“In the matter of minutes, I said hello and goodbye to her. The normal birth, life, death process was put right side by side. ” Magdalena Garcia join me in today’s episode about pregnancy loss. Magdalena supports parental mental and emotional health by focusing on the mindset, strategies, and symbolic ways mothers and fathers can tend to their inne…

This is episode 100, and in honor of that milestone, I’m showing up with a reintroduction. The first episode of the Sage Family Podcast, an introduction with myself, my husband, and my three children, was shared with you all over 6 years ago. Needless to say, those beautiful souls have insisted on perpetually growing and evolving and I have grown a…

“Those who are nested are going to be . . . more fit . . . Evolution has done the experiments . . . so we don’t have to . . . do all those crazy things that researchers do because they don’t have any baseline for what is normal for our species in raising children, what I call ‘species typical’." Dr. Darcia Narvaez join me in today’s episode about t…

“It was so important for us as homeschool parents, and because of the tenets that we hold as the reasons why we homeschool: it’s important for us to value our children as humans, and for their voices to be heard, and for their mental health, and so, when our kids were saying, ‘I think we need to start thinking about school,’ if we ignored these ide…

“Our needs are never in conflict. It’s the strategies that we use to meet our needs that get us into conflict.” Lisa Rothman joins me in today’s episode about Conflict. Lisa is a mom who has spent more than 20 years learning, practicing, and teaching collaborative communication skills. We discuss a template for preventing and repairing conflict, ca…

“There was a child that drowned when they were with their dad at a public pool and the mom was blamed while being five states away, and I thought, that was something I’d never considered, that women are blamed for the well-being of their children no matter what.” Zach Watson joins me in today’s episode about Sharing Labor. Zach is a content creator…

“Ceremony is the point in time when we all know it’s time to stop . . . and honor something or someone. Ceremony is the time and the place. And ritual, those are the elements within ceremony that get us deeper, that actually encourage us to pause and find meaning. So the elements of ritual: things like symbolism, the activation of the senses . . . …

“What happens when you don’t teach a whole group of people to understand their emotions is that they become extremely emotionally dysregulated . . . it then tends to be a woman who is tasked with modulated that partner’s expression, especially when there are kids involved and you’re trying to be a buffer between that temper—that mood—and your child…

“I believe that all humans have a right to ownership over their body, over their mental, spiritual, emotional autonomy and consent is kind of a way to ensure that it’s not just us being autonomous everywhere but we are also respecting other people’s boundaries and right to be autonomous. My autonomy ends where yours begins.” Fran Liberatore joins m…

“We have to give them the neuroscience. This is going to strip any shame. It’s going to make it easier for them to turn and face and own their behavior. We really have to turn these feelings into allies and friends.” Karen Young joins me in today’s episode about inner warriors (anxiety). Karen is a psychologist, speaker, consultant, the founder of …

“It shifts your communication dynamic from one that might be negative to one that’s positive. It moves it from demand based or power struggles to connection and partnership.” Linda Murphy joins me in today’s episode about Declarative Language. Linda is a speech language pathologist and RDI® Constultant. We discuss social learning differences, imper…

“Limits are the thing parents struggle with the most and it’s one of the most important pieces of the puzzle. Until you feel confident and competent in your limit setting skills, it’s going to be really hard to help your child through aggressive behaviors.” Tosha Schore joins me in today’s episode about Aggression. Tosha is a parent coach and the f…

“The thing that we most see is the increase in intrinsic motivation just all over the place.” Gina Riley joins me in today’s episode about Unschooling Outcomes. Gina is an educational psychologist, Clinical Professor, and Program Leader of Adolescent Special Education Programs at CUNY-Hunter College. We discuss advantages, disadvantages, higher edu…

“A demand is anything that is too hard in the present moment. And that can be for you or them. As a family, we have found the language of ‘too hard’ to be incredibly freeing. When things are hard, we show up, we do our best, we’re brave, we ask for help. And when things are too hard, we find a way to let it go.” Amanda Diekman joins me in today’s e…

“We get to upgrade the mother within us. We get to move toward a sense of our mother’s essential self as the part that gets to mother us. If our mother were completely supported, if she had gotten to receive her re-mothering, if she had gotten to heal her emotional trauma, if she had gotten to live with resonance and self-warmth, what would she be …

“Connection is the substrate of parenting and that rests on my connection to myself. When I have connection, the creative possibilities are endless just as they are when I have connection with my children. We come out of a stuck place and the space between us opens up and there is so much more room for everyone’s experience in that connection.” Ale…

“Children behave their way to safety.” Claire Wilson joins me in today’s episode about Polyvagal Theory. Claire is an author, speaker, trainer, and therapist with her book Grounded and her program Grounded Grown Ups, who uses Polyvagal Theory to help children and their grown ups. We discuss the autonomic nervous system hierarchy, being grounded, ne…

“They’re holding you in that false narrative probably because you’ve enrolled them into that story. You know, we’re always informing other people who we are. So if I have a story, ‘I’m not good enough,’ there’s all sorts of ways that I’m going show up as, ‘I’m inferior and they’re better than me,’ so when they leave because of that, it’s validating…

“In terms of equality, if my son perceives himself below anything, he’s going to have a stress response, like a lion’s in front of him.” Casey Ehrlich, Ph.D. joins me in today’s episode about PDA. Casey is a coach to parents raising PDA Autistic children and is the co-founder of the PDA Parents community and podcast. We discuss what PDA is, Casey’s…

“If we’re in our comfort zone as parents, we’re probably holding them back.” Chris Balme joins me in today’s episode about tweens. Chris Balme is an education leader and writer, passionate about helping young people discover more of their human potential. We discuss how we misunderstand tweens, what’s going on with their development, how they learn…

“How will you know when you’re done?” Ash Brandin joins me in today’s episode about video games. Ash is a middle school teacher who has been putting gaming principles into practice for over ten years. A gamer, educator, and parent, they help families raise kids with a balance of gaming, responsibilities, and other hobbies. We discuss research, blam…

“It’s a great thing to always have someone to rescue you, but to always need to be rescued is such a vulnerable way to live, such a limiting way to live. You don’t want your child to feel like they always need to be rescued.” Dr. Eli Lebowitz joins me in today’s episode about childhood anxiety. He studies and treats childhood anxiety at the Yale Ch…

Gentle parenting is a journey, not a destination, and it’s one that did not start with you and will not end with you. Mr. Chazz joins me in today’s episode about caring for kids. His mission is to help adults truly see, guide, and trust children. We discuss his journey into conscious discipline, intergenerational trauma, perfection, and calling in.…

Today I’m here with Amy Lang talking about Sexuality. Amy has been a sexual health educator for over 25 years. We go over preparing ourselves for conversations about sex with our kids, setting our kids up to have a healthy relationship with their bodies, handling nudity in the house, responding to masturbation, explaining menstruation and where bab…

Today I’m here with Dr. Cassidy Freitas talking about Boundaries. Cassidy is a mom to three, California based Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice and host of Holding Space podcast. We go over what boundaries are, the distinction between requests and boundaries, the essential role of acceptance, when a boundary is warranted, n…