Welcome to the Girl Next Door Podcast. I'm Kelsey. And I'm Erica. In every episode, we bring our

different perspectives to honest, funny conversations that feel like chatting with good friends.

We started this show years ago when we were next door neighbors and still haven't run out of

things to talk and laugh about yet. Today we have the

second episode in our two-part family culture series. Last week, we talked about creating family

culture through quality time. That's the fun side of family culture, at least often. Today, we're

talking about maybe the less fun side, dealing with hard stuff.

There are challenges at every family from marital disagreements to challenging kid behavior.

Plus, we'll talk about finding comfort within our families when the world feels heavy.

We thought that looking at these things as how you handle them in your family culture could be helpful and interesting.

So let's dive in.

Okay.

Let's start with what sounds like a basic question, but it's an important one.

How do you even recognize that you have some kind of a challenge within your family that should be addressed?

Like, how do you separate that from just the everyday hard work of raising kids? And what

systems or structures do you have to address those challenges? I love this question. I can find this

particularly hard. I think when things just feel hard in general because of a developmental

stage that your kids are at or, you know,

external circumstances like job stress or lack of sleep or whatever it might be,

it's very hard to differentiate between a totally normal, hard developmental stage and like

a red flag, right?

Some sort of problem that needs to be addressed.

...