Advertise on podcast: The Family Lab

In some ways, this podcast episode saved my life. It was the last podcast interview I did before my rock-climbing accident, and I used it as a lifeline during my recovery. Hopefully your versions of survival mode are not as extreme as mine, but this episode is a blueprint for the continuous cycle from surviving to reentry to normalization to exploring to thriving. This is a re-edit, now with video.  You can find more from Jessica Jackson at thrivinginmotherhood.com

Five experiments to help you organize your to-do list, focus on the task at hand, and get things done! To follow along in the Family Lab app, try it free for a month at familylab.lovable.app.

A quarterly update on the experiments we've been trying in the Archibald home, with guest Andi Smiley to share her own summer experiments with her kids (5,7, and 9). We talk about experiments - and the lack thereof—eating in while on vacation, road tripping, chores, finding each kid's currency, audiobooks, and pushing ourselves to try scary new things.   Andi hosts her own podcast, The Friendy Podcast Guide, to help women create, launch, and grow their podcasts.

I did a scary thing and entered a podcast competition for a show I love, Twenty Thousand Hertz. I didn't win, but I wanted to put this out into the world anyway! Do something that scares you (at least a little bit) today!

I made an app! This summer I organized all of our family systems and organization into one app to help teach my kids skills, manage our home, distribute labor, and keep track of fun things like traditions, favorite things, and bucket lists. In this episode I talk about how we run our home and how this app reflects our evolving systems and routines.     You can sign up for a free month at https://familylab.lovable.app. After that month, it's $3 a month.

Motherhood is a team sport. We need coaches, heroes, teammates, both in the game and on the bench, ready to come in. In this episode, I share lessons from some of my earliest motherhood mentors, from how to pursue your passions to how to keep kids from making such a mess.

Everyone always says moms are true heroes, but is it true? Big surprise, I think motherhood is the quintessential hero's journey. This episode explores the idea of the adventure of motherhood, dragon-slaying and all.

Everything is more fun with a game—even household chores. I've always invented cleaning games, with my siblings, for myself, and with my own kids. So I thought I'd share my Top 20.

My friend Molly Liggett and I talk about the many experiments we've tried over the last decade or so to help our kids learn how to manage money. We talk about allowance vs. paying per chore, and we get into the nitty gritty details about how much we pay our kids, what we expect them to do around the house, what they pay for themselves and what we buy for them, plus what we do when they owe us money and how we encourage them to save.

This month at the Family Lab, we're teaching kids how to manage money. This week, we talked to Lauren Santagate of The Anti-Chore Moms about her family's financial system: how her kids earn, spend, save, and invest using the Greenlight card. Lauren explains her system of paying her kids when they add value to their family, their community, or to their own brains!  You can find more information about The Anti-Chore Moms Family Exchange System at womenswealthsociety.com and follow them on Instagram @the_anti_chore_moms

It's Money Management month at the Family Lab, and we're kicking it off with author Richard Eyre to talk about the family economy he and his wife Linda set up decades ago.  In this episode, we talk about how to avoid raising entitled children and about why teaching kids to manage money is such a great way to teach them self reliance and responsibility. He'll share how their kids earned money, how they learned to manage it, and how the system evolved as they grew up. And Richard even helps me figure out how to handle the next stage of financial education for my own kids—as they start going to college! You can learn more details about the Eyre's family economy in their book, The Entitlement Trap. And listeners can get 40% off Richard Eyre's new book, The Grandparenting Blueprint. Just use the code EYREFRIEND at checkout. https://familius.com/book/the-grandparenting-blueprint/

Potty training sounds scary, but it can actually be a great time to connect with your kid and build their confidence and self reliance. Today's guest is a firecracker of a human--Jamie Glowacki. She's a potty training expert who wrote the book I wish I had when I was potty training, called Oh Crap: Potty Training. She also hosts a fabulous podcast called Oh Crap! With Jamie.   Jamie is the first to acknowledge that there isn't one right way to potty train, since every kid is so different. But she has helped potty train a lot of kids and she has drilled it down to such a great method, divided into 5 stepping stones. But before we get into that method, we talk about the when and why of potty training and her overall potty training philosophy. Talking to Jamie almost makes me want to go back and do it again. Almost. You can find all of her resources at Jamieglowacki.com

We're talking oral hygiene! My friend and our family dental hygienist, Megan Robbins, teaches us how to help our kids keep their teeth sparkly clean, including a demo with some giant choppers—so you might want to watch this one on YouTube rather than just listening. She'll answer some of your burning questions, like whether you should you floss first or brush first? Which would win in a fight--regular floss, flossers, toothpicks, or waterpicks? How bad are energy drinks and soda for your teeth? What about vaping? And what's the deal with fluoride? We also talk about strategies for kids who don't want to brush, and things may get a little out of hand when I decide to prove just how large my big, podcasting mouth really is.

Kids can be gross. And as parents, we're their first line of defense to teach them how to wash those hands, scrub those stinky feet, wipe those bums, control their body odor, trim those toenails–all the things. To help us out, I invited my good friends Megan Robbins (a dental hygienist and one of the cleanest people I know) and Laura Nielson (a pediatric nurse) to help us lead our kids from helpers to workers to managers in this critical aspect of becoming a responsible human. I think you'll enjoy these lovely ladies as much as I do!

It's that time again, for an update of the experiments we've been trying in the Archibald home. In this edition, I talk about our latest new kitchen-cleaning system, our weekly family cleaning projects, our dinner menu system, monthly check-ins with the kids, family meetings, a college tour, fall sports, my son's hat business, a home organization project, water aerobics and more!    You can find my son's hat business on Instagram @skadi-apparel