1. Parenting the Pivotals

Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Great Job! Podcast hosted by Emily and Dan Mall. The couple sees parenting as a (great!) job with no rule book. Much like in their marriage, the duo are learning everyday, every step of the way by making very intentional choices.

Their two children have entered what they call the pivotal age, commonly known as the tween years. Not only is this stretch of time transitional for their children in many ways, but also for themselves as parents. Emily and Dan discuss having to confront your own childhood stuff while parenting in real time, and how to handle modern technology issues, like cell phone boundaries, as parents without any generational precedent.

Emily and Dan then introduce the five key areas of parenting that The Great Job! Podcast will be exploring this season and why each is so important to consider.

1. Family values: how can we figure out what we hold really important in order to simplify decision making?

2. Boundaries: what even are they? And what do they look like in real life?

3. Teaching life skills: should my child be able to do x,y,z by a certain age?

4. Emotions: because so many feelings come up when parenting and as a child, how do we regulate our ability to express emotions? 

5. Mental health: how do we work through the hard stuff? 

Expect at least two sides to every issue! Emily and Dan love to have a healthy debate and encourage the same from their kids. They wrap up the episode by sharing what it's been like to work together on this podcast project, and how it differs from other projects they have collaborated on in the past. They may have been pals since elementary school but new experiences bring out new sides of each other to learn about and appreciate.

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Episode Outline: 

(00:07) Raising kids comes with no handbook

(04:30) The pivotal years mark transitions for kids and parents 

(13:01) Introducing the five parenting topic areas of the podcast

(18:59) Working together professionally for the first time

(24:01) The beauty of healthy disagreement

(25:22) Whoever wants it more does the work

Connect with Dan and Emily: 

Great Job! Website

Great Job! Twitter 

Great Job! Facebook 

Great Job! LinkedIn 

About Dan and Emily: 

We’re Dan and Emily Mall, the parents behind Great Job! We’ve known each other since 5th grade, been together for over twenty years, and have spent the last 12 years raising our two daughters, Sidda and Charlie. We started this space after we noticed a lot of our friends and teachers (and our kids’ friends’ parents) coming to us for advice or to compliment the way our kids sometimes show up in the world. We wanted a way to share our stories of what’s worked and hasn’t for parents and caregivers, who, like us, struggle with raising amazing humans.