Episode 058: Co-parenting with Brandon Hays

Welcome Brandon!

Brandon Hays is a dad and engineering leader based in Austin, TX. His professional mission is to help the tech industry improve by organizing people to accomplish things together in environments that recognize and support their "human-ness". His personal mission is to survive parenthood until the kids are in college.

02:40 Brandon's co-parenting

• Starting with traditional gender roles
• Co-parenting was a foriegn concept until remote work..
• The invisible work becomes more visible
• Covid has forced parents to confront the amount of work it takes to raise kids

06:30 Co-parenting during the pandemic

• Awareness that things changed… kids cannot return to school
• Brandon becomes the educator during the pandemic
• The amount of work to parent became too high when everything shut down
• Reworking the home dynamic when one partner needs help
• Asking for flexibility in places where he had previous thought was not available before

10:53 Working out responsibility between partners

• Clear contracts
• Splitting up tasks and making them known to each partner
• Alternating cooking dinner and clean up
• Family clean day
• Creating activities for kids, even after a long day
• Check in with your partner, how are you feeling burden?

14:05 Recognize your partner's strengths

• Being comfortable with how each partner co-parents
  
• Recognition of each partner
• Optimize each parenting style and continue to check in
• Asking and taking the self-care when it is needed

17:30 Working together

19:10 How has Covid refocused things?!

• Strengthened the team mentality
• Hard to sustain the intensity of the pandemic
• Constant change, the on-call parent

24:40 Prioritization - Do our actions line up with our values?

27:00 Take away: preserve time for planning and reflection

28:35 Genius / fail moments

• Allison checks in while her son is in virtual school and feels major mom guilt…
• Chris’s family visits and brings his camper for a huge win!
• Arit slyly phases out her daughters stuffed animal #genius
• Jess’s son goes full into minecraft, but it may be too much.. #possiblegenius
• KWu repurposed geotags for wooden toys for her kids #genius
• Brandon get creative taking pictures of his kids in their natural habitat

How can I support the podcast?

Please follow us @parentdrivendev on Twitter or email us at panel@parentdrivendevelopment.com.

Our website is at ParentDrivenDevelopment.com.

Chris Arcand
Jess
Arit
Allison
KWu

Special Guest: Brandon Hays.

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Episode 056: Child Care Educators with Jessica Sager of All Our Kin.

All Our Kin is a nationally recognized nonprofit organization that trains, supports, and sustains family child care educators—transforming opportunities by ensuring that children and families have the foundation they need to succeed in school and in life.

Jessica Sager is the co-founder and chief executive officer of All Our Kin. A graduate of Barnard College and Yale Law School, Jessica co-teaches a Yale University seminar on “Child Care, Society, and Public Policy”. She has provided commentary on child care issues for Time, The Hill, New America, and Education Week. She currently lives in New Haven, CT, with her husband and their fifteen-year-old daughter.

00:58 Welcome, Jessica Sager!

• Paul Tough: Helping Children Succeed & How Children Succeed
• Child care as profession in the home
• Making invisible workers as child care professionals visible through All Our Kin

04:18 Changing the way we value child care in our society

• Low income, closures, possible risk of losing convenient access
• More visible with current covid crisis
• At a crossroads

06:30 We’re not meant to raise kids alone - How All Our Kin helps

• All our kin in supporting child care educators around the country through their model
• Advocate for a different way to treat child care
• Direct work to educators and family; delivery ppe, public health guidance, supporting emotional and mental wellbeing of child care educators, playing new virtual roles

10:03 How can others help advocate for child care

• View as public good
• Employers need to step up

12:40 The impact in marginalized communities

• Positive impact on the economy; all our kin as a rate of return 15-20% on their investment
• Equity; making sure kids have a safe place to go even during the pandemic
• Non standard hours are needed most by essential workers

16:50 Family care network

• Designed as a hub and place of support for educators; helping people become licesned to become a professional educator, support them as educators, training on how to run a business, located in a place/community and building out their network.
• Educators are often passionate and utilize all the support and tools of All Our Kin to make meaningful and lasting change

20:20 Moving to the virtual space

• People are showing up! Connection is desired and needed

22:10 Local support wins

• Cultural differences, but deep similarities for shared passion and love for raising kids
• New Haven model succeeds in the Bronx and Nebraska

25:50 Genius / fail moments

• Kwu makes an awesome new corn chowder recipe, but her toddler wasn’t enjoying it.. #fail
• Chris struggles to get his kids online for zoom school.. As a senior engineer himself.. #fail
• Jess is at a crossroads over too much screen time for her son… but minecraft.... #genius/fail
• Jessica got an adorable pandemic kitten, but the kitten has been zoom bombing important school and work presentations. #genius on the kitten #fail on the zoom bombs

How can I support the podcast?

Please follow us @parentdrivendev on Twitter or email us at panel@parentdrivendevelopment.com.

Our website is at ParentDrivenDevelopment.com.

KWu
Chris S
Jess

Special Guest: Jessica Sager.