Parenting, apparently

What if motherhood doesn’t diminish creativity, but gives it new urgency, meaning and material?Brooklyn painter Madeline Donahue joins Melissa and Esther to explore how becoming a mother helped her find her artistic voice in her mid-30s, and why the everyday realities of caregiving deserve to be treated as seriously as any other subject in art.Through Madeline’s vivid, playful paintings, they explore the contradictions of motherhood and creative work: missing your children while you work and missing your work when you’re with them; finding joy inside exhaustion; and trying to remain an artist, a parent and a whole person at the same time. They also discuss the invisible labor of family life, the pressure to entertain children constantly, and the difference between portraying motherhood from the outside and expressing what it actually feels like to live it.The conversation moves from art and ambition to parenting, screen time and family connection: when screens support family life, when they interrupt it, and how parents can make room for creativity and what matters without chasing impossible standards.Find Madeline's work at https://www.madelinedonahue.com/And follow her https://www.instagram.com/madelinedonahue/

What happens when adults stop playing, and what does that mean for parents? In this episode of Parenting, Apparently, Melissa chats with Katina Bajaj, a creative health scientist and co-founder of Daydreamers, a company helping adults bring creativity, play, and wonder back into their lives.They explore why so many grown-ups—especially parents—feel creatively unfulfilled, and how the pressure to be productive can crowd out play, curiosity, and imagination. Katina explains the difference between creativity and play, why adults may lose the fearlessness of childhood but not creativity, and research-backed nuggets like how the presence of flowers can reduce pain.Melissa and Katina also explore creativity in everyday life: seeing a chaotic morning through a more playful lens, taking an “awe walk,” doodling when you're overwhelmed, and letting yourself daydream instead of reaching for your phone. They discuss why frustration and experimentation are essential to creative growth, how parents can model creativity and joy for their kids, and why we need to resist optimizing every part of our lives—including with AI.If you've been feeling burned out, disconnected from your creativity, or like parenting has left little room for your own identity, this episode is a reminder that play, imagination, and wonder aren't things you outgrow—they’re actually essential to our wellbeing.Follow Katina @katina.bajaj and https://www.katinabajaj.com/Learn more about Daydreamers at https://daydreamers.co/

Before you have kids, you picture the parent you’ll be and the kid you’ll have. But what happens when kids grow into humans that don’t match the ones we daydreamed about while pregnant?In this episode of Parenting, apparently, Melissa and Esther talk about parenting expectations vs. reality—from food rules and bedtime routines to chores and surprising behaviour. They compare how their parenting standards changed between their first and second children, how much of our parenting style comes from our own parents, the habits we want to keep (or break), and the age-old question: are kids shaped by how we raise them, or do they arrive with their own personalities?Plus, they get into showing affection in front of your kids, the brutal ways kids push buttons (“you’re a stupid mom”), our responsibility to let go of our preconceived notions, and what kind of parents they hope to be when their kids become teenagers.If you’re navigating the gap between parenting expectations and the messy reality of raising kids, this one is for you!

This week it's just Melissa and Esther — no guest, just the two of them, picking up a thread left over from last week's conversation about ambition: what were they actually chasing when they started Pok Pok, and is it still what they want?Is founder guilt just parent guilt with a business attached to it? Can you really measure balance by the week instead of the day? And where's the line between setting a high bar for yourself as a leader and never actually clocking out?Melissa and Esther get honest about what the company costs them and what it gives back — including the guilt they carry toward each other, and whether each of them feels like she's holding up her half. They talk about protecting weekends, running a company split between Toronto and Belgium, missing soccer games, and the Dr. Becky "fill up your cup" trick for leaving your kids before a trip. It's a candid look at what founders don't say out loud, and why neither of them calls being one "golden handcuffs."

In this episode of "Parenting, apparently," Esther and Melissa sit down with Amil Niazi — whose viral essays and national bestselling memoir have made her one of today's most talked-about parenting thinkers. The conversation grows out of the premise behind Amil's book, Life After Ambition, and her column, The Hard Part, for The Cut: what role does parenting play in our relationship with ambition and selfhood?How much of who we are should be defined by our job, versus everything else that makes up a life? Is "balance" a myth, or does it just work better as seasons than as a pie chart? And what does "good enough" actually look like on an ordinary morning — first day of school included?Drawing on her own winding path — from producing at CBC and BBC, to bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post, to finally settling into writing on her own terms — Amil shares hard-won lessons on letting go of the millennial "do it all" script. She also opens up about a small but telling choice: she tells her three kids she writes, rather than that she is a writer. It's a distinction that gets at the heart of her conversation with Esther and Melissa, and it raises a bigger question for the rest of us: does how we talk about our own careers shape how our kids will frame theirs?Read Amil's work at the cut:https://www.thecut.com/tags/the-hard-part/And pick up a copy of her book Life After Ambition: A "Good Enough" Memoir:https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/750349/life-after-ambition-by-amil-niazi/9780771005213

Melissa and Esther welcome back pediatric occupational therapist Laura Petix (the pod’s first return guest!) who arrives with a new book: The Sensory Code, out October 6.They start where her book does, with the nervous system budget. Everyone wakes up with a certain amount in the tank, and every ordinary thing costs something. Socks might cost Laura a dollar and cost her sensory-sensitive daughter five, which is how a kid ends up at zero, or into the negative, by the end of a school day. Laura explains how parents can better navigate their day with small sensory strategies.Laura outlines the three senses nobody learned in school: vestibular, proprioception, and interoception, which she calls the missing link to emotional regulation. It's why a kid can be genuinely unable to notice they're hungry until they’re home from school.Then Melissa asks a question many parents wonder: at what point is supporting your kid actually coddling them? Laura's answer is surprising. It's a warm conversation about what's going on underneath the behaviour, and why knowing about it makes everyone in the house easier to live with.Get Laura's new book: https://theotbutterfly.com/thesensorycode/