America has 3% of the world’s kids… and 40% of the world’s toys. We’ve got clutter, right here in River City. In our opinion the best decluttering advice, from Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist, is to “slow the accumulation of new possessions.” In other words, don’t let all that junk in the front door in…
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Babysitters: whether you have a full-time nanny or a college kid two Saturday nights a month, finding and maintaining good childcare is an ongoing process. You find someone your kids adore– but he’s graduating this year and moving to Southeast Asia. You have someone your kids used to adore, but she has no idea how…
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Birthday parties: must we really? Every kid, every year? Can we skip the goody bags? Can we ban slumber parties now and forever? Is it possible to spend less than four figures on a fete for a four-year-old? In this episode we discuss ways to make birthday parties easier: stopping “The Great Crap Exchange” (Margaret…
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Every parent has a “how old is old enough to” question about her kids that keeps her biting her fingernails. And as soon as one of those questions is resolved, a new one crops up. This seems to us a parenting challenge that gets harder, not easier, as our kids get older. So we asked our listeners: what’s…
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Rule one of vacationing with kids: don’t vacation with kids. Oh, your tickets are already purchased? Then you’d better stock up on Ziploc bags. (Take it from a mother who’s needed a few.) We asked our listeners on our Facebook page for their packing essentials and got dozens of responses. In this episode we dig…
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Does messy matter? In our kids’ rooms, in our front halls, in our kitchens? We’re not talking about hoarder-level mess; we’re talking about the tendency toward entropy and chaos in any house with multiple children who play two travel sports and/or bring home backpacks brimming with loose slips of paper every afternoon. Margaret’s house is pretty…
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Out of all the things we stress about as parents, whether to let our seven-year-olds quit the violin seems like it shouldn’t matter that much. If they wouldn’t have made first chair in the Vienna Symphony anyhow, what difference does it make? But letting our kids quit— or making them tough it out— gets at…
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When it comes to mom-yelling we hold these truths to be self-evident: never yelling is not possible; less yelling is desirable. Let’s be real: there are times when every parent’s got to yell. Here’s how Lisa Belkin put it in The New York Times: When all else fails, a few claps of oral thunder certainly…
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Sibling rivalry: harmless rite of passage? Or everything that made you the neurotic adult you are today? The inevitable part of it seems clear. Dr. Ron Taffel says siblings are like lion cubs, born with an intense and innate need to tussle. But if that fighting it’s normal, it isn’t always benign. So when…
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What’s the WORST part of being a mom? We put out the call on our Facebook page and received an avalanche of responses, each deserving in its own very horrible way. In this episode, Amy and Margaret advocate for their own lists of Mom Worsts, and discuss: —whether that most classic of Mom Worst…
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Episode 18: When To Let Kids Quit – What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood
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