The longtime blogger behind Design Mom, Blair is also a mother of 6. In this episode, she shares with Sarah her perspective on worrying less, especially as kids grow up and make their own choices.

Then in the Q&A, we tackle a question from a listener who wonders if it’s true that you need to develop a child’s soccer talents as a toddler in order for the kid to play in high school. Do we wish we’d pushed kids more in activities?

Please give the episode a listen! As always, we welcome ratings and reviews. We also welcome folks to our Patreon community, where we discuss these topics in our very fun forum. Our next Zoom meet-up will be 11/26, when we’ll discuss all things holidays, and then we’ll have our annual goal-setting workshop in December. Membership is $9/month.

In the Q&A, a listener writes in wondering when kid birthday parties switch from being family-centered to friend-based, and whether there’s a way to combine the two.

Please give the episode a listen! And please consider joining the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community. In addition to an active discussion forum (3-4 topics per week), we have monthly online gatherings where we discuss work/life related topics. On November 28th we’ll be gathering (via Zoom) to discuss our next book club selection, Virginia Sole-Smith’s Fat Talk.

Then on December 12th Sarah will lead our annual goal-setting workshop, during which she’ll guide us through various exercises to plan the upcoming year. This workshop is always a huge hit. As one community member told Sarah, “The goal setting Patreon you did last year was AWESOME and I think I have had a great year partially because of spending an hour with you and Laura on that call.”

Membership is $9/month. Hope to see you there!

But how much time “should” parents spend with their kids? There’s no good answer, but this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds was inspired by a letter Sarah and I received from a listener who had tracked her children’s time. She found that her two little ones spent slightly more waking hours per week at day care than with her (though, I should note, this was during a week with no sick days, and kids in daycare get sick a lot). Her partner helpfully asked if the daycare teachers were their children’s “real” family. She had been thinking of adding a little outside of work childcare (the hypothetical we used is that she wanted to play in a Tuesday night pickleball league) but now she was teetering into Mom Guilt about this topic.

We had a lot to say about this…and we said it twice, because we first recorded this episode together in Boston, and then found the track was blank. Sigh. So we re-recorded. Anyway, please give the episode a listen, and let us know what you think! As always, we welcome ratings and reviews.

In the meantime, if you’d like to discuss childcare with Sarah and me in a Zoom format, please consider joining the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community! We host monthly online discussions, and our discussion board features three or so topics a week that community members weigh in on. Our next Zoom gathering is this Thursday (10/12) at noon, eastern, where we’ll be talking about different childcare options and what works for different situations. Membership is $9/month.

Working parents (particularly women) are one such group, and a number of Best of Both Worlds listeners have found the resources and networking provided by such groups to be helpful. In this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, I interview two ERG experts: Sarah Johal of the Parents in Tech Alliance, and Lori Mihalich-Levin of the Working Parent Group Network and Mindful Return. Both offer advice for those who might be interested in leading, participating in, or even starting such groups in their workplaces. ERGs can be done well or less well, and can be more or less effective, so there are lots of practical tips for those looking to land on the “effective” side of the ledger.

In the Q&A we talk about a hot topic for this time of year: school lunch bags and containers. Please give the episode a listen!

Back in the early 1990s, widely sharing a photo of someone doing something stupid would have required so many steps (have a camera with you; get the film developed; figure out a way to share it with more than friends and family) that most people would have thought better of it somewhere along the way.

But kids today are growing up in public. Anything you do can be documented and shared widely.

As part of our screen series at Best of Both Worlds, I interviewed Devorah Heitner for this week’s episode on kids and technology. Devorah is the author of Screenwise, which is available now, and the new book, Growing Up in Public, which you should immediately pre-order for fall (we will also remind people about the book and mention it again when it is out!)

Devorah shares how to communicate with the young people in your life about the perils and promises of technology. She talks about the importance of putting the relationship first, and how to handle situations when something goes awry. It is a fascinating topic, and I encourage anyone who’s parenting tweens and teens to give this episode a listen.

In the Q&A we give advice on getting more sleep to a listener who has a poorly-sleeping toddler and another baby on the way. Yep, things are going to be rough, but we have some ideas to make the situation better!

What policies do we set in our households and why? How does this change as kids get older? What has surprised us? (Kid group texts are a topic I hadn’t quite anticipated — they can be thornier than the internet or social media!) Sarah talks about how her family’s screen-free month went, and we talk about some positive aspects for kids of the digital world.

Please give the episode a listen! And stay tuned for the next two parts of the series as well. As always, we welcome ratings and reviews.

For any Frugal Girl readers, I was today’s Meet the Reader post. I talk about the “why” behind saving money (freedom + security) and the wisdom of keeping base expenses low if possible. I take issue with how frugality literature often doesn’t question the decision to be a one-income family and why women need to protect their earning capacity.

Anyway, please check out the interview! In the meantime, I took my 2-year-old to the Please Touch Museum this morning. We have a membership, and they open only to members on Mondays, so it wasn’t too crowded. We had a good time but he definitely wanted to stop at the cafe, which is always a flash point for (frugal) me. My default answer on buying food out is no. I don’t want to start the habit, we bring snacks, we also have food at home…

But he was really excited about it and pointed at a popsicle in the cafe which turned out to be 90 cents. Really! Is anything under a dollar anymore? He ate every little bite and loved it and was so happy about it.

So, I guess it’s good to spend 90 cents for fun. Now let’s hope he stays asleep until camp pick up…

I love being in my own space. I sleep best in my own bed! But traveling is definitely still a priority for me. That’s true even though traveling with kids, particularly little ones, is not easy. Years ago, when I had three kids ages 4 and under, I told myself it was OK if I wasn’t traveling all that much because they would all be out of the house by the time I was 50. I could spend my 50s traveling like a young person, only I wouldn’t have to stay in hostels!

Then, of course, I proceeded to have two more babies, pushing that everyone-out-of-the-house moment close to 60. My husband will be 70! So yes, we’re beholden to the school schedule for a while. And while we both travel for work and have traveled some together, most likely a lot of our trips will involve young people. But while travel with kids may not be easy, it’s still doable. I realized that I don’t need to wait until they’re gone, nor do I particularly want to, since my oldest kids shouldn’t miss out on experiences just because they have a baby brother. And so I’ve been devising some ambitious travel plans for the next few years. Possibly Europe, Hawaii, another national park or two…

Alas, so has everyone else in this summer of “revenge travel.” Some of the places I’m looking for 2023 travel are already starting to book up! I’m a fan of planning ahead, but I’m not sure I like that everyone else is planning ahead if they have the same travel desires as me…

Anyway, I’m reminded of a quote from the first year of Best of Both Worlds, when travel expert Henley Vazquez talked about adventurous family travel. I asked if there was a way to make traveling with toddlers more pleasant and she basically said “I wish there was!” And yet she’s traveled with kids over and over again. The point is that it is going to be rough at times but it is worth it to see the world, and have your kids see the world.

To be sure, they won’t necessarily remember the world if they’re really little, which is one reason I have traveled with just the big kids to Paris, Yellowstone in the fall (and Disney! Which is honestly best for big kids, whatever impression people might have). But as my little guy crosses three this winter he might start to remember these adventures. And given that my oldest three will indeed all be gone by the time I’m 50, we don’t actually have that much more time to enjoy adventures with them. And hey, my husband has racked up a lot of frequent flyer miles that need to get used at some point…

What’s on your family travel bucket list?

In the not-travel category: We’ve been having fun watching the fireflies in our new yard. For some reason they seem far more numerous here than in the old yard!

I finally bought a new MacBook Pro. This one I’m typing on now made it six years, which I think is reasonable for heavy daily use. I wrote several books on this laptop — Off the Clock, Juliet’s School of Possibilities, Tranquility by Tuesday. I’m curious what I’ll write on the next one! I put this off for a long time. I’m cheap and I have a strong tendency to just make do. But a few of my frequent-use programs could no longer update on my current Mac and my machine didn’t have the capacity for upgrading to the current Mac operating systems (I mean, maybe with a lot of add-on memory? But that seems really inefficient). The good news is that since I bought a new machine this time BEFORE my current one died I will be able to slowly make the transition.

I have been making progress on another Summer Fun List item: morning runs. During much of the year my during-the-week runs happen in early-to-mid afternoon. In winter it’s warmer then. I tend to need a break, and we have childcare. Morning seems cold or dark and if we have to be moving at 6:30 a.m., it’s harder to get out and do anything. But! Summer changes all that. The camp schedule doesn’t require anyone to be up until 7:45 or so, and we’re definitely up by then anyway. On the days my husband is around I can set the alarm for 6:40, run from 6:55-7:35 or so. It’s a nice way to start the day. I don’t do it every day by any means, but I have been doing two weekdays per week and I’d like to get to three. Though my eldest has decreed that when he gets home from camp he wants to start running with me three times a week and he is not going to want to do it in the morning. So maybe I will be both a morning and an evening runner. We shall see…

I have two Medium columns up since the last time I posted about them. One is “Jealous of your kids’ camps? Make your own this summer” and then yesterday I posted “The best way to kick your screen time habit.”

Friend-of-the-blog Lori Mihalich-Levin, who was a guest on Best of Both Worlds a few years ago, recently released two new guided meditations that are designed to be used while pumping: short version and long version. If that sounds like you, please check them out!