Mothers with Self-Control

Amanda and Lisa discuss fashion and why it matters.

Complaining can be therapeutic, or a drag. It can be frustrating if no one’s listening to you, or it can be annoying if you’re the one being complained to unnecessarily. But sometimes what we dub “complaining” is necessary, like when it comes to giving constructive criticism or righting a wrong. It’s important to know when complaining is necessary or not, and how you can master the art of complaining gracefully. Dr. Amy Cooper Hakim is an author, public speaker, and psychologist. She is the executive consultant and founder of The Cooper Strategic Group, where she works with organizations to help employees get along better and improve morale. She is also the co-author of Working with Difficult People.

As parents, they say we’re not allowed to have a favorite child. We want each of our children to have the same opportunity for success, and to feel just as loved. But favoritism may come more naturally than we want to believe. And the question is: how does it affect our kids in the long run? Dr. Linda Weinberger and Dr. Shoba Sreenivasan join us from the University of Southern California to discuss this further.

Many parents turn to movie ratings to get a quick insight into the appropriateness of a movie for their kids. But the movie rating system in the United States is often criticized for not providing an accurate reflection of a movie’s content for parents. Our producer, Rod Gustafson, has a long professional history of reviewing movies from a parent’s perspective, so we figured he would be a great resource to discuss some of the pros and cons of movie ratings.