We were sitting at an intersection when our then 6-year-old daughter said, “Daddy, that Blues Clues paw print is orange.” This instance was the second time it happened with our children. Blues Clues was a once-popular kid’s program about a dog named Blue who would leave his paw print in different places during the show.

Read, Watch, or Listen: https://lifeovercoffee.com/day-8-dad-youre-the-first-picture-your-child-will-see-of-god-the-father/

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Parenting Day 8: Dads, the First Picture a Child Sees of a Father

If a person’s parenting model primarily consists of bringing critique from a heart of personal frustration, the parent’s model needs to change. Biblical parents center their primary communication with their children on love, not criticism.

Read, Watch, or Listen: https://lifeovercoffee.com/a-biblical-perspective-on-critiquing-children/

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Parenting Day 13: A Biblical Perspective on Critiquing Children

After all these years of counseling and all the trouble I’ve seen in people’s lives, it has become more real to me than ever how we need a better worldview and foundation on which to land when we fall. Learning how to fall well is God’s mercy to us.

Read, Watch, or Listen: https://lifeovercoffee.com/day-19-if-you-could-export-only-one-thing-to-your-child/

Will you help us to continue providing free content for everyone? You can become a supporting member here https://lifeovercoffee.com/join/, or you can make a one-time or recurring donation here https://lifeovercoffee.com/donate/.

Parenting Day 19: If You Could Export Only One Thing to Your Child

Every loving parent wants their children to turn out well. However, they are also aware they have a role to play. Though God is the primary change agent, parents are secondary agents who must cooperate with the Lord to transform their children. Here are seven tips to help those parents.

Read, Watch, or Listen: https://lifeovercoffee.com/day-28-seven-point-checklist-to-have-fantastic-children/

Will you help us to continue providing free content for everyone? You can become a supporting member here https://lifeovercoffee.com/join/, or you can make a one-time or recurring donation here https://lifeovercoffee.com/donate/.

Parenting Day 28: Seven-point Checklist to Have Fantastic Children

If our children learn not to take themselves too seriously, it will be easier for them to live in relationships with others today and after they become adults. Not thinking too highly of yourself is to think humbly of yourself. A lack of gospel-centered humility keeps an individual from living well with God and others.

Read, Watch, or Listen: https://lifeovercoffee.com/day-30-teach-your-children-to-laugh-at-themselves/

Will you help us to continue providing free content for everyone? You can become a supporting member here https://lifeovercoffee.com/join/, or you can make a one-time or recurring donation here https://lifeovercoffee.com/donate/.

Parenting Day 30: Teach Your Children to Laugh at Themselves

Susan teaches children the various names for the offspring of different animals in this charming song meant to help children understand that we all continue to grow and develop throughout our lives.

Becoming


In Episode 2 of The Balancing Act by Baby Yum Yum, host Chiara Bjorkman is joined by child psychologist Jane Cole to unpack one of the most debated topics in modern parenting: screen time. From tantrums to routines and real-life solutions, this conversation explores how parents can create healthier tech boundaries for their children.


How Much Screen Time Is Too Much?

In this episode of That Black Couple, Jenn and Daren discuss the complexities of parenting while being polyamorous, addressing common misconceptions and societal concerns. They explore the benefits of polyamorous households for children, emphasizing open communication, community support, and the importance of diverse experiences. The conversation highlights the need for honesty and authenticity in parenting, ultimately showcasing how polyamory can contribute to raising well-adjusted, happy children.

Reference Material
* What About the Children?! Children in Polyamorous Families: Stigma, Myths, and Realities - https://www.whatdidshesay.ca/2019/03/25/what-about-the-children-children-in-polyamorous-families-stigma-myths-and-realities/
* “It’s someone who means a lot to me, and who means even more to mom”: Children’s views on the romantic partners of their polyamorous parents - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11521776/
* Polyamorous Relationships: Children’s Perceptions - https://inrs.ca/en/news/polyamorous-relationships-childrens-perceptions/
* A WHOLE VILLAGE: POLYAMOROUS FAMILIES AND THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE CHILD STANDARD - https://community.lawschool.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Sheff-et-al.-final.pdf

S8E5 - Parenting While Black and Polyamorous

The Way We Feel is a 9-song album of original children’s music designed to teach emotional intelligence, social awareness, and self-regulation—without being cloying, preachy, or disposable.

From identifying emotions and managing anger to learning empathy, resilience, and communication, each track offers kids (and the adults raising them) a tool for understanding feelings, naming them, and growing through them. With playful lyrics, simple metaphors, and clear messages, this album can help spark meaningful conversations in classrooms, families, and little brains everywhere.

Every song is developmentally appropriate, musically rich, and psychologically grounded. Think of it as an emotional toolbox disguised as a singalong.

Recommended for:
Ages 4–10, teachers, parents, caregivers, therapists, and anyone who wants a future generation that’s better at feelings than we are.

The Way We Feel

The First Time's Not the Last Time

Lyrics/License

This is an explanation of the developmental systems approach of child development. This audio describes the five unique systems that affect our development. Bronfenbrenner's notes on microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. It also covers Gottleib's approach on the genetic side of development as well as why we need an interdisciplinary approach. It ends with a simple application to apply to your life. 

voice memo - July 16, 2025 at 2:46 PM

Susan Salidor is an award-winning children’s music composer and performer with the heart of a teacher.  She has released eight albums of original and traditional music and is the author, along with Ukrainian illustrator Natalka Soiko, of two picture books for young children, I’ve Got Peace In My Fingers and One Little Act of Kindness (Sideline Ink Publishing), based on two of her most widely-known original songs.

Like, follow, comment, share. There's more coming. Always.

See phrases.pub for lyrics, licensing, and a full, searchable catalog.

Phrases and Phases Publishing is a one-man label, archive, and reality-refraction field. Founded by J. Adam Walters - lawyer-turned lyricist, satirist, and architectural dropout from polite society - it's the home for songs that shouldn't exist, poems that go to far, and fictional universes with better paperwork than the Library of Congress. 

From folk elegies to parody rap to theocratic cartoon trauma epics, everything here is written by a human who uses AI as a collaborator and instrument rather than an outsourced brain, and finished only when it reaches a space where laughing hurts, or hurting laughs.

Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.

In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master's University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).

This is an accidentally funny podcast about the realities of Blackness and adult life. 

Our goal is to create a space for Black millennials to discuss and embody adult life on their own terms. We aren’t beholden to “traditional” gender or parenting roles, queerness is fluid and present in the ways we show up in our relationships and in the world, and we want to build community with other 30-something Black folx who are trying to figure this ish out.

We do “adult” differently. 


-About Daren and Jenn-

Jenn is a queer, Black feminist from Oakland. Daren is an introverted nerd and novelist from Anaheim.

They are boo’ed up and have been since 2002 when they bonded over a mutual love of Brian McKnight’s “Never Felt This Way”, their favorite Brandy lyrics, and nineties TV like Family Matters, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and Living Single. It was a shared obsession with Black cultural icons, histories, and artistry that drew Jenn and Daren to one another even though they are actually completely different personality-wise.

Jenn and Daren have always said to themselves, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a show?” Well, no major networks have reached out yet. So, until that happens, you can find the them here, sharing their views on race and culture and everything in between.

They are young thirty-somethings who have been married since for over a decade. Jenn and Daren have three beautiful, brilliant, radical, snarky kids who play no games.

New tracks tagged #child development