Confession: I’ve wanted to co-host a podcast about raising good kids for years.

I don’t know if it’s just because I’m a podcast obsessive…

I love to talk, but moreover I love to ask people advice and get their perspectives. During covid quarantine I tried to motivate myself to start a podcast on raising good kids. But other than one interview with my friend, Mark Hsu, who wrote an hilarious “advice” book to his daughters entitled, “Please Open in the Event of My Death…” (and it was a great interview, if I do say so myself. But ask please ask Mark, yourself)I just couldn’t get podcasting off the ground. The equipment, the scheduling, the fact that after dinner is the only time to nail down other parents and nobody wants to do a podcast interview when they really just want to binge Succession).

Plus – would it be okay for me to focus a podcast around raising good kids and also still schilling the best diaper bag for dads on the side? “This podcast and every one of our podcasts brought to you by E.C.Knox making the best diaper bag for dads.”

I suppose I could do that.

I’m desperate to justify how I couldn’t get this off the ground, myself.

But enough of me.

Back to me.

Covid times brought me to come to know the folks at LYSB, the Lyme Youth Service Bureau, who produce an excellent podcast, “Lyme/Old Lyme: In it Together“, that’s funded with a grant for drug and alcohol prevention. But drug and alcohol prevention isn’t meant to be treatment. Prevention is all about, well…talking about how to raise good kids. Prevention means raising resilient children who think for themselves and make wise choices.

So it’s a podcast about raising good kids! I mean…this is exactly what I’d hoped to do, myself.

And because their podcast is new and it had a staff of one, I reached out to say, “Hey, could I offer myself as another voice to bring more layers?”

To my delight, they accepted my desperate attempt to fulfill my Terri Gross aspirations and I’m part of the team.

So check out the LYSB podcast and hear me attempt to further and deepen conversations with specialists in raising good kids.

Most recently, we spoke with Dr. Alicia Farrell, a child psychologist specializing in how to raise tough kids in a tough world.

Her three takeaways are:

  1. Never do for your kids what they can do for themselves. This could be from tying their shoes to confronting a challenge on the playground to advocating for themselves in a high school class.
  1. Let them make their own mistakes. Failure is very, very good. It teaches lessons, mill motivate them to tryiy different next time and builds resilience.
  1. Have fun. Don’t forget to be silly. Play trucks and games. Be silly just for the sake of delighting and making them laugh. Life shouldn’t be so serious.

This was a great conversation with a specialist that definitely made me examine “am I doing this right?”

The questions and self-questioning never end.