Is Your Kid an Asshole or Just a Kid? With Melinda Wenner Moyer

Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

Jo Piazza, Influence Inc.

Society & Culture, Parenting, Kids & Family, Personal Journals, Technology

4.3 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ever feel like gentle parenting only works for gentle children—and yours were born throwing punches? Same. That’s why this week, I sat down with science journalist and parenting sanity-saver ⁠Melinda Wenner Moyer⁠, author of ⁠How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes⁠ and the new book ⁠Hello, Cruel World: How to Parent with Hope in an Era of Anxiety and Doom⁠. We’re diving deep into the hard stuff: screen time panic, why discipline doesn’t mean dictatorship, and how to build actual resilience (hint: let your kid be bored). Melinda brings research, realism, and a refreshing amount of empathy to the parenting chaos. We also unpack why most parenting influencers should probably be legally required to disclose their lack of qualifications—and why your 8-year-old flipping you off at school pickup doesn’t mean you’ve failed. ⁠Subscribe to Melinda's substack here⁠. ⁠Join our newsletter community here⁠. ⁠Pre-order EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here⁠. ⁠Visit our lovely sponsors here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:12.1	Have you ever found yourself scrolling past a perfectly lit Instagram reel of a mom who's gently correcting her tantruming toddler using a soothing tone and all of her gentle parenting words. And when you look at that,
1:19.8	do you feel a twinge of guilt and shame for a moment and then snap back to reality and think,
1:26.2	you know, it takes gentle kids to be a gentle parent.
1:30.6	And my kids, they're not gentle people. They're not. I mean, look, I genuinely believe that 90%
1:39.5	of parenting influencers are the worst thing to happen to parents in about 20 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm just
1:45.8	going to say it. And that's why I want to talk to an actual science journalist and a woman that I call
1:50.4	a parenting sanity saver, Melinda Wenner Moyer. Melinda is the author of the bestselling book
1:57.1	How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Asholes, and her brand new book, Hello, Cruel World,
2:01.4	How to Parent with Hope in an Era of Anxiety and Doom, is coming out next week. In both,
2:08.0	she applies real science and actual nuance to the minefield that is modern parenting in the digital
	...

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