TPP 136: KJ Dell'Antonia on How to Be a Happier Parent
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
42 min
2 speakers
6 chapters
transcribed 1 day ago
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is KJ Dell'Antonia’s background and why did she write *How to Be a Happier Parent*?
Sometimes it can be really annoying to have people say, Well, you know, appreciate the positive things. Be grateful. And it and I that's really that's not what I'm saying. It's more just that our brains are really designed to focus on the negative stuff. So we don't need to give in to that. Like our brains want to like look for the tigers, right? That's that's our our natural makeup. It's what Has felt important throughout our lives and For us to Shift our mental mixtape to more of a positive one is difficult, but once you get it rolling, you know, it it becomes an earworm. It it repeats.
Welcome to Tilt Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. I'm your host, Debbie Rieber, and this week I'm talking with KJ Del Antonia, a mother of four, the former editor of the New York Times Mother Load column, and the author of the new book, How to Be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving Almost Every Minute. In our conversation, KJ shares what she learned about happiness while writing her book, tells us what she believes is getting in our way from finding happiness in the day-to-day, even when things are hard, and shares some strategies for building more happiness into our daily lives.
I hope you enjoy our conversation. Before I get to that, if you get value out of this podcast and the conversations like my one today with KJ and all the other thought leaders I have on this show, please consider signing up to support it. To make a small monthly contribution to help cover the cost of production, just sign up at patreon.com slash tiltparenting. You can also find the link on any of the show notes pages for the podcast over on the Tilt Parenting website. Thanks so much, and now here is my conversation with KJ. Hey KJ, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. Good, me too. I am excited to talk about How we can be happier parents, you're the perfect person to have this conversation.
And you know, just as a way of introducing you, would you mind just taking a few minutes and just tell us a little bit about your your backstory, who you are in the world, who you are as a parent, and we'll start with there and then I want to hear about why you wrote this book.
Okay. Um I am professionally the former editor of the Mother Load blog at the New York Times. For five years I was the lead writer and the editor and did all the basically if you saw it on the Mother Load blog or if you read it in the Times and it had to do with parenting. pretty well, if it's on the motherlove blog, it's definitely me. It was in the times and it had to do with parenting, there's a decent chance I had some kind of a hand in it, depending on what it was. And I was really focused on Parenting policy and culture and society and the ways that we uh deal with each other as parents, the ways that things are good, the ways that they are less than good. It was it was not a personal writing experience, but as an editor I was editing a lot of personal
Writing. So what was happening? Is that there's sort of Things just kind of crashed into each other. There's all this research going on while I I'm doing this that I'm responding to that's all about, you know, how parenting robs parents of all jo how having children robs parents of all joy. That's one of my favorite wasn't a Times headline. It's just like, oh geez. Um We we answered we were answering survey questions uh in ways that led researchers to write things like, you know, parents would would prefer doing laundry to being with their children. There was the book All Joy and No Fun, which was written by a friend of mine and You know, it's just this moment that I'm I'm watching and responding to professionally of
It it wasn't just the things that are obviously hard. I mean, yeah, we don't have family leave. Um, yeah, this country we talk a great game about supporting families. We don't do diddly. And so there's there's all of that out there.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is KJ Dell'Antonia’s background and why did she write *How to Be a Happier Parent*?
0:00–6:54
2
What research and cultural factors does KJ say are making parents feel unhappy?
6:54–13:11
3
How do everyday logistics (school schedules, sports, daycare) create hidden stress for families?
13:11–19:15
4
What are the biggest mental barriers that keep parents from feeling joy?
19:15–24:43
5
How can parents shift their brain’s “negative mixtape” to a more positive one?
24:43–37:28
6
What practical strategies does KJ recommend for managing screen time and technology?
37:28–42:18
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
TPP 266a: A Conversation with Poet and Advocate LeDerick Horne
TPP 522: A Whole Child Approach to ADHD with Phil Boucher, M.D.
TPP 091a: A Conversation With Steve Silberman About His Book “Neurotribes”
TPP 521: A Conversation with Dr. Peter Gray About Restoring Childhood
TPP 253a: Advocate and Author Jonathan Mooney on Why Normal Sucks
TPP 520: Dr. Özgür Bolat on Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids