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Ten Percent Happier


Being a parent is really freakin’ hard. Of course, it can also be incredibly rewarding and delightful. Either way, it consumes us. Childproof is a show about us, the parents, and how we can raise kids without losing track of ourselves in the process. Each episode host Yasmeen Khan, a journalist and mom, brings us conversations and stories with fellow parents and experts on how to navigate this whole parenting thing — especially the shifts that happen within ourselves. Because parents are growing too.




Editor's Notes:

"Childproof is a show about the parent experience with a nod towards the idea that parents are also growing just like kids are growing," host Yasmeen Khan tells Apple Podcasts. "It's the show for parents seeking growth, and I'm one of those people." The North Carolina-born and now Brooklyn-based host, journalist--and most importantly, mom--Khan brings you the bi-weekly show Childproof about parenting for parents.

Khan's past life as a reporter and journalist for WNYC Radio covering New York City schools and policing paved the way for her passion for covering families--especially issues and anxieties that the pandemic brought to the surface. "People are so deeply affected by these events. Family structures are, and parents are," Khan says. "I bring a lot of that sort of background with me and I have brought some characters, actually, from my time reporting into the show also." 

The self-proclaimed "audio evangelist" covers a range of topics on parenting through the lens of other parents sharing their stories. "If we're going to feature someone's story, I want to hear somebody wrestling with something," Khan says. "What are parents grappling with? What's the interior experience of a parent? I hope in that sense, honestly, the show could be for anybody, any grown-up, if they have kids or not, but because sometimes the issues we're grappling with aren't specifically related to our kids, all the things that we're dealing with as people."

Anything goes, and each episode aims to have a takeaway in the form of a lesson learned or some evidence of personal growth. But getting to hear parents share their own concerns is cathartic in its own right. "Nothing should feel like it's too precious or performative or anything like that, but if you feel like someone is really opening up in a conversation, and you can sense that they're just being real with me and the audience, that's compelling," she says. "That's really where the power of audio comes in because audio stories and listening to someone tell their own story is so intimate. I think it's the most powerful way to tell the story."

And as a mom to two girls herself, she knows a thing or two about being a parent. "My kids fill my tank in a way that I need, that I can't get anywhere else," she says. "And the thing I love about being a parent is that my life is filled--this is going to sound so cheesy--but my life is filled with so much love. I don't feel like I deserve it all the time, but it's just nothing but love. And that just gives the house a lot of good energy, you know? And I like that.”


Childproof

Melissa Gould lost her husband Joel nearly nine years ago when their daughter, Sophie, was 13 years old. The mother and daughter processed the loss in their very own, very distinct ways: Sophie grieved mostly in silence as a young teen, not wanting to attract pity or stand out from her peers. Melissa grieved loudly – and then publicly, when her memoir, Widowish, came out last year. We talk to both Melissa and Sophie about how complicated it can be when grief takes different shapes in the family, and how their mother-daughter relationship is evolving into one between two adults.

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15: Growing Together in Grief

In this episode we celebrate the caregivers and chosen family members who bring so much into our lives. Yasmeen talks to sisters adrienne maree brown and autumn brown, hosts of the podcast How To Survive The End of the World. As writers, facilitators, activists (and queer aunties), they know a lot about nurturing community. They discuss the growth of their relationship as parent/auntie, the radical possibilities of ‘auntiehood’, and the real work of nurturing chosen family. 

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14: 'Auntie' Is A Verb

When the kids are away, how do parents play? Sure, we all have interests we can tick off and activities we like doing as grown-ups. But when that rare chunk of free time comes along, what’s going to serve you well in that moment? In this episode, Yasmeen explores how we can all figure out what we really want to do when we have time to ourselves – along with how we can find moments of personal freedom while parenting. We reach out to two “experts” on the matter: Yasmeen’s mom, who took up a long list of various activities over her years of raising kids, and Sara Shapouri, a mindfulness teacher who occasionally moonlights as an animal-costume-wearing musician.

Try a meditation for parents from Sara Shapouri in the Ten Percent Happier app. In this meditation, Sara helps you settle your nervous system and then ask: what do I need right now?

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13: Hobbies and Hiding in the Bathroom: How Parents Spend Their Free Time

Erin is a mother of three teenagers. As her oldest prepares to leave home, she wonders how she can go about strengthening their strained relationship. She wrote to Childproof for advice and we enlisted the help of veteran meditation teacher James Baraz, who has personal experience healing his own relationship with an adult child.

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12: A Listener Asks: I’ve Changed As a Parent. What Do I Do About the Past?

Being a parent means dealing with a wild range of emotions all the time, both our own and those of our children. Sometimes we may feel rage, sometimes total elation. How are we supposed to make sense of that? Today we’re sharing the first two episodes of a new show at Ten Percent Happier called More Than a Feeling. It dives into the confusing, exhilarating, and messy world of human emotions — and how to make sense of them.

In More Than A Feeling’s first episode, we hear host Saleem Reshamwala grapple with defining emotions in the first place (we don’t always have the best language for this). Then, in an episode called “Get Me Out Of Here,” producer Mark Pagán goes deep on one emotion: fear. Specifically, his own fear of riding the New York City subway. We follow along for the (actual) ride.

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11: More Than A Feeling

Tom Sheppard didn’t grow up with his parents, but he spent his life trying to learn more about them. When Tom was just 3 years old, his father killed his mother. That part he knew. But he never got the full story on why and how it all happened. What’s more, he knew that the relatives who were lovingly raising him were withholding information about the incident. They weren’t lying to him, but he never got the whole truth either. Until a handful of years ago. 

In this episode, Tom tells us about the secret his family kept. And how his yearning to uncover the details over the years helped define who he is as a father.

As a heads up, this episode contains depictions of violence.

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10: The Family Secret That Keeps Me Honest With My Children

We know interrupted sleep comes with the job of raising kids, especially at the beginning. Night and day bleed into each other and, before long, we’re in a nonstop loop of pacing, rocking, changing, feeding and wondering: will I ever sleep again? 

In this episode we check in with a few under-slept parents about how a prolonged lack of rest has affected their lives and, in some cases, sense of self. We also talk with Dr. Lauren Whitehurst, a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in sleep, about how to be patient with our bodies and brains when we’re sleep-deprived.

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9: Will I Ever Sleep Again?

Having a job and having a child isn’t just a balancing act of two different roles. It’s a whole new identity to figure out — you are a working parent. But if you spend your efforts being devoted to work, and then devoted to kids, where does that leave… you know… you? How do you toggle between these different tasks and mindsets, draw firm boundaries between your work and home life, and still take time to check in with yourself? 

In this episode we’re sharing an adaptation of an article we did for the new parents issue of Romper, the online parenting magazine, focusing on mothers navigating the transition back to work after parental leave.

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8: Learning How To Be A Working Parent – And Not Just A Parent, Who Also Works

When you think back to your own middle school experience: do you cringe? In her latest creative project, author and podcaster Hillary Frank goes deep into the discomforts of middle school. Her audio drama, Here Lies Me, centers on an eighth grade girl confronting issues of harassment, bullying, all-around awkwardness, and the loss of her childhood. Hillary first conceived of the story some 15 years ago, long before she was a parent herself. But she only brought it to life as a fiction podcast last year – coincidentally at the same time that her own daughter entered middle school. We talk with Hillary about how she immersed herself in what truly goes down in the eighth grade, and how that has – and has not – prepared her for this stage of parenting. 

You can find Here Lies Me wherever you get your podcasts—and check out their website: hereliesme.com

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7: ‘Welcome To Eighth Grade, People’

Aubrey, a mother of three children with cognitive differences, has a habit of lying in bed at night and ruminating over the mistakes she feels that she’d made throughout the day. “Especially when you become a parent, your flaws take center stage,” she says. Although she’s been working on strategies to take better care of herself, she’s searching for a way to be kinder to herself when the chaos of her busy days feels like it’s too much. For an episode of Twenty Percent Happier that we’re sharing, Aubrey meets with Matthew Hepburn, a meditation teacher, to learn how to replace her nightly routine with a new practice: one that can help her ease up on herself when she feels like she’s falling short.

You can find more episodes of Twenty Percent Happier exclusively in the Ten Percent Happier app. https://www.tenpercent.com/twenty

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12: A Listener Asks: I’ve Changed As a Parent. What Do I Do About the Past?

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