What Fresh Hell: Laughing In The Face Of Motherhood

In our back-to-school episode Amy dropped some news: her immediate family had Covid-19 back in March. Thankfully, Amy's family had "mild" or "moderate" cases of coronavirus. (Those terms officially include any course of illness that does not include inpatient hospitalization.) But even in a single household, their experiences ranged from asymptomatic, to 36 hours of fever, to three weeks in bed, to months and months of continuous long-term Covid-related illness. Because listeners expressed interest in hearing more from a fellow parent who's actually gone through Covid-19, in this episode Margaret interviews Amy on how their symptoms progressed what their recovery has looked like and what she thinks you should have ready at home before you need it Here's what we want you to know: it's worth it to have your kids wearing masks and taking other precautions. Their risk of serious illness is lower; it's not non-existent. As always, if you have concerns, discuss them with a medical professional! To find out mor

Our kids’ schools have sent plans. And revised plans. And codicils to the plans. Now it’s time to make our own decisions: if the choice is available to us, are our kids going back to classrooms this fall? Here are the factors that are driving our own decisions– knowing that the ‘right’ answer is fundamentally non-existent, and that this calculus is by definition personal. As Adrianne La France writes for The Atlantic: "All along, this disaster has been simultaneously wholly shared and wholly individualized, a weird dissonance in a collective tragedy that each person, each family, has to navigate with intricate specificity to their circumstances." Amy drops some big news in this episode: her family has had coronavirus. We'll be following up with a bonus episode specifically about that later this week. Here are links to some other writing on the topic that we discuss in this episode: New York Times: What Back to School Might Look Like in the Age of Covid-19 Ann V. Klotz: This Is The Song That Never Ends Clair

Amy takes a question from a listener who wants to encourage her know-it-all daughter to speak up while discouraging her constantly correcting everyone in the family. Is there a way to support her daughter's knowledge and self-confidence, while correcting her annoying habit of having absolutely all the answers? Check out our other episodes on the topic: Asking for What We Want and Encouraging Our Daughters' to Do the Same: bit.ly/WFHWhatWeWant Teaching Our Kids Empathy: http://bit.ly/TeachingKidsEmpathy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From board rooms to town halls to IEP meetings to doctor's offices, there are places where women speaking up for what they want or need are either ignored, resented, or just not taken seriously. (Anyone who's ever had been told by a contractor to "put her husband on the phone, and I'll explain it to him" can tell you that.) That's why our girls need to be trained in the arts of asking and negotiating– not only because those are things we don’t teach our daughters as well as we teach our sons, but also because the world often doesn’t reward women who speak up. We discuss how to value our daughters' voices– and teach them to do the same– with Marisa Porges, author of the new book WHAT GIRLS NEED: How to Raise Bold, Courageous, and Resilient Women. Here are links to other writing on the subject that we discuss in this episode: Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever  Deborah A. Small et al: Who Goes to the Bargaining Table? The Influence of Gender and Framing on t

Margaret answers a question from a mom who is pretty freaked out by her 20-month-old's habit of throwing stuff when he's angry. If you have a question you'd like Margaret or Amy to answer submit to: questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As soon as you become a mother unsolicited advice-givers are everywhere, telling you to “sleep when the baby sleeps.” Or “it gets easier.” Or “enjoy every moment.” Out of all the advice (parenting and otherwise) that we and our listeners have ever received, here is a selection of the very worst. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Each week Amy or Margaret answers one listener's most pressing question. This week Amy answers the question, "How can an introvert make new friends especially during the complicated social limitations of coronavirus?" Check out our Finding Your Mom Tribe episode: https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/2019/06/finding-your-mom-tribe-episode-110/ Here's the link to the Catherine Price's Screen/Life Balance site Amy mentions in this episode.  http://screenlifebalance.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We asked our listeners to divide the world into two kinds of people, and to stake out their claims on one side. Sleep cuddler or stop-breathing-on-me? Book finisher or life-is-too-short-er? Shoes on or off in the house? Many of you gave slightly judgmental “there’s me, and the crazy people” types of responses. Others gave "there's the right way to do it, and the way my spouse does it" sorts of answers. All of which, in this episode, we are totally here for. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Margaret answers a question from the What Fresh Hell Podcast Group from a listener who asks when (if ever) life with her 2 and 1-year-olds is ever going to get easier. Submit your question– we might answer yours next! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Even the cheeriest and sunniest of parents are hitting the wall. We're over it. This stinks. Even the most ‘We’ll make a fun obstacle course in the yard!’ moms are suddenly thinking ‘No. NO. I don't want to do this anymore.’” Somehow we've traveled past denial, to bargaining, then circled back to anger, without seeing so much of the acceptance part. That’s life on the coronacoaster. We think this is particularly hard for parents, because we have to hold together some semblance of certainty for our kids that everything's going to be fine amidst our own complete uncertainty. Saying "you don't have to be scared" even when we feel scared. Taking on the anxiety and frustration and boredom and irritation of our littles when we haven’t worked out our own. We don’t have a ton of solutions this week, but we review some rules for zen living and figure out how we might do those a bit more. In the meantime, knowing we’re not alone in feeling this way definitely helps.  Here are links to the things we discuss in this epis

Fess up: everyone's got a Bad Mom Moment. Or twelve. We tend to hold these things really close, our shame rooted in deep certainty that no other mother has ever temporarily forgotten their baby in the toy aisle at Target. Guess what? You're not alone. Here are some of our listeners' Bad Mom Moments– and more than a few of our own. Our guest this week is Arianna Bradford, the brains behind The NYAM (Not Your Average Mom) Project, a website dedicated to helping parents -- moms especially -- celebrate the person they are outside of their role as a parent. Her new book, SHAME ON YOU: BIG TRUTHS FROM A BAD MOM, is a hilarious collection of parenting essays that focus as much on a mother's mental health as they do on kids, and how very, very strange they are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Every week Margaret or Amy answers one listener's most pressing question. This week Margaret answers the question, "I know it's silly but I'm really worried about being away from my child for three nights. How I can deal with this?" Submit your questions to: questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This extended pause has been really hard for some of our kids, and actually sort of good for others. For every lonely preschooler who just wants to finally have someone to play “bad guys” with, there’s a formerly rambunctious middle-schooler who became a real scholar without all the distractions of the in-person classroom.  And the happiest kids have sometimes surprised us. The family Eeyore is sunnily certain things will be back to normal soon, while the happy-go-lucky one is taking more naps. We've learned (again) that our kids are more complicated than we imagined. In this episode, we discuss the things we’ve learned about our kids and will take forward as parents, both for the kids who have weirdly thrived and for those who have struggled.  Here are links to research and other writing on the topic that we discuss in this episode: Aaron E. Carroll for the NYT: The Coronavirus Has Made It Obvious. Teenagers Should Start School Later. Nora Fleming for Edutopia: Why Are Some Kids Thriving During Remote Learni

Each week Amy or Margaret answers on listener's most pressing question. This week a listener asks: "Any thoughts on how to get my 8 year old son to listen to/ ead anything outside his go-to genre?" Amy suggests the "You Wouldn't Want To Be" series as particularly appealing AND educational for grade-schoolers... you can find those books here: https://www.youwouldntwantto.be/ Submit your parenting question- we might answer yours next! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No joke: this is a particularly anxiety-provoking time. And even if our kids are little, and we manage to keep the TV off most of the time, they're still picking up on a certain hum in the house, a new and different frequency.  But our job as parents is not to make it feel like like the pandemic, the social unrest, the climate change, and the coarsened social discourse of this moment isn't happening. Our job is to talk with our children about these times in age-appropriate ways. Here's the good news: we're not supposed to present our kids with the solutions to all the things that might scare them. We're supposed to meet them where they are, help them discuss their feelings, and then ask them what feels like the right thing to do next. Our guest this week is Dr. Abigail Gewirtz, a professor at the University of Minnesota. She’s an award-winning child psychologist and leading expert on families under stress,  Her new book is WHEN THE WORLD FEELS LIKE A SCARY PLACE: Essential Conversations for Anxious Parents an

Each week Margaret or Amy answers one listener's most pressing question. Today Margaret answers the question, "What can I do about my husband who gives terrible gifts?" Submit your questions to: questions@whatfreshhellcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shutting it all down was definitely hard, but the parameters of the assignment were clear. Reopening is more like: do what you want when we think you can, or at least aren't fully convinced that you can’t. Most of us are probably going to need to leave our houses before vaccines are available at your neighborhood Walgreens. But how do we do that safely when kids touch seriously everything? When masks are optional? When all we are learning about this virus is how little we know?  We live in a world where we are entitled to make our own decisions, for ourselves and for our families. But other people's decisions affect us, including some people we are closely related to. How do we understand and mitigate the actual risks? How are we going to do this when everyone’s doing it differently? Here are links to writing on the topic that we discuss in this episode: Carolyn Hax: Balancing snowbird migration and virus mitigation German Lopez and Amanda Northrop for Vox: How to weigh the risk of going out in the coronavir

Each week Margaret or Amy answers a listener's parenting question. This week Amy answers the question, "How do I get my incredibly active 2 1/2 year old to stop when I tell her to?" Submit your parenting question– we might answer yours next! questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The idea that our kids are colorblind, and that we therefore should put off talking to our kids about race because they’re too young to understand its complicating factors, is wrong. And mothers of color could have told us that a long time ago. As parents, we should be talking about race with our kids early and often. Dr. Erin Winkler’s work shows that when parents are silent about race with our kids, or use "colorblind" rhetoric, we may actually reinforce racial prejudice. Yes, exploring race and racism and its many implications makes many of us uncomfortable. But it may be a lot easier than we're making it, as this week's guest, Deborah Porter, explains:  “You have to be able to tell the truth in an age-appropriate way. To not discuss race is not being truthful. We can be truthful with our children about what race looks like in an age-appropriate way, where for them, it's just the thing that we're talking about today." We've created a Google doc with lists and articles and videos and social media accounts t

Each week Margaret or Amy answers one listener's most pressing question. Today Margaret answers the question, "What should I do about my kids' troublesome coping mechanisms during the coronavirus outbreak?" Submit your questions to: questions@whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices