Episodes
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It was such a joy to get to chat with Wendy Snyder, parenting coach and founder of Fresh Start Families. Her passion for shifting the way we think about parenting and relationships with our kids is such an inspiration. If you are a parent of a spicy/strong-willed child, then this is the episode for you! She discusses “out of date” parenting models that are heavy with punitive measures and why these not only cause disconnection and harm in our relationships with our kids, but ultimately why they’re not effective or the way we all flourish. She opts instead for compassionate discipline which she talks about in the episode. I love the practical ways she gives us to empower our children and ourselves by meeting our needs and attuning to our kids. Her personal story and how she landed on this way of parenting resonates so much with my own story and I love the way she talks about strong-willed children and discusses their intense needs to feel powerful and a sense of belonging. So often times we hear this “need for power” as a negative thing, but Wendy talks about how we all have this need, it’s biological, and we all have it in varying degrees. When this bucket isn’t getting filled, this is when we see resistance or less desirable behavior in us all. She gives the example of even how we see adults speak to a coffee barista rudely, when that bucket isn’t being filled. Wendy’s passion is contagious and I am so excited to share our chat with you.
You can find Wendy and learn more about Fresh Start Families and her resources, coaching services, course information, and membership group information on:
-Instagram @freshstartwendy
-her website FreshStartFamilyOnline.com
-her podcast Fresh Start Family Show
I mention the following people/resources in the episode:
Spicy Ones, coined by Mary Van Geffen @maryvangeffen
@singinghome and how she helps moms yell less through regulation awareness, music, and singing
*Raising Your Spirted Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, and Energetic by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka
*This is an affiliate link. I may earn a small commission if you choose to purchase, at no additional cost to you.
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I had the great pleasure of chatting with Amy Hughes, @simplelittleamy over on Instagram. Amy is a gentle parenting coach, writer, & has signed a contract, working on a new book, launching in 2025! I am so excited about these and all the wisdom she has to offer! Her passion for encouraging parents, especially parents of faith, to throw off punitive & shame based ways of parenting, and move into peaceful and connected ways of parenting is so beautiful! It really is so timely that I am publishing this right now, as I’ve been sharing so much over on Instagram about my disheartenment over misconceptions many Christian parents have about gentle/respectful parenting. This has been really on my heart and Amy and I discuss all of this in our chat. I love the way she says "Connection before correction" and "All feelings are fine but not every behavior or reaction is fine".
I also adored the way she said we can be "Christ honoring & child honoring at the same time." We also delve into talking about her journey from a more rigid Charlotte Mason based homeschool, to a more freeing unschooling style with Charlotte Mason still be a huge influence in their homeschool. Amy talks about the way she naturally exposes her kids to important things and things she finds value in and building trust with them. She also talks about the choice and autonomy she gives her kids in all of this.
We end on her encouragement for families that our homeschool truly does not have to look like anyone else. That we often leave the public school system to homeschool, but can end up finding ourselves comparing ourselves to another system, some kind of homeschooling system we feel we need to measure up to, or feeling like social media tells us there’s a “certain right” way to homeschool. Amy is such an encouraging voice, reminding us that we can throw off all of these perceived pressures, and find calming, peaceful ways of educating our children, and learn to let go and give our children more freedom. She talks about a quote from Patrick Farenga, who worked with John Holt, where says unschooling is giving our children as much freedom as we can comfortably bear. We can build a foundation of trust and connection with our kids, and trust the process.
Thanks Amy for coming on the podcast! It was a joy to chat! Amy just released a new e-book, A Guide to Strewing, which gives us such great wisdom on how to strew in our homes! Here's the link to her Instagram Bio. & website. Let me get us right over to our chat!
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Missing episodes?
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It was such a blast getting to chat with Laura (fireflynatureschool) & Lauren (chickieandroo), 2 of the 3 authors of Nature School and creators of the Wild Mag subscription. Stephanie Hathaway (stephhathawaydesigns) is the 3rd, by the way! I have enjoyed following these ladies on Instagram and being in the homeschool community with them as well as collaborating with them for a few years now and it was so fun connecting in this way. Their heart for adventure, nature, & home education is so pure and passionate! We chatted about their new book, Nature School, their why behind it and what they hope it provides for families.
We talk about so many of the benefits of being outside in nature like: Health, happiness, life skills, attention to details, taking risks, promotes independence, & connection, relationships, and team work, leadership, relaxation, peace
We talk about set backs for why it’s hard to get outside. Such as pressure for academics instead, & how we often have a negative view of play, even when we don’t realize it, forgetting it’s amazing benefits for learning and connection. Nature has all the core subjects and helps us make deeper connection with what we learn inside.
We talk about how we often get a Romanticized view and set unrealistic expectations for ourselves about nature or nature activities and get it in our heads what we think it “should” look like, and that, this can cause us to shrink back from it. But, embracing what is and the challenges that come are a part of the life skills and adventure!
We chatted about how to keep it simple, but stay consistent and to just keep going, as we really believe the benefits outweigh all the hurdles.
I hope you enjoy listening just as much as we did chatting and be sure to check out Nature School. Also, be sure to check out Wild Mysteries Podcast & Wild Mag, their monthly nature subscription. -
Hey friends! This podcast episode is long over due! I had such a blast chatting with Meredith Miller, author of Woven: Nurturing a faith your kid doesn't have to heal from.
She has such a gift for articulating to parents how we can raise kiddos in a faith centered home, when we don’t have all the answers (who does?), & even when/if we are struggling to with doubts and concerns of our own! She talks to parents who are wanting to raise their kids in a different faith culture than the one they were raised in. She talks about how we can we move away from an obedience training paradigm to a trust based paradigm. She tells us about something called moralistic therapeutic deism, a kind of faith a lot of people were & are taught. I love the way she explain it to us and why we want to move away from it and what to do instead. I laughed out loud about the way she says we don’t apply the Bible, it’s not sunscreen!Instead she says, we introduce children to the God whose story is told in the Bible.
I can’t wait for you to listen to this chat & hope you enjoy it as much as I did! Thanks Meredith for coming on the show and sharing your heart with us! This work you’re doing is so needed!
Here we go!
Meredith's Website
New Book! Woven: Nurturing a faith your kid doesn't have to heal from
Podcast: Ask Away
Instagram: @meredithannemiller
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It was wonderful getting to chat with Sarah Collins from Homeschool OT @homeschoolot over on Instagram. She has been such a valuable resource to our family and our occupational therapy needs and is such a passionate, wise voice for homeschool families, as we seek to address the roots of our children’s behaviors and create homes with rhythms, peace, and well-being. In this episode, we chat about boredom! We, as homeschool moms have heard that age old cry from our children “I’m bored!” And often our responses can be something along the lines of “good, that breeds creativity!” Or “go find something to do” or whatever our go to answer may be. And no shame, mamas! We all have likely said similar things. But, Sarah and I chat in this episode about why for some children, it might not be as easy as it seems to just go find something to do and why children struggle to find something to do in the first place. It’s such a fascinating conversation and I have been learning so much. Sarah talks to us about task initiation and why some kids have a harder time initiating tasks. She talks about how depending on the stimuli around them and the choices they have (and clutter!), they may be over or underwhelmed and may need our guidance to help them. She gives us some great practical strategies and tips. We talk about windows of tolerance and zones of regulation and how we can cater to our individual child’s needs to help them thrive. It was such a blast hearing from Sarah. The way she is able to give us insight into the root and why behind our children’s reactions to things and their needs, is so incredibly insightful. She is a gem of knowledge! I hope you love our conversation as much as we did and you can find Sarah on Instagram @homeschoolot. And on her website HERE. She also has a monthly membership available that I currently subscribe to. This is a great way to be able to pick her brain, gain community, do book studies, and so much more!
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It was such a blast chatting with Elizabeth @sunshineinmynest about cultivating healthy physical and spiritual habits. We dive in to chat a bit about simple routine habits for kiddos (and for ourselves!) to establish healthy routines with visuals and gentle boundaries. We chat about her new book with @readkaleidoscope Shadows of the King The Story of 1 & 2 Samuel and her personal story about how she came to write it and what she learned through it. She gives great insight about lowering our overwhelm level as moms (with tips about AirPods/headphones!) and finding the right time, for everyone, to delve into God’s Word together and separately. Finding quiet for ourselves, but also letting our kiddos SEE us in God’s Word, even when it’s loud and crazy. We end with Elizabeth’s profound words, reminding us that our accomplishments don’t equal our worth and how our habits are not about our self-worth or identity, but rather, leading us to the One true hope in Jesus!
Elizabeth is so authentic and full of encouragement and wisdom. I hope you’ll check out our chat and enjoy it as much as we did! -
Hi friends! I’m beyond excited to introduce this new episode to you, as I had the sincere pleasure of chatting with one of favorite unschooling gurus, Sue Patterson over @unschoolingmom2mom. Sue is an unschooling coach and mentor and has 3 grown adult children that she unschooled. I won’t say much bc she just says it so much better & with such sheer joy, but we chat about how we really can unschool and it actually does work! It was such a fresh breath of air to chat with Sue and I could literally listen to her all day! She has such wisdom and encouragement to share with us about how we truly can live a life of learning without school, pressures, and societal expectations regarding learning, especially math. One of the biggest questions I get about unschooling is but what about MATH?? How will children learn math if we don’t use curriculum & air them done for lessons every day? Or what about teens and how do we unschool them? Sue and I talk about alllll of this and more on the episode.
Sue’s website is www.unschoolimgmom2mom.com and she is offering a discount code for 1/2 off her math course (as well as her Confused About Unschooling? course), through the end of this month July 2023, use the code SUMMER2023
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On today’s episode, I had such a blast chatting with Kat @bllissfullybeautifulchaos. Kat is an unschooling mama of 4 who created her instagram page very recently, so she can share her passion about unschooling and connection parenting. She’s become such quick friend, as we have so many things in common, and I loved hearing her perspective about why unschooling works for kiddos with ADHD and dyslexia. Both of these are near and dear to my heart, as they run on both sides of our families. I’m learning that I have undiagnosed ADHD and had no idea until very recently. Kat talks to us about how a more traditional homeschool setting didn’t work for her neurodivergent learners because the expectations to get through the curriculum and lessons dysregulated them so much that they had to spend hours recooperating, not to mention all the power struggles to get it all done. This is so familiar for me, as well! Kat talks to us that because there are so many days and times that are unpredictable because of neurodivergence, living a learning lifestyle gives ourselves and our children the freedom to not follow a specific method or lesson plan or curriculum, and instead frees us to give ourselves and our children what is needed in the moment. Kat talks about how they dont use curriculum and what they do instead. She touches on how they learn reading without curriculum and we talk about how the conventional way to approach a child having struggles with a specific school subject is to intensify the support and time spent on it, Kat talks to us about letting go and giving children the time and space to learn it as the child feels safe and curious on their own to do so. She talks about how children naturally learn and desire to do the things they see older siblings and adults around them doing. This gives the child the control and autonomy to take over their own learning. We talk about how the little things DO truly add up, even when it doesn’t seem like it, especially when it’s done out of joy and freedom. We talk about connection/conscious parenting and how unschooling gives us the time to spend helping our children and ourselves learn how to regulate emotions, communicate needs, demonstrate empathy, etc. We talk about sensory tools and how to integrate them in and through our days to help our neurodivergent kiddos, as well. Kat talks about how unschooling and conscious parenting his not a hands off approach, but extremely hands on in such a different way. We end with Kat encourages moms who are struggling and possibly afraid to take this different path for their families to just take some time to intentionally do things together they enjoy and take the pressures off, both them and us. She encourages families to just start! Take the dive and see what happens! And along the way, we see the healing we may not have even known that we needed all along as well.
I hope you gain wisdom, encouragement, and next steps on your journey by listening to our chat. Let’s get to it! -
Hi friends! Today we are flashing back to an instagram live I did last year with Jessica @thewaldockway. Jessica has amazing unit studies and encourages homeschool moms to use the power of games to help children learn. Here is her website. I have seen the power of gameschooling in my own home and am constantly blown away by how much my children learn through games. Jessica talks about her personal story and how she saw this in her home, as well. We talk about how we can gain confidence in gameschooling and not believe the lie that it’s not “enough”. We talk about how our children really are gaining amazing skills and having meaningful learning experiences, because it’s being done with connection and joy as the foundation. I hope you enjoy our chat as much as we enjoyed having it and be sure to check out Jessica’s amazing resources.
Let’s get talking about gameschooling! -
Today, I’m flashing back to an Instagram live that was recorded last year with Maggie Nick, LCSW, MSW @maggiewithperspectacles. Maggie is a licensed trauma therapist and parenting expert. Founder of parenting with perspectacles. She helps parents “reparent” themselves & has a “revolutionary approach to healing low self worth” by help[ing] you understand yourself on a profound healing level so you can be the parent you needed to your inner child, & your [current] child, if you’re a parent”. Her content and basically everything she says resonates with me & she has been such an amazing encouragement and practical help in my motherhood journey, so I was thrilled when she said she could come on the show!
We chat about something Maggie calls “the gameface mama”, when we are white knuckling our way through, trying harder, we're overstimulated, & seemingly can’t come up for air. Do you relate? I certainly do!
Maggie walks us through how she came to a point in her life when she said no more. She refused to live that way anymore and she talks to us about how we can put our Perspectacles on, get compassionate and curious about our triggers and feelings (and our children’s), accept all the different parts of us, tangible ways we can regulate ourselves in times of stress and frustration, & widen our capacity so we can gain compassion.
It was such a gem of a conversation & one I constantly need to come back to.
Maggie has amazing content on her Instagram feed & parenting courses that I highly recommend. So head on over & check her out. She also has a Facebook Group Community! Here's a LINK to all her goodness!
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Man! Friends! That was such a long break! I started this podcast right before we decided we’d be selling and moving to a different part of our city. I continued for as long as I could during that process, but had to drop this ball with all the others a juggle, for a good bit! We are now in our new to us home, a 1950’s home that we are majorly renovating. We love it so much and are beyond thankful, but as you can imagine with 5 kiddos and homeschooling and renovating, life is messy, chaotic and beautiful. I’m finally picking back up the mic and publishing the amazing chat I had with Amber O Neal @heritagemomblog!
It was such a joy and honor to chat with Amber. She’s just one of those people that feel like instant friends when you talk to her. Her words are literally like sweet tea to the soul (which is fitting as one of my favorite curriculum packs from her is Sweet Tea and Cookies).
In our chat, we talk about her book A Place of Belonging Celebrating Diversity and Kinship in the Home and Beyond. If you haven’t checked this book out, I honestly can’t recommend it enough. It’s one of those books I come back to, to re-read different parts frequently because it’s just such a hefty dose of good reminders as we raise our children to celebrate cultural heritage and embrace inclusivity.
We talk about what it means to be an “askable” parent. I love Amber’s “car questions” phrase. We chat about this.
We chat about Amber’s amazing book lists she offers to moms and the importance of Curating a diverse selection of books and media choices in which children see themselves and people who are different
We chat about being deeply rooted means, what global citizenship is, inclusive communities, sacred spaces and places, and so much more!
I’ve rambled on enough about just how beautiful our chat was, so let me be quiet now, and get right to it!
You can find Amber’s book basically anywhere books are sold. -
Justine and Cynthia empower homeschool parents to take the joy back in their homeschools. Encouraging us with mindset shifts & simple tweaks to our approach can make a world of difference!
I had such a blast chatting with Cynthia & Justine from Learn & Live Letter! @learnandliveletter Their passion for home education and helping families make it joyful and beautiful is simply amazing! I adore their friendship and how they’ve created a business together, born out of their passion! We chat about finding community in your homeschooling journey and why this is so incredibly important, deschooling & how this makes us not feel like we are failing, how unplanned days = joyful days but schedule + rigidity = cancelled joy, the beauty of flexibility, and conquering our fears!
Cynthia and Justine create unit studies and empower homeschool families with their amazing online community! They focus on child-led learning and meeting individual children where they’re at! They also do an incredible job of turning the tables and helping to normalize home education! Be sure to check them out on instagram and here's their website!
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Today’s guest is Ekanem from @singinghome over on Instagram! Guys, let me tell you! My mind was just blown by our conversation and I have had such light bulb moments after our chat as I’ve interacted with my kiddos! Ekanem uses music to help mom connect with intense preschoolers so they can be happier at home + school.
Her mission is phenomenal and so fascinating! She talks about how we can have a purposeful scream (and no, not at our kids!), but a way we can get the pent up stress out and complete the stress cycle, without hurting our throats or scaring the kids! She has a free workshop all about this! So be sure to check that out! It's HERE! And you can check out Ekanem's website and other links HERE.
We also talk about how we can use music to restore peace and calm in our homes! Ekanem talks more about the science behind it and why music and singing help calm our nervous systems so much.
I have seriously already seen a difference in my home as I have started to implement singing more! When tensions run high, I try to remember to stop and sing and be silly with my kids! I don’t always remember, but I have been so much. I don’t know why this super simple tip eluded my mind to help in those tense moments! It makes so much sense that it would help! Literally just today because I was reflecting on this topic and therefore it was in the forefront of my mind, I got extremely flustered in the moment. I had asked my kids to be quiet when they were eating a snack, for just a minute while I recorded something and they kept not doing it. First off, most likely bad timing on my part, but when I snapped, instead of yelling, I just started loudly singing at the ceiling! “I AM SO ANGRY I AM TRYING TO DO SOMETHING REALY FAST AND MY CHILDREN WONT STOP TALKING…it turned into more of an opera sounding ridiculous song, they started cracking up, so did I and we all were able to laugh together!!! And then I was able to get my recording done and move on! Mamas, this is such good stuff! I’m so excited to learn more from @singinghome and I hope you enjoy our chat as much as we did! -
Erin didn't start as a relaxed/interest-led mama, but she has found freedom & joy by moving in this direction.
Today’s guest is Erin from @erin.theelectichomeschooler https://www.instagram.com/erin.theeclectichomeschooler/ and she is also on YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/theeclectichomeschooler and some amazing videos that are so helpful, over there! I had an absolute blast hearing her journey as a homeschool mom and what led up to her embracing a more relaxed style of homeschooling. She began with a more traditional style of school at home homeschooling and just found this was not working for her and her family. They kept hitting walls and were not finding joy in it. So, She began her Instagram account after a few friends encouraged her to do so and she began finding such freedom in the way many of the accounts talked about homeschooling and broke the mold of a more traditional school at home set up. She specifically mentions W+F and how much they inspired her. Check out the show notes for more info about W+F, as they’ve specifically inspired my homeschool journey in such an amazing way, as well!Erin is very Charlotte Mason inspired and has loved how rich and beautiful Mason’s method has made her homeschool. I love how she reminds us that our homeschools are “what we make them to be” and that if we don’t like the way it’s going we can change it!She talks about her encouragement to new homeschooling moms and how we can receive such informational overload when we first start out but when we narrow our focus and find out what’s most important to our family, that this is when we can focus on this and block out too much noise. I love the way she talks about her faith and the way it drives their homeschool.Erin asks her kids what they’re interested in and uses unit studies to guide their homeschool. She has some amazing resources over on her WEBSITE https://www.youtube.com/theeclectichomeschooler to help you with this, including the Purposeful Homeschool Assessment Pages that are FREE and her newest product the Purposeful Homeschool Vision Planning Guide.https://www.theeclectichomeschool.com/shopShow Notes:W+F Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wild-free/id1209794530Hosted by Ainsley Arment & Jennifer PepitoCheck out Ainsley's The Call of the W+F Book & her NEWEST book, launching at the end of this month, The Wild + Free Family https://amzn.to/3C0p4R9 and Jennifer's NEW Book, Mothering By the Book, https://amzn.to/3vTWuwL they have podcast episodes specifically about these new books, too! *Stories Begin At Home MAY earn a small commission based on your purchase of these books, at no additional cost to you.
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I chat with Mickey Richards, a homeschool coach & my coach! We talk about what we can do when we are feeling overwhelmed and burned out as homeschool moms. We discuss ways we can experience stress differently when we face resistance from our kiddos or are just plain overstimulated ourselves! We talk about grounding exercises and thought patterns and how we can work with our bodies and change our thinking to help us when our bodies go into that fight/flight/freeze mode (or as Mickey says when our thoughts are saying “let’s get the heck out!). We talk about how life is our curriculum and how we can view what our children need as our curriculum and that be more than okay! Some children need a lot of sensory input, others need less. Either way, we can meet our children’s needs and prioritize them over the “books” and be confident in this. If we can’t even sit at the table together without big feelings etc., we have to work on this first! Mickey talks about how we can hold boundaries and still be gentle/respectful parents and encourages new and veteran homeschool families alike that homeschooling can be taken one step at a time, with lots of experiments, and no one right way of doing things! We can trust the process! Mickey’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/homeschoolingmyboys?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= Mickey’s Website: www.homeschoolingmyboys.podia.com The Gospel Morning Basket Subscription: https://storiesbeginathome.com/product/gospel-morning-basket-collection-subscription/ August Individual GMB: https://storiesbeginathome.com/product/august-gospel-morning-basket-volume-2-summer/
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Katie Klein, @littlehouselearningco is our guest on the podcast today! We discuss how she finds freedom in the CM method because of Mason’s emphasis on relationship with the child & coming alongside the child. We talk about gratitude and how to regroup when that age old comparison creeps up on us. We talk about how it's easy to see only the highlights of other peoples homes and homeschools on social media and then only see our trials or challenges in our own lives and how gratitude and relationships with others is the antidote to this. I love how Katie talks about her faith in Jesus and how she depends on him for patience and gratitude during her homeschool and motherhood days. I love this reminder that gratitude isn’t something we can muster up perfectly on our own, we need help in order to even be grateful! She talks about how she rests in Jesus on her hard days! She encourages new homeschool families and veteran ones alike to take deep breaths and enjoy the process of homeschooling! Be sure to check out her Homeschool 101 Course, it's a great resource if you're new to homeschooling and want some guidance as you begin!
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Stephanie Plummer is our guest today from @positivelytheplummers over on Instagram. Her unique experience of being unschooled as a child and now unschooling her children is such an empowering, beautiful illustration of how unschooling CAN & DOES work for families who choose it. She talks about what unschooling is & isn’t and why she doesn’t even love the word, because she doesn’t want families to feel like they can’t do certain things that work for their families simply because of a method or boxed in way of thinking. I love the way she talks about inner child work and how essential that is in the deschooling process. Whether you unschool, don’t at all, or are dipping your toes into it, Stephanie offers such wisdom to glean as she encourages us to raise natural learners!
