Simple Families
Simple Families offers solutions for living well with children. In this show, we focus on child behavior, positive parenting, family wellness, and decreasing the mental load. As a Mama with a doctorate in Child Development, Denaye’s perspectives are grounded in research, but more importantly real life.
Episodes
April 25, 2025 • 43 mins
In today's episode, I'm speaking with Jessica Slice. Jessica is a disabled author, speaker, and essayist. In her 20s, Jessica fell ill on a hike in Greece and has since been slowing learning to navigate life as a disabled person. In her work, she shines a light on the amazing ways that disabled parents navigate and innovate in the world.
I appreciate the way that she opened my eyes to this journey that so many parents are on acro...
Mark as Played
March 28, 2025 • 22 mins
In this episode, I'm chatting with you about moral development. The study of moral development helps us to understand how humans learn right from wrong, make decisions, and internalize a value set. I'll share about the typical developmental stages and how this topic can help us to better understand parenting strategies and child behavior.
Sponsors:
Team Supercrew - visit teamsupercrew.com and use the code SIMPLEFAMILIES for 10% o...
Mark as Played
February 28, 2025 • 43 mins
Love is love. But in today's world our growing children are experiencing rapidly shifting messages about identity and commitment. Sometimes our own life experiences around first love can help us to guide our children. Yet often, as parents, we can feel confusion around processing this new milestone in our ever-changing world. In this episode I'm chatting with Lisa Phillips, the author of First Love: Guiding Teens through Relationsh...
Mark as Played
January 24, 2025 • 57 mins
I don't know about you, but I find it difficult to delegate tasks in both my work and family life. Often, I find myself deciding that it's easier to do things myself rather than enlist the help of supportive people. In this episode, I'm excited to chat with Emily King, CEO and co-founder of Faye. Emily experienced the overwhelm that comes with balancing parenthood and a demanding job, and she created a whole business dedicated to ...
Mark as Played
December 13, 2024 • 51 mins
Leadership is built into parenthood. In today's episode I welcome Adam Galinsky, a renowned social psychologist and Columbia Business School professor. Adam is the author of the brand new book, Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others. He has more than 300 scientific publications and a TED Talk viewed 7.5 million times.
Although he may never have set out to speak to an audience of parents, Adam naturally made t...
Mark as Played
November 22, 2024 • 58 mins
In today's episode, author Eli Harwood joins us to explain what it means to be securely attached and why it matters. Eli is a mother and therapist known widely on the internet as the Attachment Nerd. She shares her own experiences as well as tools to build the connection we need to help our children thrive.
LINKS:
Eli's Website
Eli's New Book: Raising Securely Attached Kids
Eli on Instagram
SPONSORS:
LMNT - Get your free LMNT Sa...
Mark as Played
October 25, 2024 • 25 mins
Many of us (myself included) strive to develop more effective and efficient routines. Sometimes, we fail to realize that we have more functional systems in place than we realize. Personally, I've set lofty goals for improving routines in cleaning, homework, exercise, the morning hustle, etc. Those systems generally fail. What I have found does work is to do what I call, "obstacle-identification-and-removal". I'm sharing a little ab...
Mark as Played
October 4, 2024 • 47 mins
I'm excited to welcome my minimalist friend Zoe Kim back to the podcast to chat about what minimalism looks like with older kids. Zoe, an author and mother of four, is sharing some of her favorite tips, along with some of the wisdom that she used to build her simple home a few years ago.
LINKS:
Zoe's Custom Ikea Closet
Zoe's Book, The Minimalist Family
Zoe's Website, Raising Simple
Zoe on Instagram
Zoe and Matt's Weekend Workshop...
Mark as Played
August 30, 2024 • 56 mins
"Resilience is being able to handle the bad stuff over time and to know you are not doing it alone." - Tovah Klein Ph.D., author of Raising Resilience
In today's world of uncertainty, resilience is an indispensable trait that our children will need as they grow. In this episode, I'm chatting with Dr. Tovah Klein, the bestselling author of the brand new book Raising Resilience. Tovah talks me through my own recent resilience-build...
Mark as Played
July 30, 2024 • 11 mins
In this episode, I'm discussing two valuable principles in parenting: co-regulation and declarative language. I recently read two short books by the same author (Linda K. Murphy) with tools that have proven useful in both my own parenting and in my therapy practice. I'm giving you a quick overview of these tools and tips for integrating them into your own life (with both kids and adults!).
Links
Linda K. Murphy's Website + Books
...
Mark as Played
June 29, 2024 • 24 mins
We are currently packing the whole house into boxes to move out for renovations. Therefore, I've been reflecting a lot on our journey towards minimalism. In today's episode, I'm talking about minimizing the "stuff" in all parts of the home--kitchen, bath, closets, wardrobe, drop zone, etc.
SPONSOR
Try two weeks of PrepDish for free: prepdish.com/families
Mark as Played
May 31, 2024 • 37 mins
Safe and healthy screen use is a topic on my mind...all.the.time. In today's episode, I'm sharing some rambling thoughts about how I'm making decisions for my kids (ages 8 and 10) around things like smart watches, YouTube, phones, content restrictions, and much more. In this episode I'm sharing many of my own thoughts and opinions, so please take what works for you and leave what doesn't.
How are you managing screens at home? What...
Mark as Played
April 25, 2024 • 37 mins
There are widely held assumptions about the adolescent years--many of which are negative. My guest today, Ellen Galinsky, challenges many of the stereotypes that we've come to believe about teens. In this chat she shares the basic needs of adolescents to help us better understand what they need (and want) from us. Her research supports collaborating with children during these years of growth, rather than trying to hold tight in con...
Mark as Played
March 28, 2024 • 42 mins
Most of us have a conflicted relationship with social media and online life. For today's episode I'm chatting with author Kara Alaimo. Kara's new book, Over the Influence: Why Social Media is Toxic for Women and Girls - And How We Can Take it Back, debuts this month. In our conversation we are sifting through a variety of topics related to how we are influenced as parents and how we can be thoughtful when leading our children into ...
Mark as Played
February 22, 2024 • 45 mins
The chances are good that you are familiar with perfectionism. Either you have experienced it yourself, you have a partner or parent with these tendencies, or perhaps you have a child touched by perfectionism. In today's episode, I'm chatting with Clarissa Ong Ph.D. She's a professor and the co-author of the book The Anxious Perfectionist: How to Manage Perfectionism-Driven Anxiety.
SPONSORS:
Masterclass: Get 15% off an annual ...
Mark as Played
January 19, 2024 • 41 mins
There are many misconceptions about what it means to be 'gifted'. Today's guest, Julie Skolnick, explains to us that giftedness usually comes with considerable challenges. She also shares ideas and insight on how to support and educate children who are gifted, but also have challenges (sometimes called twice-exceptional).
LINKS
Julie's Book, Gifted and Distractible
Julie's Website, With Understanding Comes Calm
Episode ...
Mark as Played
December 15, 2023 • 41 mins
Many of the guests on this show are authors—especially of non-fiction books. Although we often rely on non-fiction to teach us, sometimes the greatest lessons actually come through diving deeper into the life experiences of characters in a novel. Today, I’m speaking with authors Christine Platt and Catherine Wigginton Greene. Christine and Catherine have co-authored a brand new book that tells the story of an entertaining and thoug...
Mark as Played
November 17, 2023 • 38 mins
Once upon a time, building a village to raise a family probably felt simpler. The village was likely the (literal) neighbors and family members who lived right around the corner. But in today's world, our communities are more complex and diverse. The people we lean on may live nearby, but they also may live on the other side of the globe. I'm joined by Michelle Kennedy, the founder of the app Peanut, to talk about building communit...
Mark as Played
October 20, 2023 • 42 mins
In today's episode, author Michael Easter, shares his work and theories on the topic of comfort. He posits that the growing rates of mental and physical health challenges may be rooted in the fact that we are living more comfortable lives than ever before.
As parents, we strive to keep our kids as comfortable as possible when they are infants. But, perhaps we should ask ourselves if continuing on that path will negatively impact t...
Mark as Played
September 22, 2023 • 20 mins
As adults, we often avoid uncomfortable situations and even frequently rescue our children from uncomfortable experiences. We know, however, that experiencing discomfort can result in growth and resilience. Have you gotten uncomfortable recently? Maybe you should.
Links from the episode
Simple Families Podcast Episode 298: Accommodating your kid's anxiety
Simple Families Podcast Episode 318: Child Anxiety
Simple Families Podca...
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.