Mom To Mom Podcast

Today, we're passing the mic to Monica Swanson wife, mom, blogger, podcast host, and author of The Boy Mom: What Your Son Needs Most from You. Monica is passionate about encouraging moms who are raising boys in today's world and she's joined us today in a candid discussion about a mother's influence in the life of her sons.

Nothing we do is more important than prayer, and time on our knees will bear more fruit in our children’s lives than any other activity we engage in. Prayer is powerful and the sooner we learn to harness its incredible power correctly, the better. It’s the best investment we can make in anyone’s life, especially in our children's.

In today’s culture, families struggle to find the time and the urgency to be in the Word together. Today, we are joined by Ruth Chou Simons, bestselling author, artist, entrepreneur, speaker, and mother to six boys who will help us build a Biblical foundation that will shape our family for eternity.

Our theology, or lack thereof, doesn’t just affect our eternity. It also affects our today. Simple, childlike faith is the start. But as you develop a deep relationship with God, it stands to reason that you’d want to know Him better--who He is and what He does. Theology is not for the Christian elite. It is for moms like you and me. The truth is, if we’re not living with right theology, chances are, we’re not rightly reflecting our Holy God.

Some folks prefer to call it Morning Basket, Morning Meeting, others who maybe choose to slot it at other times in the day instead of the morning have been known to call it Symposium or Power Hour. No matter what you call it, if you’ve been homeschooling for any length of time, you definitely know that Morning Time is a current buzzword in homeschooling circles. It seems that everyone has caught the fever. Today we're sharing our very favorite resources for Morning Time.

Now that life has shifted and we are all schooling at home, let’s spend some time chatting about what we’re supposed to do and how we should begin. If you’ve never homeschooled and this is brand new overwhelming territory, never fear!! Thank goodness for Jamie Erickson and September McCarthy, two seasoned and experienced homeschooling moms who, between them, have homeschooled 15 children from preschool through high school.

Raising teens can be both tricky and tremendously exciting at the same time. Your teen is dealing with hormones he or she hasn’t dealt with before. They might feel insecure or maybe because of social media, they’re being pressured to be cool. They are beginning to wake up to the reality of the world around them and starting to figure out what they love to do and what they’re good at.

In this episode, we're talking about the real issues we’re all facing right now in the midst of dealing with Covid-19 and how that affects us as moms. As hectic as it may seem, with all the change and upheaval and news reports to digest every day, we can find the silver lining if we look for it.

To round out our three-part series of the working mom, we want to focus on a category of mothers who tends to get overlooked or perhaps, not considered when she is seen in the workforce or doing both working from home, working outside the home and raising a family. This is the woman who is working when that wasn’t necessary “the plan,” or the vision her family had made a choice for when considering who would work and why.

Today we’re joined by Heather MacFadyen, wife, mother of four boys, and host of the wildly popular Don’t Mom Alone Podcast. She shares some great insight into finding the balance between work and home, setting good boundaries, and learning to delegate when necessary.

In part one of a three-part series about The Working Mom, Kate and September welcome Emily Thomas, who not only works full-time as a supervising RN at an eating disorder clinic but hosts the popular Mom Struggling Well podcast.

The podcast is turning one and to celebrate we’re passing the mic to you. Over the last few weeks, we’ve invited you to share with us some of your burning questions: things you’ve always wanted to ask a mom a little further along on the journey. And you took us up on the offer. Dozens of questions poured in and today, we’re gonna try and tackle as many as we can.

Today, on the Podcast, we have a special guest, author Kristen A. Jenson. She’s here joining us to help give us some tools to have hard conversations with our kids in order to protect them from porn. Kristen is the author of the Good Pictures Bad Pictures series of read-aloud books including the best-selling Good Pictures Bad Pictures: Porn-Proofing Today’s Young Kids and Good Pictures Bad Pictures Jr.: A Simple Plan to Protect Young Minds.

What’s the crazy dream God has dropped in your heart, the wild adventure He’s inviting you to join? What is He asking you to do that you know you couldn’t possibly do on your own? In fact, if you try to do it on your own, you're pretty much guaranteed to fall flat on your face? Has He given you a wild, preposterous, secret, scary, or enchanting dream or idea? That’s what we call a God Dare.

For the mom who struggles with anxiety and depression, the holiday season can magnify feelings of loneliness, despondency, and hopelessness. The holidays can be a trigger for past wounds and losses. So today, we want to have a raw discussion around the table about our own struggle with anxiety and depression and share some physical and spiritual tools that have helped the three of us during some dark times in our lives including the holidays.

Some of us LOVE the Holidays and everything that comes with it. And then some of us wish we could wake up and have the house decorated, everything wrapped, the food cooked and the festivities planned. Because, let’s just be honest… As a mom, the Holidays can be a tad bit overwhelming. It’s not that we don’t love our families or the special memories, but the hype and the expectations, the lists and the to-dos can sometimes overtake us.  So, today, consider this Episode to be your sanity saver.

If your child is between the ages of 6 and 23, born between 1995 and 2012, then they are part of what’s called I-Gen or Gen Z. Seventy-four million Americans or 24% of the population fit this category. They are the generation that has never known life without the internet and they are the most smart-phone addicted generation in history. Though there are pros and cons to the digital world, the cons are winning. What are parents to do? How do we reach the most isolated, loneliest generation in history?

Every grandparent has influence over their grandkids, whether good or bad. Let’s be honest: some of us did not grow up with examples of Godliness in the far reaching branches of our family tree. But, that just means that the inheritance can start with us. We can be the start of a generational line of faith. We can be a Lois. As Deuteronomy 4:9 says, let us make the Lord and His faithfulness known to our children and eventually to our children’s children.

Entertainment puts on airs and shoots for the making of good impressions; hospitality opens arms and doors wide and allows us to live transparently for Christ. When we practice hospitality, we live out our real, messy, and redeemed lives before strangers and brothers alike.  Today, we look forward to creatively covering the Hospitality basics and breaking apart the myths that may keep us from living out a calling to live with welcome arms and open hearts.

October is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month--a time each year set aside for us to remember and encourage those who have lost a child through miscarriage or early on in infancy. So today, we want to honor those mothers who grieve and also provide some helpful tools for those friends and family members who want to lovingly support a mother whose arms ache from the loss of her baby.