How Do We Talk About What's Happening in Minnesota? (with Erin Cox)

What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood | Parenting Tips From Funny Moms

What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood

Kids & Family, Comedy, Parenting

4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2026

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We welcome back family counselor Erin Cox to talk about how we talk about the immigration raids and ICE detentions taking place in the United States, the children who are being detained, and the fear all children are absorbing from the news, social media, and their communities. We discuss what’s happening on the ground in places like Minnesota, Texas, and Portland; why it's making so many of us feel frightened and disoriented; and what we can do as parents whose children are directly impacted—and for those kids who are learning about it online. We discuss how children communicate distress through behavior and play and why empathy and emotional vocabulary are essential tools we can teach our children. Erin explains the importance of co-regulation—how children borrow calm from the adults in their lives—and shares ways parents can care for their own nervous systems so they can show up as a steady presence. While fear may be the point of these tactics, connection, community, and resilience are how we can respond. Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode: Follow Erin on IG @loveuwitherin Corina Knoll for The New York Times: A Winter of Anguish for Minneapolis Children A.O. Scott for The New York Times: In Under 500 Words, a Judge Weaponized Wit to Free the Child Detained by ICE Hennepin County Sheriff Dewanna Witt talks to CBS News' Nicole Sganga about the situation in Minnesota Elora Mukherjee for The New York Times: Liam Ramos Was Just One of Hundreds of Children at This Detention Center. Release Them All. Sahara Sajjadi for Copper Courier: Three-year-old child forced to serve as her own attorney in Tucson immigration court Camilo Montoya-Galvez for CBS News: ICE halts "all movement" at Texas detention facility due to measles infections CBS News: Columbia Heights schools, where 5-year-old Liam Ramos attends, closed Monday due to bomb threat David Martin Davies for Texas Public Radio: Reps. Castro and Crockett Describe Conditions at ICE Dilley Detention Center Laura Kelly Fanucci for America: The Jesuit Review: I’m a Minnesota Catholic Mom — Here’s What My Neighbors Are Saying About ICE The Marshall Project: ‘Why Is This Happening to Us?’ Daily Number of Kids in ICE Detention Jumps 6x Under Trump Lily Hay Newman et. al for WIRED: What to Do If ICE Invades Your Neighborhood Ken Burns documentary The American Revolution James Baraz and Shoshana Alexander: AWAKENING JOY What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/⁠ mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent, parenting in crisis, talking to kids about ICE, immigration fear children, kids and anxiety, family separation, safety planning for kids, co-regulation, empathy for children, trauma-informed parenting, kids and current events, emotional regulation parents, helping anxious kids, resilience in families, parenting during political stress, how to talk to kids about scary news Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs.
0:04.8	Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand.
0:12.4	Marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time.
0:17.4	From startups to scaleups, online, in person, and on the go. Shopify is made for
0:22.8	entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup.
0:31.9	Hello everyone and welcome to what fresh hell laughing in the face of motherhood. This is Margaret.
0:36.7	And this is Amy. This week we are back with family counselor Aaron Cox. Aaron, thanks for being back with us today. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
0:45.1	Today we're going to talk about how we as parents should react and help our kids understand what's happening in Minnesota and in Portland and other places across the United States where ICE has really stepped up their detainment.
1:00.4	This was requested by Deirdre on Instagram.
1:03.1	She said, please do an episode on how to talk to our kids about all of this.
1:06.9	I am in Minnesota with nine and 13-year-olds.
1:10.1	Trying to be a present parent with all of this
1:12.3	feels impossible and scary. And I think the three of us can certainly identify with that.
1:17.9	It's hard to know what to say, and yet it feels like this is what we're all thinking about.
1:22.0	So time to talk about it. Amy and I are located in New York. The issue of ICE has not been as omnipresent as it has been in
1:29.6	Minnesota, but this is all over our kids. I have teenagers on their TikTok feeds, on their
1:37.1	Instagram feeds. So for kids who you're like, well, I don't want to introduce this topic,
1:42.1	or I don't want to talk about it because it's not affecting us and our community.
1:46.4	I would advise that your kids are probably hearing about this. We used to joke about Amy, who used to sit on the fire escape behind her school, explaining the birds and the bees to her fellow classmates.
1:59.3	Yeah, I was the 11-year-old sex counselor for my peers.
2:02.0	Yeah.
2:02.4	Really reliable resource.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.