Hello everyone and welcome. You’re listening to SuperPower Mommas and I am your host, Laura Greco. And I’m very excited about the topic that we are talking about today, which is keys to parenting with confidence. I have with me a very special guest. I got to hear her do public talk that I attended and was very inspired by her way of being. She is a mom of, oh, how many children do you have?
Three.
She is a mom of three children. She is also an award winning author of Forks, Knives, and Spoons and The Naked Parenting series. Her writing has been featured in the Huffington Post, and Simply Women International Doula, and The Key, among others. She is the Ted Talk speaker, which I got to hear. And she is pursuing her master’s in fine arts at the Newport MFA, which you have to tell us what that is, and Leah lives with her family in Rhode Island. So welcome Leah. I am so excited to have you here talking about this topic, which is so important.
Thank you so much for having me, Laura. It’s exciting to see you again virtually now.
Yes, yes. And you drove all the way from Rhode Island to New Jersey to give a talk where we are. And yeah, I was very inspired by you and your work.
Thank you.
No, thank you. When we talk about confidence, confidence is really important in parenting. So I’m really happy to have this conversation because parenting with confidence is a real struggle these days. I feel like there is a straddle going on between the old world and the new world, and parents are somewhere in the middle of all that.
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, so we always start though, with what’s your superpower? We get your mama superpower. Can you let us know what that is?
Well, yeah, I think let’s go with confidence. So I think it was very much a gift that I received from my parents and I think that if we’re able to feel confident in ourselves and have that self belief, then we’re able to step out into the world and be more brave, be able to pursue the things that we care about and love. And so very much so with parenting, if we’re able to know what our values are and be able to execute and be more stubborn than the kids are on that, and be confident in our convictions, then I think it absolutely helps to ground me as a parent. And it helps to remove some of the doubt that is just kind of inherent into in this job.
Yeah, of parenting yes. The job of parenting, right.
The job of parenting.
Well, and I love that you say it that way because as parents, often we identify ourselves as, I am a mom, I am this or that. And honestly, that’s just one portion of the person that we are.
Very true. Yeah, very true. And I think that’s super important as well. I mean, having confidence as my superpower, but it’s also confidence in me pursuing my dreams and my goals as well as being a mother. And I think that adds great value to my parenting because then I can be a good example to, I have two daughters and a son, an example to them about how you have to nurture yourself and take care of yourself as well.
I love that because we dive so deeply sometimes into our parenting that we, and you’ve worked, have you worked as a doula, is that what I?
Yes, so I was a doula for a good dozen years or so. And maybe a little shorter than that, but a childbirth educator in that time as well. And I did prenatal, postnatal, new parenting education. And I saw that over and over, which is kind of what inspired Naked Parenting was that as I was working with my clients during a birth, or immediately after birth, you’re usually with a family for about the first three months of a baby’s life, as a postpartum doula. What I started finding is that parents would come back to me as their kids turned two and three. And they kept asking more and more questions. And I ended up becoming very much like a de facto parenting coach.
My younger brother’s friends would start asking me questions. And so we would just talk about different scenarios. And so it catapulted me along with my blog at the time into writing a book that kind of jelled all those thoughts together to help parents have this little bit of a guide and really give them a high five and a feeling of empowerment as we navigate all those things that come along with this. I always felt like there was nobody, no expert, nobody, who can give you what can you do in every single situation? It’s impossible. But my goal was, how can I make you feel confident as a parent in different areas so that you can apply it to a two year old problem or an eight year old problem or a 17 year old problem. Like if you can feel confident, then you can adapt that to all the different scenarios and all the different ages.
Oh, wow, yeah. And you just inspired another thought in me saying that, because that confidence, no matter what age, it really comes from the ability to know you have an intuitive sense of that wisdom of what needs to be in that moment. But it’s the confidence that allows you to express it.
Yeah. And I think even confidence is knowing when we need extra help. Like knowing when I need to go look for blog advice, podcast advice, when I need to go, even like there were times that we saw a therapist for parenting help. So we were like, all right, here’s the deal, this is what’s going on. And when there was like a diagnosis of ADHD and we were feeling like, gosh, do we like pull back on this scenario? Are we pushing too hard here? Or can we keep pushing hard in this direction?
Those kinds of like, where’s the line? We went to a therapist and just said, “All right, here’s the deal.” And she’s like, “Nope, you can feel comfortable doing this. Here’s where you could ignore things.” And we were like, all right good. So we left there feeling like, all right, our confidence is back. We know we’ve got a plan, my husband and I together. So it is, I think being confident also means knowing where I can reach out to whether it’s a friend to cry or vent to, or a professional where you can get some advice, and friends can give advice too, other moms. That’s my expertise, I’m a doula and a parenting educator, but really my expertise is in being a mom and we all earn that. And we all develop that. So we were able to share that then with others as well in our mother’s circles.
Absolutely, absolutely. And this really ties beautifully into what we’re going to talk about after the break, because where do you discover that confidence within yourself asking for help, I just actually just did a video again on YouTube about asking for help. But that also takes confidence because sometimes we don’t ask for help because we don’t want to look like we’re weak or don’t know something, however, that’s actually not true at all.
Yeah, absolutely right.
So as I said, we’re going to go in for a break, but before we do, please just share where people can find your books and your information and you.
Thank you. So the best place would be my website, which is leahdecesare.com. And that has all the information and links there.
Beautiful. Beautiful. So stay with us, everyone. We’re going to come right back. We are going to continue the conversation on the keys to parenting with confidence.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Podcast: Play in new window
