Hi there, thanks for tuning in. I know that many of you are knee deep in the holiday season,

which is always a mix of excitement and stress. Every year I do a holiday Q&A episode

where I take questions from listeners. In this episode, definitely have some themes

that come out, including compromise, flexibility, and finding your why during the holiday season.

Hi, this is Dene. I'm the founder of Simple Families. Simple Families is an online community

for parents who are seeking a simpler, more intentional life. In this show, we focus on minimalism

with kids, positive parenting, family wellness, and decreasing the mental load. My perspectives

are based in my firsthand experience raising kids, but also rooted in my PhD in child development.

So you're going to hear conversations that are based in research, but more importantly,

real life. Thanks for joining us.

Hello, hello. Thank you for tuning in. Happy holidays. I look forward to doing this holiday Q&A

episode every year because I feel like it's a time when many, many listeners have questions.

And you didn't disappoint this year. I asked for questions and I got way more than I bargained for.

So I'm going to take as many as I can. This is the last episode for 2022. So I want to pause and

say, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. It's been a big year of change

for me. One of the biggest changes being that I have mostly phased out my presence on social media,

especially on Instagram and Facebook, not completely, but I would say probably by like 95%.

And it's been really peaceful. I started out 2022 with a New Year's episode, which was called

a Fire hose, which now looking back was a bit of a premonition about the year to come because I

started 2022 off feeling like there was a fire hose of information coming at me all the time.

And I started out the year reflecting on how I was contributing to that fire hose of information

that was inundating all of us. The parent education market is saturated with so many different voices.

...