everymum

Welcome back to Everymum the podcast with me, Aisling Keenan. Today I’m joined by Emma O’Leary, a paediatric speech and language therapist, mum of three boys and the woman behind the hugely popular parenting platform Life With Tiny Humans. Emma has been sharing the realities of family life online for years, combining her professional experience with the much less polished reality of raising children. And, as she puts it, trying to keep the chaos at bay. Emma’s boys are now 11, 9 and 7, so she’s right in the thick of that particularly interesting stage of parenting where your children are becoming increasingly independent, but still very much need you. In this conversation, we talk a lot about life online and what it means to raise children in a world where screens are simply part of everyday life. We talk about screen time, the repercussions of too much of it, how you actually go about limiting it without losing your mind, and the alternatives that can help children switch off and engage with other things. We also get into the other side of being online as a mother - the comparison, the pressure, the feeling that everyone else is somehow doing it better, and the negativity that can come with putting your family and your parenting out there. But Emma also talks about the other side of that coin: the incredible support, connection and sense of community that can come from finding other parents who understand exactly what you're going through. We talk about what motherhood has taught both of us, how your children can be completely different people who require completely different parenting, and how much of parenting is actually about figuring out what works for this particular child, rather than following some universal rule. So whether you have tiny humans, slightly bigger humans, or are simply trying to work out how on earth everyone else seems to be managing it, you'll definitely take something from my chat with Emma. I'll be back next week with another great episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to Everymum the podcast, I'm your host Aisling Keenan. My guest this week is Sarah Maria Griffin, a successful novelist whose work explores identity, family, fear and the complicated business of being human. She’s the author of Eat the Ones You Love, and her latest release, Strange is the Light. In this episode, I wanted to help you get to know the person behind the books, and particularly Sarah’s experience of becoming a mother for the first time. We talked about her childhood, what she was like growing up, and the route she took into becoming a writer. But most of our conversation centred on pregnancy, labour and those first moments of motherhood. Sarah talks very openly about what pregnancy was actually like for her, what she remembers about giving birth, and the things that surprised her about becoming a mother. We talk about the physical experience of delivering her little girl, the reality of those first few days, and how different the reality of having a baby can be from what you imagine beforehand. It’s a really honest conversation about becoming a mother for the first time. Not just the lovely bits, but the uncertainty, the physicality and the sheer strangeness of suddenly becoming responsible for another person. This is my conversation with Sarah Maria Griffin. I'll be back next week with more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi everyone and welcome back to Everymum the podcast, I'm Aisling Keenan. My guest this week is Bronagh Starrs. Bronagh is a psychotherapist, expert in contemporary adolescent mental health. She’s also an author and she has spent decades working with young people and their families. Her new book, I Can’t Go In, is about something that an increasing number of parents are finding themselves dealing with: school anxiety, and what happens when a child becomes so anxious that they simply cannot get through the school gates. So I wanted to talk to Bronagh about what school anxiety actually looks like, how you can tell the difference between a child who doesn’t want to go to school and a child who genuinely can’t face it, and why some of the things we instinctively do as parents: reassuring them, encouraging them, bargaining with them or putting pressure on them, which don’t necessarily help. We talked about what parents should do when the school run becomes a daily battle, the role schools can play, why some children are particularly vulnerable to school anxiety, and whether things like neurodiversity and parenting styles can play a part. And, importantly, we talked about what schools can do to help. Because understanding that your child is anxious is one thing, knowing how to help them through it is another. This is my conversation with Bronagh Starrs – enjoy and I'll be back next week with more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to Everymum the podcast, with me Aisling Keenan. What happens to a woman when the physical body, social identity and daily life she knew are all suddenly altered? That’s what my guest this week and I discuss – Nicole Gaffney Hahesy, or Cole Gaffney as you might know her online, is an influencer and mother to a 7-month-old girl named Éala. We talk about her placenta previa, her tricky birth, Éala’s stay in the NICU, and the fact that Éala still doesn’t care much for sleeping. We talk about CMPA (Cow’s milk protein allergy), reflex and colic and how Nicole faced all three in the early days of Éala’s little life.

Nicole has built an online presence around motherhood, style and everyday life, so I wanted to talk to her about the stuff underneath the nice pictures: postpartum body image, getting dressed when your body has changed, figuring out who you are when your priorities have completely shifted and the reality of trying to feel like yourself again when you're also becoming somebody completely new. Because I think there’s a huge pressure on women to be grateful for motherhood every second of the day, while simultaneously looking like they’ve somehow emerged from it completely unscathed which we ALL know is not the case. Enjoy this episode with Nicole, and I’ll be back next week with more.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi everyone, welcome back to Everymum the podcast, I'm your host Aisling Keenan. As many co-parents will know, separation is rarely the end of a relationship. For parents, it's often the beginning of a totally new one where you're navigating school runs, birthdays, holidays, doctor's appointments and all the everyday logistics of raising children with someone you're no longer sharing a life with.

And while we hear so much about the emotional impact of separation, we don't often talk about the practical reality of communicating well when emotions are running high. For many families, those day-to-day interactions can become one of the biggest challenges of co-parenting. A simple text can be misread, conversations can quickly escalate, and children can end up caught in the middle of misunderstandings that were never meant for them. Finding ways to reduce conflict and keep communication focused on what matters most can make an enormous difference, not just for parents, but for their children too.

Noel Crabbe, a father to four daughters, is my guest today and he set out to tackle exactly that problem by creating an app designed to help separated parents communicate more clearly, more calmly and, ultimately, more effectively. We'll talk about what inspired the idea, what he's learned from working with families navigating separation and how technology can play a role in helping parents work together. Whether you're co-parenting yourself, know someone who is, work with families, or are simply interested in how technology is being used to solve real life problems, I think you'll find plenty to take away from this conversation.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.