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Parental Development
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Parental Development

Author: Dr. Leah Featherstone & Beka Dean

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Parenting is one of the hardest jobs we'll ever have. Dr. Leah Featherstone, clinical psychologist, and her sister, Beka Dean both grew up in a very traditional, conservative family, with a parenting style to match. Through her education and experience, Leah has moved away from that approach and now uses principles of attachment, relational neurobiology, and positive parenting to raise her own kids. The sisters talk through this new approach, with the goal of promoting cooperation and enhancing relationships between adults and the children they help to nurture, support, and raise.
124 Episodes
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This episode is a little all over the place, but we talk through triggers, doing our personal work, and learning how to respect the opinions and ideas of others. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram
Grades

Grades

2024-10-1649:101

This conversation talks about grades and how we use them in school. Alfie Kohn, a leading researcher in behaviorism and rewards has articles posted here and here. Our education system puts a lot of focus on grades and achievement, regardless of the research showing that they may not actually accomplish what we think they do. So how do we deal with or talk about grades as parents without projecting our own feelings about our own achievement and intelligence onto our kids. We have some t...
Detective

Detective

2024-10-0937:56

How do you validate your kid's feelings without validating their negative beliefs about themself? How do you remain curious and compassionate while also managing your own regulation? Ultimately, we need to be detectives and get to figure out the underlying cause of the behavior. This can be easier said than done... Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram
Parenting is Hard

Parenting is Hard

2024-09-2536:45

Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram
Food for Thought

Food for Thought

2024-09-1836:18

What do you do when people start talking to you kids about things or in ways you don't agree with? This episode explores when Lincoln's pediatrician made comments about his weight in front of him. Say it with me: we do not comment on people's bodies!!! There are absolutely ways to talk to kids about health, nutrition, food, and more in ways that shares information and guides behavior without shaming them or making them self conscious about how they look. Subscribe, rate, and review us...
Guess Who's Back

Guess Who's Back

2024-09-1123:42

We're back, baby! We needed some time away for our own sanity, so now we're back and ready to keep sharing our conversations! Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram
We cut last week's episode short, so we needed another one to finish our conversation about expectations. In last week's episode we talked about the need to lower expectations if our kids are showing us with their behavior that they can't do the task. But what if your kid has done it in the past and now all of a sudden they are refusing or saying they can't do something anymore? There is still a function behind this behavior, and I choose to see this behavior as a CAN'T do as opposed to a WO...
This episode talks through the expectations we have for our kids, how to make sure they're realistic and look at them differently, through this new parenting lens. Can we differentiate our DESIRES for our kids from the EXPECTATIONS of our kids. Expectations feel like boundaries or rules, which can lead to the punishment, control, shame, or coercion we're trying to change in this type of parenting. If we truly believe that "bad" behavior is a lack of a skill, lack of connection, etc. and tha...
The moral of this week's episode: Nothing matters other than your relationship with your child! What doesn't matter: grades; behavior; attitude; sports What does matter: Our relationship My job as a parent isn't to control my kids' behavior, get them to act a certain way, make sure they're making other people comfortable. It's to show them love and acceptance and show them what a healthy, loving relationship is supposed to look like. So much pressure is put on parents to make sure o...
Knowledge Is Power

Knowledge Is Power

2024-01-3137:25

How do we treat our kids like full human people without treating them like adults and forcing them to grow up too quickly. Let's talk about it! Treating our kids like full people simply means that we welcome all of their humanness and don't try to minimize or talk them out of their experiences. It means that they deserve as much respect as any adult. There is not a topic that's off limits with my kids. There is a spectrum of the amount, intensity, and way information is shared. For hard to...
Not Quite Done Yet

Not Quite Done Yet

2024-01-2436:21

This episode finishes our conversation about bias, inclusion, and how our brains are wired for sameness , making these changes hard. In order to start to change our unconscious beliefs, we first have to bring it into our conscious awareness so we can then override those that are unhealthy, dangerous, wrong, etc. We have to consciously choose to access the parts of our brains that challenge our biases and help us develop new pathways regarding people and situations that are "other." I...
Unconscious Bias

Unconscious Bias

2024-01-1747:02

This episode talks about what can sometimes be a taboo or hard topic: bias, diversity, and race. We utilize science to talk through how our brains are wired for sameness and build bias into our system, in order to protect us. For more information about this topic, check out this book, that we used to start our conversation. Understanding the science can help take the shame and judgment out of this topic, which can then make it easier to have productive conversations. Our brains are designed...
We Back

We Back

2024-01-1031:45

Guess who's back!!! We're slowly getting back into the swing of things with our first episode of the new year! This episode talks about several topics and situations we encountered over the last few weeks and different approaches and suggestions for dealing with them. Anxiety isn't something that we can simply overpower. It has to be managed and processed in a way that honors it, validates it, and teaches our kids ways to manage it on their own. Forcing kids to repair with their peers can t...
My Way or the Highway

My Way or the Highway

2023-11-2243:46

It's our last episode of 2023!! This one talks through various topics, including lying, managing big behaviors, and managing different opinions of family members. You can hear our episode on lying here and the episode when Lincoln had a hard interaction with his teacher here. Bottom line: Give people grace and approach behavior with curiosity. If you're looking for more information on parenting differences, that one can be found here. What are your non-negotiables? What is reasonable to ...
If/Then

If/Then

2023-11-1540:00

Last week was all about learning what our attachment style is, now this episode takes about what to do about it. We have no control over how our attachment is developed. We do have control over how we adjust moving forward. Attachment healing can only happen within relationship. To change attachment the patterns first have to come into our awareness. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversatio...
Getting to Know You

Getting to Know You

2023-11-0846:53

This episode talks about adult attachmen styles, which is important for us to learn, so we can understand how we relate to others, including our children. We need to normalize all attachment styles, while also understanding that we can work toward being secure. Our comfort level with and willingness to allow closeness and intimacy determines our attachmen style in adulthood. Recognizing how our insecure attachment can be so easily passed down to our kids through our interactions, and...
Our Healing

Our Healing

2023-11-0142:48

This episode dives deeper into the relationship between parents and adult children. What do those relationships look like now? What if parents aren't able to do what you need? How do you know if you're ready to have hard conversations? For adult children, true healing can only come when we stop being dependent on our parents for our validation, regulation, and wellbeing. If our parents weren't able to meet those needs in our childhood, it's unlikely they'll be able to do it differently...
This episode is a little bit of everything, all based on situations happening in Leah's house. How do we validate anxiety without contributing to it? How do we challenge unhealthy thoughts without being invalidating? How do we just sit in the discomfort with them? Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram
Let Them Struggle

Let Them Struggle

2023-10-1848:22

All parents desperately want to protect their kids, which is a great and noble goal. At the same time, overly protecting our kids in certain areas can stunt their growth and development in important ways. Many times the concept of protection allows us to control behaviors in ways that make us feel more justified. Areas in which we protect our kids in inappropriate ways: Physical - find ways to let your kids explore and engage in risky behaviorsSocial - it's part of relationships to be hurt,...
This one is for parents of adult children, who might be learning about this type of parenting and information for the first time. How do you talk about what you wish you'd done differently? How do you repair what you now see as ruptures? Ultimately, everyone wants to be validated, which is not the same as acceptance. We all have our own experience, and just because it's different than your experience, doesn't mean it's wrong. 1. Validate 2. Listen to understand 3. Guard against defensivenes...
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