Cloudy with a Risk of Children

Frazzled: The Risk of Sleeping

Sleep is as natural to the human condition as breathing — and just as critical.  Without it, we wouldn’t survive. Despite that, sleep often doesn’t always come naturally, especially as we get older. But one would thing it should come naturally when we’re young.  And it does, of course.   But dealing with the seemingly random and choppy sleeping patterns of newborns can drive parents to distraction, not to mention the ups and downs of raising small children who won’t sleep when you want them to, and the challenges of nightmares and night terrors and the rest.   And if our kids don’t sleep, well, then neither do we.  As if parenting isn’t tough enough already, exhaustion triggered by lack of sleep chips away at our health, shortens our fuses, and can harm our relationships with our spouses. So it’s a big issue for parents; and joining us to talk about that today is Kida Stevens.  Kida is a pediatric emergency nurse at Alberta Children’s hospital, a wondrously talented nurse who I’ve had the privilege of working alongside for fifteen years. She’s also a parent of two kids — ages three and six — and she’s leveraged her experience as a mom and pediatric nurse to share her expertise in kids’ sleep issues with parents.  She runs a sleep coaching business for paents called RestfulNights Sleep — restfulnightssleep.com As always, thank you for listening.

Picky, picky: The Risk of Eating

Raising children to be healthy eaters is a major focus for parents.  One of the most common questions pediatricians field from parents is "What can I do about my child's picky eating?" In this episode we interview Anne Blocker, a dietician and the Executive Director of the Ellyn Satter Institute (https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/ [https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/]), an organization dedicated to fostering healthy attitudes and strategies around eating. Join us as we discuss how to properly frame the eating experience for kids, and how to erase the worries parents may have around raising well-nourished children.

Emma: The Risk of Loss

Losing a child is every parent's worst nightmare.  On today's show we tackle that topic head on as we interview a mom, Cheryl, who lost her little daughter Emma to cancer. Cheryl shares Emma's — and her family's — journey through her illness.  She shares the shock of diagnosis; the details of Emma's medical journey and her passing; what little Emma was like; how her family survived her departure; and the deep impact Emma had — and continues to have — on their lives. It's a profound conversation, packed with life lessons for the rest of us.

Battered and Beaten: The Risk of Bullying

Lisa Dixon-Wells is a former champion swimmer and Founder of Dare to Care, Canada's leading anti-bullying organization. Bullying is as old as the human race itself.  Social media, however, has amplified this age-old scourge beyond anything we've ever witnessed — especially for our youth.   With Lisa's help, we explore the definition and roots of bullying; the impact of social media; bullying in schools and in sports; and most importantly, strategies like the "Three Door Challenge" that parents and kids can use for protection and for prevention.

Empty: The Risk of NO Kids

Imagine a world without kids – or at least one with far fewer of them. Darrell Bricker, co-author of Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline, joins the podcast to discuss the profound demographic shift sweeping the globe — a seismic change that will leave us with a much greyer world populated by significantly less children. Fifty years ago, 3.5 billion humans populated the planet; and there was enormous concern that people were on the edge of outstripping the ability of the planet to support them all.  Paul Erhlich, who authored The Population Bomb in 1968 and who more than anyone else fanned the flames of hysteria around imminent mass starvation, campaigned tirelessly for “Zero Population Growth” policies to minimize human suffering. Ehrlich and his disciples were spectacularly wrong, of course: human populations instead exploded, to north of eight billion people today — and rates of famine and starvation have never been lower. But will the world’s population continue to skyrocket? Are we headed to 10 billion? 20 billion? 50 billion? The answer is a resounding “No”.  We’re closing in rapidly on “Zero Population Growth”, and then we’ll experience rapid population decline — not because of Ehrlich-style policy prescriptions, but because people all over the world over have decided to cut back on having kids (or simply to have no kids at all) even as humans live far longer than ever before. Without doubt, children born today will inhabit a world far different from any that we’ve experienced before.  What will that mean for their lives and their prospects?  How can a shrunken cohort of young people be expected to support a huge population of old people?  What are the implications for human innovation, ingenuity, and flourishing?  Join us as Darrell offers his insights on these issues and more.