Our children's reactions are often NOT logical. Their outbursts of emotion sometimes seem ridiculous and outsized, and when we try to "talk some sense into them," it usually makes everything worse. Before we know it, we find ourselves yelling and reacting with big anger, and the whole family spirals into a swamp of dysregulation.  Can you relate? 🫣 Believe me, I've been there, and if you have too, you are going to love today's episode with a neurobiological researcher, Dr. Dan Siegel, who...

Do you enjoy traveling, but financial constraints prevent you from visiting some places on your bucket list? If this sounds like you, I’d like to share a strategy I recently learned about: traveling using credit card points. By making a few minor adjustments to the credit cards we use and when, we've earned enough points to fund a vacation for our family of four at no cost! (And that’s without going into debt or carrying a balance!) I learned how to do this from my guest on today’s podcast,...

Radical gratitude is a powerful practice to help you through difficult times. But if you’re in the thick of difficult times (which I know many of you are!), you might be tempted to click away right now. And I get why. ❤️‍🩹 When things are hard, it can often feel impossible to feel gratitude. In fact, during our most trying times, it can even feel insulting if someone suggests that we focus on gratitude! Who wants to be grateful when everything seems overwhelming, difficult, and maybe even...

Brooke Romney is the queen of modern manners for teens.  If you missed it, our last episode was an interview I did with Brooke about friendship problems in the teen years. I hope her words in that interview resonated with you like they did with me.  This episode is a little bonus addition where I asked Brooke to share three mini conversations we can have with our teens to help them get better at friendships. (Because, let’s face it, most teens need some help learning how to be a good...

Teenage friendship problems weigh heavily on us moms. 💔 Do you have a teenager who’s struggling with friends? It hurts the mama heart, doesn’t it?  October was Teen Month here on 3 in 30, but I decided to extend that one more week to include one of my favorite resources for advice on raising teenagers: Brooke Romney.  I asked Brooke to talk with us about how to help support our teens when they’re coming up against problems with friends. And let’s face it, friendship problems are a...

Does holiday stress ever take the joy out of the holiday season for you?  It's November 1st, friends, which, for many of you, might mean that you've officially switched from harvest mode to full-on holiday mode.  And with that switch, you might also feel the beginnings of holiday stress. 😵‍💫 With that in mind, I invited a special guest to do a bonus episode with me. I interviewed my cousin, Dr. Amber Price. Amber is hear to teach us research-based ways to avoid the holiday stress. You will...

Coming-of-age celebrations are a powerful tool to use when raising teenagers.  If you’re not sure what a coming-of-age celebration is, you are in for a treat! A coming-of-age celebration is a special occasion where you invite all of the important people in your teen's life to come together, celebrate your teen, and offer words of wisdom.  My son Noah turned 13 this past summer, and we hosted one of these celebrations. It was an incredible experience for him. In today's episode, Jennifer...

Do you have a teenager who is struggling, floundering, or fighting with you constantly? My older sister Sarah had a few rough years in high school. My parents worried about her a lot. But then, Sarah found a new story - a story where she knew she was playing an important and meaningful role. She didn’t want to return to her cliché story of struggling teenager rebellion. She wanted to be and do something better. Listen to hear how you can help your teen find and live a better story. For...

I recently taught a free masterclass all about mom rage. Toward the beginning of the class, I asked the women in attendance to share something that makes them feel angry on a regular basis. One mom shared: “Feeling rejected by my teen who wants nothing to do with me. This is not the mother-daughter relationship I envisioned.” 💔 This comment stopped my breath for a second. How painful for this mom! No wonder she feels angry about it a lot. I'm guessing she feels a lot of other things, too:...

Protecting my kids from the dangers in the online world is a high priority for me. My son is 13, and I’m still holding off giving him a phone, even though he insists he’s the only one in eighth grade who doesn’t have one.  (And I want to say here that it's okay if you have a different view on what's best for your child, so no judgment on when you decide to make a phone available to them!!)  When he does get a phone in the next year or two, he will definitely have limits and filters to help...

Are you feeling out of your depth as you navigate the teen years? My son, Noah, just turned 13, and I have noticed a definite shift in some of the dynamics of our relationship. That's why I'm so grateful for experts who can help me!   Amie Anger is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and mom of 6 kids ranging from 11-18 years old. She has a Bachelor's in Psychology and a Master's in Social Work and two years of post-graduate fellowship training at the Yale Child Study Center through the Yale...

Are you wondering how to have political conversations with your friends and loved ones without things turning, well... hostile? Election time is here, and the political atmosphere is so divisive that it can feel impossible to have political conversations without things getting heated.  So does this mean we just avoid talking about politics altogether? 🙊 Sarah Stewart Holland & Beth Silvers of Pantsuit Politics say, “No!”  Their book I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening) has helped...

Parenting a child with big emotions, big reactions, and a neurodiverse brain can be a real challenge. 🫠 I know this firsthand because my son Noah has always been spicy and spirited, and he was diagnosed with ADHD at the end of 5th grade. His formal diagnosis has been a huge blessing for our family, as it has given us a way to research ways to support him and to help him understand his own unique brain and body. One of our biggest sources of education has been The Childhood Collective, a...

Hello, my friends, this is it! This is a last call to sign up for the Self-Assured Motherhood program because enrollment closes Thursday at midnight. This program is for YOU if you often feel overwhelmed and burned out in your motherhood but are also very committed to your family and becoming the mother you want to be. This program is for YOU if you love gathering parenting strategies, tricks, and scripts from podcasts, social media, and books but don't always know how to apply what...

Living with grief can feel heavy, dark, and confusing. It's a time when it's easy to lose ourselves. Grief looks different for everyone, and if you are in the middle of grieving, my heart aches for you.  I have experienced loss, and I know the deep ache of grief. It's a tender topic that's close to my heart. That's why I'm honored to share Shelby Quinlan's story with you.  Shelby is a former teacher and SAM alumni. She's mom to three girls, and she and her family have been navigating their...

I always get asked who my Self-Assured Motherhood program is designed for - young moms? moms with young kids? stay-at-home moms? My answer is always emphatically: it’s designed for all moms!  SAM is for all mothers - all ages, all stages, all walks of life. In fact, I often have the women in my program tell me it should be called Self-Assured Womanhood or Self-Assured Personhood because the principles apply so universally. (However, the acronym SAW and SAP don’t have quite the same ring as...

What does a spaghetti dinner have to do with my Self-Assured Motherhood program?  Well, in this episode, I tell you! Come listen in! My Self-Assured Motherhood Program is open for enrollment TODAY, and I want you to join! SAM is not like any other parenting education you’ve participated in in the past – where you heard the lessons and felt like you understood them, but then you didn’t actually apply them long-term. This program was developed with your long-term success in mind.    And...

This bonus excerpt is one I pulled from Eli's full episode that dropped earlier this week. (If you haven't had a chance to listen, I highly recommend it. It's one of the most value-packed conversations I've had on 3 in 30!) Because it was so value-packed, we had to trim it to 30 minutes, and I didn't want you to miss out on this fascinating part of the conversation, so I decided to make it a bonus episode. These thoughts from Eli on co-regulation for parents blew my mind!   I mean, I had...

We all know how important it is to raise securely attached kids, but how to do it can be the tricky part!  It's true what they say about parenting: The days are long but the years are short. I feel like the years are flying by with my two kids, who are both now in double digits, and I often find myself wondering how I can parent them in a way that will keep our bonds strong through their teen years and into adulthood - and in a way that they will thrive in their adult relationships after...

Here we are! It's the final day of our two-week-long series on how to become more peaceful, confident, and happy in motherhood.  I have loved this series, and it's also been a ton of work--more work than I had anticipated! (Though I don't know why I didn't anticipate that airing a podcast episode every weekday for two weeks 🫨 would be a huge challenge. Sometimes things sound easy before you do them, and that was definitely the case with this series!) But, despite the hard work, I'm so...

My kids are headed back to school soon, and they will be doing all sorts of assessments to see how they're doing in math and reading and writing. And this got me thinking: I need to do a series of mini-podcast episodes during this back-to-school season for moms to assess how they are doing, not with balancing equations or diagramming sentences (because I have a feeling most of us would fail those assessments 🥴), but to assess something way more important: our own levels of emotional...

My kids are headed back to school soon, and they will be doing all sorts of assessments to see how they're doing in math and reading and writing. And this got me thinking: I need to do a series of mini-podcast episodes during this back-to-school season for moms to assess how they are doing, not with balancing equations or diagramming sentences (because I have a feeling most of us would fail those assessments 🥴), but to assess something way more important: our own levels of emotional...

My kids are headed back to school soon, and they will be doing all sorts of assessments to see how they're doing in math and reading and writing. And this got me thinking: I need to do a series of mini-podcast episodes during this back-to-school season for moms to assess how they are doing, not with balancing equations or diagramming sentences (because I have a feeling most of us would fail those assessments 🥴), but to assess something way more important: our own levels of emotional...

My kids are headed back to school soon, and they will be doing all sorts of assessments to see how they're doing in math and reading and writing. And this got me thinking: I need to do a series of mini-podcast episodes during this back-to-school season for moms to assess how they are doing, not with balancing equations or diagramming sentences (because I have a feeling most of us would fail those assessments 🥴), but to assess something way more important: our own levels of emotional...