of different emotional reactions around this, like, “Oh, I'd love to nap!”, or “They always nap way too long”, or “That kid who of mine does not know how to take a nap!” 

You can go all over the place with napping conversations. So today we're just going to talk a little bit, mostly from a general place, because napping is good for kiddos. It's often also good for...

Inspiration from this Episode

“Grief doesn't just go away. It becomes a part of the fabric of our lives.”

“Grief is so unpredictable and so messy. It's important to have somebody be able to go along on the ride to hold your hand.”

“Take care of yourself with permission to grieve and permission to live well in people's honor and memory.”

105 | Us & Kids: The Two Griefs of October

Intro 

On today’s show, we are talking about grief and that's not always so very easy when we contemplate what October is in memory of. October is both Infancy and Pregnancy Loss Awareness month, as well as breast cancer awareness month. 

And for me, both of those titles hold significant weight because they have happened to me in our family, my immediate family with my kids, but also in my extended family. I also know that so many people are affected by one or both of these so I think it’s an important topic to cover today.

...

Inspiration from this Episode 

“Though all of those pieces together made a lot more sense to me that it was sensory and not just he's a naughty kid.” 

“We had to do a little bit of advocacy work on his behalf and on our financial behalf as well.” 

“And so he was open and willing to continue to do some of these things together because he felt the benefits of it and they were fun.”

104 | Us & Kids: ProActive Parenting

Intro  

On today’s show, we are going to be chatting with our special guest, Christi Gilbert. She is an awesome mom of 3, an education expert, and my oldest daughter. She and I are talking through her experience of parenting her son as she began to realize that some other expert input would be really wise. 

Hear her story and thought process as she worked to find the appropriate expert, listen to her gut, and use the guidance in ways that brought growth and health. 

...

Inspiration from this Episode 

“I know that I made list after list, after list, trying to keep track of everything everybody was doing.” 

“One of the things grandpa and I did is we spent a lot of time playing and studying together. We just spent a lot of time together.” 

“So within three days we spent 24 hours talking with each other in the car and we said, this is a perfect house for us.”

103 | Us & Kids: Interview with Grandkids

Intro  

On today’s show, we are doing something a little bit different. I’ve brought on a few guests to be on the show today but they aren’t just any guests - they are 3 of my grandkids. I told them they’d be allowed to ask me anything - so they did! 

And now, you get to listen in and hear our conversation together. These are random, unscripted, and unknown to me until they ask them - so, join the table and get a small snapshot of my life. And for...

Inspiration from this Episode 

“The kids also see that when their parents value their effort, it encourages them.” 

“Kiddos grow up respecting your authority because you've demonstrated it kindly.”

“We help our kids learn to understand that other kids have feelings that we have to pay attention to.”

102 | Us & Kids: Raising Gritty Kids

Intro  

On today’s show, we're talking about how to help your kids be successful. We sort of think of it in terms of how to help your kids be gritty. How do you help them get along in life? So we're going to split this into two different thoughts. 

This is more about parenting, that it isn't necessarily about what's happening for kiddos. It's more about how to help you parent well. The first part of this podcast is about what's happening for you. And for that adult relationship between you and your spouse or your partner.

What You’ll Learn in...

Inspiration from this Episode

“Read their signals and adapt your interaction to them. As you do, they are going to relax, and they’re going to move forward.”

“But talking is also more than words because it’s communicating our desires.”

“It moves us to choose our thoughts and our emotions for the good of ourselves and for others.”

100 | Us & Kids: Top 10 Tips for You

Intro 

On today’s show, we are looking through pulling together the last seven podcasts where we listed 10 tips and integrated those top tips from each of those podcasts into the top three podcasts out of the last 100. 

We are taking old material that we talked about in other podcast episodes and repurposing them so that they integrate a little bit more for you, your marriage, and your family. I hope that you enjoy this too because I found it fun to do.

What You’ll Learn in Today’s Episode

• Enjoying vacation time for...

Inspiration from this Episode 

“Those nice things help us know that we’re being trusted and they soften the fear of really connecting.” 

“We have to turn those chemical connections on again over and over throughout the course of our marriage.” 

“Spend time with each other talking about, how can we make our intimate life a bit better?”

099 | Us & Kids: 10 Tips for Intimacy

Intro  

On today’s show, we are doing our last one of our 10 tips in our series. This is podcast 99 moving into podcast 100 and I wanted to think about what I haven’t covered much and I realized I haven't directly talked about intimacy. Intimacy comes not just from having bodies close to each other but also comes from what happens before those bodies ever get close. 

So as we talk about intimacy, I'm talking less about close bodies and more about what happens before then which makes that time of close bodies...