Hey, y'all, welcome back to the Don't Mom Alone podcast.

I'm your host, Heather McFadion, and this is the place where I get to walk alongside you

and connect you with people and resources so you know that you don't mom alone.

And in this episode number 496, I'm welcoming back to the show,

my friend Courtney Defeo. And I remember my friend Joy had this adorable little boy. And she was

just kind of watching Ella and was like, so did she just do that? Like, does she just eat the

Cheerios? Like, she just sits there and eats the Cheerios. And then she puts them in her mouth and then they would call her for like 30 minutes while

we were talking. And she's like, I thought I was a bad mom. And I'm realizing like they're

just wired differently. Courtney is the host of the Pardon the Mess podcast. She's a mom

of two girls and she's been a longtime friend of mine. And as I have

four boys, it's been helpful for us to share each other's experiences and perspectives and to

walk through the differences together. And so one goal in this conversation is to model that for

you, that maybe you can have similar conversations with your friends.

Where have you been making assumptions about the other gender? Where have you felt shame or guilt

about how your kids are behaving? And how do we recognize what's normal and what's not normal

and that broad spectrum of what it is to be a girl and what it is to be a boy and our own

unique experiences? And so if you

don't fit into anything we described, that's fantastic. We hope you're just having conversations

with people not getting locked into this what is wrong with me that this is hard idea or what I

bring up if a child acts away in public. How do I manage that in my own heart and mind

and stay connected to my kid? At the end of the episode, we are both sharing some gift ideas

for this holiday season. We've linked to some in the show notes. My Amazon shop has some links.

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