28. Back to School Special

In this episode of the Hands Full Parenting Podcast, Axel and Pat dive into the essentials of preparing your child to return to school after the long summer break. From re-establishing routines to addressing emotional readiness, they share practical tips and expert advice on how to make the transition back to school smoother and less stressful for both kids and parents. Whether you're dealing with back-to-school jitters or just want to get a head start on organization, Axel and Pat have you covered with strategies to set your child up for a successful school year. Tune in for a lively and informative discussion that will leave you feeling confident and prepared for the start of the new school year!

This week, Axel and I explain why kids test limits and push boundaries. We explore whether children actually need and/or desire boundaries and examine the effect of establishing firm limits on the parent-child relationship. If you’ve ever wondered why kids need boundaries and how to effectively respond to limit-pushing behavior, this episode is for you!  

Our development is shaped by people passing in and out of our lives. Sometimes the only thing we consciously remember about them are words of advice they either intentionally, or unintentionally, impart to us. If we accept that this is the case, shouldn’t we, as parents, deliberately cultivate a list of aphorisms to share with our children that will help them navigate life? This week, Axel and I tout the benefits of deliberately transmitting words of wisdom (aka aphorisms) to children, and we share some of the most impactful words of wisdom we’ve received from our families and mentors.

This week, Axel and I are awestruck by our guest, Sara Reith, the brilliant and indefatigable Executive Director and Founder of OHuddle, a non-profit that provides 1:1 mentoring and wraparound services to over 600 children in Wayne County, Ohio. Sara shares with us secrets from the best mentors, what we can learn about parenting from research on mentoring– and makes us choke up with heartwarming tales of mentoring successes.

This week, we pack as many discipline strategies, tools, and hacks as possible into an hour-long episode. We provide scripts and concrete explanations for how to deal with a range of different behaviors, from sibling conflicts to physical violence. You’ll learn how to de-escalate, redirect, diffuse, and teach. If you’re looking to add to your discipline toolkit, you won’t want to miss this episode. 

There are likely entire podcasts and dissertations dedicated to examining leadership insights from the hit Apple TV series Ted Lasso. What isn’t discussed as much, but should be, are the show’s lessons about how to raise healthy, well-adjusted young people. In this episode, Axel and Patrick outline and explore the most essential (in our humble opinions) parenting lessons from the series.

If you’re like us, your default parenting responses can make you seem like a bad boss. Curiously, we would never allow someone else to treat our kids the way we sometimes treat them. Is it okay that we hold others to a different standard than we hold ourselves? Or should we strive to parent more like the best coaches? In this episode, Axel and Patrick make the case for parenting like Ted Lasso, as opposed to a bad boss.   

Over the past three decades, childhood obesity rates in the US have tripled. Over a similar time period, the prevalence of eating disorders has more than doubled. Understandably, Parents are worried about what and how their children eat. In this episode, Axel and Patrick discuss the fine line parents walk in deciding how to feed their kids and offer practical solutions for common childhood eating issues (picky eaters, disinterested eaters etc.).

In this episode, Axel and Patrick describe ways parents are dealing with all-night gaming binges, and the consequences of each method. They also offer their recommendation for a Best Practices approach to addressing this behavior and, possibly, how to decrease your child’s interest in video games.

Are you concerned that your child, or a child you know, is staying up too late (too often) playing video games? If so, you are not alone. In this episode, Patrick and Axel reveal the results of an informal high school survey which suggest that the vast majority of adolescents are playing video games into the wee hours. Additionally, they consider potential benefits, likely drawbacks, and offer insight into why kids are motivated to engage in this puzzling behavior.