Hands Off Parents

The "Summer of Maternity" continues on Hands Off Parents, and Abby is thrilled to welcome back previous guest, and hilarious person, Stacey Daniels. Stacey is a loving aunt and takes the job very seriously. Coincidentally, she and Abby are both going through some aunt challenges, and they discuss the extreme love you can feel for your siblings' kids. Also, Stacey definitely tells Abby about what makes a cute kid and what doesn't. Is your kid cute? Of course they are! All kids are cute. Post pics of your cute kids on the Hands Off Facebook page @handsoffparents.

Holy Crap We're Back... but not officially because Steph is being lazy "breastfeeding" and "not sleeping" and "raising a baby" (Whatev!). So, Abby is spending this summer of maternity leave having co-hosts and special guests. This week, she welcomes back the amazing Nancy Wozny, mom of two babies who are both pushing 30. Abby has been very freaked out after binge watching the teen drama "13 Reasons Why" and asks Nancy how you raise teens who talk and don't hate you. Nancy is a pro on both fronts and offers some solid advice on when to hover and when to leave well enough alone. Stay tuned for a Summer of Hands Off Guests, and if you want to be one, shoot us an email at handsoffparents@gmail.com.

This week Steph and Abby are thrilled to welcome Rabbi Joshua Fixler, who just happens to be a new dad AND an amazing human being. Don't worry! This is not a religious conversation, but rather one about how a rabbi dad does it all (HINT: His wife is amazing). But then, yeah, they spiral into the meaning of life and explore how to MAKE meaning in your own family. At the end of the day, it seems like marking the good moments in your life and simply being grateful for them is what makes for good parenting - and just good human-ing. ALSO: OMG! Steph is having a baby this week! Hands Off Parents will be back after a brief maternity leave (Abby is just being lazy). Stay tuned for pics of the new baby!

This week, the ladies are lucky to have Jill Jarvis on the show. Jill is a mom of four and runs the very popular blog BigKidSmallCity.com, which is every parent in Houston's go-to list for fun family activities. Jill was working as an engineer and one day realized something needed to change. She also wanted to get out more with her kids, so she began her blog. Several years later, she's loving what she does...AND getting paid to do it! She gives the ladies some of her fun summer tips, too. Tell us what you are excited to do this summer in the comments.

This week Steph and Abby welcome author and mother of two teens (12 is teen-ish), Katherine Center! Katherine's sixth novel, How to Walk Away, will be released on May 15th but she's already hard at work on her 8th book right now. Yes, she is human. Maybe. Katherine imparts some wisdom to the ladies on how to juggle it all and have fun at the same time. Raising young adults is much different than dealing with toddler tantrums and Katherine assures the ladies that their goals of raising nice people is a good approach. Finally, some validation! Speaking of, write us a review!

This week Abby shares some highlights from a recent road trip that her family took to Marfa, Texas. Sixteen total hours in the car with two kiddos, and she lives to tell the tale! Steph spent the weekend stuck in the house, making space for her new baby. Together, the ladies figure out that parents regularly need to take AND make space to keep our sanity. How do you make and take space? Let us know in the comments!

Steph had a rough week: kid challenges, pregnancy challenges, and she needs to put a bunch of Ikea furniture together before she has this baby! She found herself traveling down an all too familiar Google rabbit hole of worry and anxiety. Abby remembers the pregnancy Googling well and wonders if this is just a byproduct of being pregnant in this day and age. People say, "don't Google your symptoms," but perhaps it's more empowering to be in the know then in the dark? Did you Google everything about your new baby or no? They also ramble on about a variety of other topics including screen time, four year old independence, and West Side Story. Apologies in advance for the children in the background. Comment below! Write a review! Share with your friends!

With the conclusion of two major holidays, Steph and Abby get into a discussion of how religion plays a role in parenting. Steph grew up with one religion, but Abby grew up with none really--just a lot of holidays that overlapped and contradicted. How do you raise your own kids when you are unsure of where you stand? What do parents coming from multiple religious backgrounds do? How do you instill religious traditions without the religion part? Lots of questions! Give the ladies some answers on their Facebook page,

This week, Steph and Abby address a listener's request to chat about what to do with (little) mean girls. To help them, they have brought back the lovely Maryocéane Guy, an educator and mom of four-year old Margo. Mary tells the ladies about how she wants to handle mean girls as a mom, but what to actually do from an educated (READ: rational) perspective. This leads the women to talk more about bullies and how to address negative labeling in general. Overall, the three decide the best moves as parents is to talk, talk, talk! Talk to Steph and Abby in the iTunes reviews! But don't be mean, please. Especially about the technical difficulties today. The pregnant woman should never be the one in charge of the sound board.

They're back, and boy are they back with a doozy! This week Steph and Abby talk with Bev Caplan about the most difficult decision she ever had to make: terminating her pregnancy. Once Bev found out that her baby had a chromosomal abnormality that would ultimately end the baby's life within the first year, or even the first hours, she made the toughest choice of her life. It's one of those stories that will take your breath away but needs to be shared. Share your own stories on the Hands Off Parents Facebook page @handsoffparents!

This week Steph and Abby are thrilled to welcome mom, business owner, amazing person, and good smeller, Aimee Woodall to the show. Aimee owns and runs a highly successful cause-driven branding and strategy agency (Black Sheep Agency) that has serviced the likes of the Obamas! (Yes, the real ones). Aimee is also a mom of a 16-month old, a wife, and a human being with a lot going on. She imparts some sage advice that she got from Michelle (yeah, Obama) on managing your time as a whole and making time for yourself, which Aimee now lives by. Send yourself an iCal reminder to listen to her eye-opening advice!

This week, Steph and Abby welcome parent, advocate, and activist, Sarah Becker. A former school psychologist, Sarah and her husband founded HISD Parent Advocates, a local organization that keeps parents in the loop on issues related to our school district, board, and policies that directly affect our kids. Sarah discusses many of the recent (and dare we say, controversial) proposals to reorganize Houston's public school system. She also describes the choice her own family made to move their children out of a highly coveted, disproportionately white (relative to HISD as a whole) magnet school and into an under-enrolled school with a primarily brown and black student population in a neighborhood with lots of poverty. For those not in Houston, the conversation is equally important as they discuss larger implications of living in a diverse country, where racial lines are still drawn when it comes to our schools. Sarah educates the ladies on the works of Nikole Hannah-Jones and the movement to integrate America's

This week, Steph and Abby dive further in the topic of getting kids to listen. They delve into the (often frustrating) world of kid emotions...and tantrums and meltdowns and whining and crying and screaming and irrational behavior and how you deal with it. (Wine.) Steph has been reading a book on the subject and shares this with Abby and their listeners. The idea is to have several approaches in your parenting toolbox, some more direct than others, but in the hopes that one of them will get your kids to do what you want them to. Do they work? Probably not, but definitely worth a try. Tell them how you get your kids to listen in the comments!

This week Steph and Abby discuss anxiety, what it is, how it manifests, and all the ways parents pass it down to their children. Is it inevitable that our kids will get all the crazies that we have? Or is it possible to be mindful of the anxieties we are fostering in our children? Or maybe they are just being anxious over anxieties? Share your own anxieties on their Facebook page!

Despite their better judgement, Steph and Abby decided to weigh in on the Aziz Ansari media storm. (Cue thunder) The ladies discuss why this particular case resonated so much with so many different voices and how they might think about this from a parenting perspective. It's a challenging conversation but an important one to have, they decide. And they also decide they are old, like "get off our lawns" old. Tell them how you might use this event in your parenting.

Before the new year, Steph and Abby vowed to have a more cohesive approach to the podcast and they immediately broke this resolution. Instead of cohesion, they discuss lice. Yup, lice. These pesky buggers will outlive us all! To address their lack of resolutions, they cover CNN's 2018 Parenting Resolution list, which is just completely ridiculous. Mock it along with them. Did you make any resolutions? Parenting or otherwise? Share in the comments!

This week the ladies discuss a recently published parenting book that advocates that parents act like gardeners -- plant the seeds and then let your kids grow! It is about creating the right environment and letting kids be themselves, as opposed to trying to build your kids into what you want them to be (like a carpenter). The ladies wonder if they think they are gardeners but really they are more like the carpenters. Is any parent a true gardener? They also discuss two other books they've been reading, Steph's is about how to talk to difficult children; Abby's is about the robots taking over the world! Naturally, they are both doomed.

Oh it's the obligatory holiday episode, where Steph and Abby discuss how many teachers they need to buy presents for, what their kids want and what they won't get for them, and the Alabama election results! Also Steph shares some BIG news. It's the most wonderful time of the year. Spread the joy and write them a review on iTunes.

This week Steph and Abby are honored to welcome Lisa Stanton, mother to a transgender daughter named Maya. Lisa's story is heartwarming and heartbreaking, as she details the struggles that Maya had with being born a boy. Lisa and her husband realized that Maya knew who she was better than anyone else, and that they would support her in becoming the person she wanted to be. Get your tissues out because this episode will definitely make you cry (Steph and Abby were hysterical half the conversation).

This week Steph and Abby describe all the things they are thankful for: Their fear of impending doom, death, the break down of social civility... wait, that doesn't make sense. They are thankful for all their listeners and pie. Lots of pie. They wish you and yours a very Happy Thanksgiving; let your kids eat all the junk food, watch all the TV and be thankful that distractions exist!