What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making Life Better, with Two Funny Moms

What does it really mean to become an active participant in the care of your own health? In this episode, Margaret talks with primary care physician Dr. Lucy McBride about her new book, Beyond the Prescription: A Doctor’s Guide to Taking Charge of Your Health. They discuss how to become a more self-aware and empowered patient, as well as:

The difference between medicine and "wellness"

Why data is less useful without full context

How stress and grief can affect physical health

The four parts of whole-person health: informatics, inputs, infrastructure, and insight

Why health decisions involve trade-offs

The importance of understanding your own “patient personality”

How to ask better questions at medical appointments

How to make shared decision-making part of your healthcare

Why quality of life matters alongside longevity

Here's where you can find Dr. McBride:

https://www.lucymcbride.com/

https://lucymcbride.substack.com/

@dr.lucymcbride on IG and LinkedIn

Buy BEYOND THE PRESCRIPTION: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9781668024386

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables.

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/
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Feeling overwhelmed by everything that needs to get done? If you're the person who keeps track of the appointments, school forms, groceries, household repairs, gifts, kids' activities, and all the little things that seem to live permanently in your head, you may not need to get better at managing your workload—you may need to outsource some of it.

We tackle a listener question about how to outsource the household workload without having pockets deep enough for full-time help. We talk about why outsourcing can actually feel like more work at first, how to decide what to hand over, and how to get other people to truly take responsibility instead of simply giving you another task to manage.

Here are some topics we discuss:

Why the mental load is usually a systems problem

Glass balls vs rubber balls, and how to tell the difference

Why part-time help is a great way to outsource

why making your own life easier is a legitimate use of your resources

Here are links to some of the resources discussed in the episode:

Zawn Villines on Substack: Why the 'Fair Play' book doesn't fix labor inequality for most couples

Zawn Villines on Substack: Results of the State of Household Inequality Survey Show How Damaging Heterosexual Relationships Are to Women

Sarah Aswell for Scary Mommy: A Woman Is Going Viral For Timing How Long Unpleasant Tasks Actually Take

Christi Newrutzen on TikTok

Our Fresh Take with Eve Rodsky

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables.

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This "Deep Dive" series revisits a few of our past episodes on back-to-school challenges such as the morning rush, school projects which require lots of parental oversight, and how to help our kids navigate intensifying academic pressure.

So many of us spend hours chauffeuring our kids back and forth to their myriad activities. Why are kids so overloaded with activities these days, and can we get off of this ride? Here are some parenting strategies for navigating this issue.

Amy and Margaret discuss:

Why kids are so overscheduled these days

How overscheduling really affects kids, beyond the mom guilt-inducing headlines

What questions to ask when assessing if our kids are overscheduled

Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:

⁠Dr Shimi King: Overscheduling Your Kids Isn’t the Fast-Track to Success it Once Was⁠

Solution Health: ⁠Overbooked Kids: The Overscheduled Crisis⁠

Anna Nordberg for Slate: ⁠The Fine Art of Underscheduling⁠

Jill Barshay for Mind Shift: ⁠Overscheduling Kids’ Lives Causes Depression and Anxiety, Study Finds⁠

Carolina Caetano, et. al for Economics of Education Review: ⁠Are children spending too much time on enrichment activities?⁠

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables.

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/⁠
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We think of rewarding kids as a surefire way to get the behavior we want. But what if rewards mainly serve to underline our children's intrinsic drive to succeed? Dr. Özgür Bolat, education scientist and author of The Reward Trap: Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science for Motivating Kids, explains why rewarding kids may actually undermine their motivation in the long run.

As Dr. Bolat explains, there's a difference between motivation and compliance. Rewards can get children to do something, but they don't necessarily create the ownership, engagement, or intrinsic motivation parents actually want.

In this episode, we discuss:

How rewards can change the way children view an activity

Hedonic adaptation and why rewards often need to get bigger to have the same effect

The connection between rewards, praise, and controlling parenting

How autonomy-enhancing parenting differs from control

Why family chores can help children develop a sense of responsibility and prosocial values

Mastery orientation vs. performance orientation, and how each affects children's anxiety and motivation

Why focusing too heavily on grades, competition, and achievement can create performance anxiety

How parents can encourage curiosity and help kids find motivation even in subjects they don't initially enjoy

The role of flow in learning and why children become deeply engaged when a task matches their skill level

Why differentiated learning matters—and what happens when work is too easy or too difficult

How rewards and competition in school can contribute to learned helplessness

Why understanding big concepts can actually help children remember facts and information

Dr. Bolat's PEACE model for building connection with children

How getting curious about the reason behind a child's behavior can reveal what they actually need

Why a homework problem may be a symptom of a much bigger issue around fear, judgment, or connection

Here's where you can find Dr. Bolat:

https://ozgurbolat.co.uk/

LinkedIn

@dr.ozgurbolat on IG

https://ozgurbolat.substack.com/

Buy THE REWARD TRAP: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9798893961805

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables.

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

⁠⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when one child’s needs take up most of a family’s attention? Even when parents are doing their best, it can be easy for another child to quietly become the “easy” one—the independent kid, the high achiever, the people-pleaser who never seems to need anything.

In this episode, we discuss:

What the term glass child means and why some children can become overlooked

How hyperindependence can be both a strength and a sign that a child doesn't feel comfortable asking for help

Why people-pleasing isn't inherently a bad quality—and when it can become a problem

How being the “easy,” responsible, or high-achieving child can lead to perfectionism

Why some kids learn to hide anger, sadness, resentment, or other difficult emotions

The importance of making space for children to express complicated feelings without judgment

How small-T trauma and difficult family dynamics can affect kids even when their experiences don't seem “bad enough” compared with someone else's

Why children may act out or seek negative attention when they're feeling overlooked

How parents can use short, intentional moments of one-on-one connection to help every child feel seen

The idea behind the 7-minute rule: finding small windows of distraction-free connection throughout the day

How connection can look different at different ages, from play and cuddling with young children to mentorship and open communication with teens

Why you don't need to perfectly balance your attention every single day to make your kids feel loved and supported

Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:

Jenn Lonzer for the Cleveland Clinic: Always Coping, Rarely Seen: Explaining Glass Child Syndrome

Dr Becky Kennedy of "Good Inside" blog: What is the 777 Rule in Parenting?

Corinne Masur for Psychology Today: Helping Kids Feel They Matter

Our episode When One of Our Kids Takes Up All of Our Bandwidth

Our Fresh Take with Sara Hirsh Bordo

Harlan Cohen on IG

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables.

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

⁠⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices