Welcome to The Parent's Place Podcast. Your new home for parenting help, guidance, and information!
We will cover topics all over the board when it comes to parenting!
Meet your hosts, Jennifer Daly and Sara Hendricks! Hear why we've been wanting to start this podcast and what it means to be a Starfish Thrower. We couldn't be more excited to finally get this up and running. We hope it brings you as much joy as it has us, but more importantly, we hope it makes a difference in your life. Thank you for joining us. We're so happy you're here!
This podcast has been published and can be heard everywhere podcasts are available.
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Can't Listen? Read the Transcription Here:
Jen: Hello and welcome to the Parents Place, a podcast put out by The Family Place for parents to develop skills that will strengthen families and provide tools that will help each of us in our parenting efforts. No matter our skills, we can always use reminders that help us work towards a safer, happier home. I'm your host, Jennifer Daly, the education director at the Family Place and my co-host is Sara Hendricks, a family educator at the Family Place. Every week, we will interview professionals that will provide valuable information that will make a difference when you apply it directly to your life. Thank you for joining us. Now, let's get started with today's episode.
Sara: Jen, can you even believe what's happening right now?
Jen: No, it's taken so long, and I'm so stinking excited. I wanted to do this forever!
Sara: Me too! I am so giddy right now1 We are finally starting a podcast! We both have had this dream for a very long time and it's finally happening. So welcome to all of our listeners! We're so excited! I hope you can feel our enthusiasm. We can't wait to share with you our reasons why we wanted to start this podcast, but first, we're going to introduce ourselves. So, my name is Sara Hendricks. I am one of your hosts. I've been married since May of 2006, so we're coming up on 15 years and I have three beautiful little girls. Their ages currently are nine, seven and three. I grew up in Arizona, lived there for 19 years and then I moved to Utah and I've been in Utah ever since. So, I moved to Utah when I got married in 2006, and I've made Cache Valley, Utah my home since 2008. I went to Utah State University and graduated with a degree in family, consumer, and human development with an emphasis in deaf education. Going to school, my dream has always been to work with families and help bridge communication gaps, and I get to do that through my current job at the family place! I'm a family educator at The Family Place and I've been working there for the last five years. Jen, how about you?
Jen: I'm Jen Daly and I'm another one of your hosts, and I am the Education Director at the Family Place. I have been married for a little over three years. I joined the married club quite late in life, but am grateful that it's part of my life. I have two wonderful stepdaughters. One is 22 now and the other one is 14. I have been at the Family Place for 16 years now and have loved every minute of it! I love helping people and seeing the changes that they make in their lives. I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and I moved to Utah in ‘98 and have loved being here ever since. I do not miss the heat. The brown because it's just brown in Arizona. And so, I have loved every minute of being here. I went to Utah State University and I graduated in family and human development. And I also had my social service workers license.
Sara: Well, how about just so our listeners can get to know us a little better? Let's share something maybe quirky about ourselves. So, you go first.
Jen: Oh boy. OK. The one that I share a lot because I get the best reactions from people is that I love Oreos, but I don't love milk. So, I dunk my Oreos in water because I feel like it does the same thing as milk. It just makes your cookie a little bit softer. So yes, I dunk my Oreos in water,
Sara: And that is totally disgusting! Please tell me you're kidding right now.
Jen: No, not kidding!
Sara: Oh, I can see why that would get a big reaction from people! OK, I’ll go. Hopefully this isn't too much information about myself so back when scrapbooking was popular, when you actually, like, cut out pictures and paper and glue them together, I used to scrapbook all the time. That was something I really enjoyed doing. But I decided that it would be fun to make a scrapbook about poop and I called it “Crapbooking”. It's not just scrapbooking, but “Crapbooking”, and the name of the scrapbook that I made was called “Fecal Matters”.
Jen: Oh my goodness! And what was the purpose of this book?
Sara: Just some like bathroom reading, I guess.
Jen: Alrighty then!
Sara: It was actually really fun. It makes for a really good white elephant present.
Jen: I'm sure it does! Oh, my goodness.
Sara: OK, moving on! So, we're excited to share with you our reasons for starting this podcast, and we want to start by sharing a story that really means a lot to both Jen and me.
Jen: The Starfish Story. An elderly man saw a child standing on a beach throwing starfish into the ocean. Thousands of starfish stranded by the outgoing tide lay on the beach around them. “Why are you throwing the starfish into the ocean?” The man asked the child. “If I don't, they'll die”. The man looked around them, “But with all of these starfish, you can't possibly expect to make a difference”. The child picked up another starfish, tossed it into the ocean and said, “It made a difference to that one!”
Sara: This story is something that Jen and I both have really taken to heart and apply it in our lives. You may have noticed we both said that we work at The Family Place. The Family Place is a non-profit organization with a mission to strengthen families and protect children. We do that in different ways through services that we offer at The Family Place. We have our education department that is where Jen and I are both stationed, where we offer parenting classes and kid’s classes and ways that we can provide families support to learn how to strengthen their families and protect children. We also have our therapy department that provides services for people who may need some counseling or therapy. And then we have our kids place, which offers scheduled care, crisis care and shelter. So those are just some of the services that we're able to provide for families locally and most all of our services we offer for free.
So, throughout this podcast, you might hear us mention The Family Place. We both feel very passionate about where we work and the services that we provide. And it just spills over into everything else in our lives to talk about The Family Place and our love for our mission to strengthen families and protect children. So, know that if you're not local to Cache Valley, Utah, that is OK! Everything that we are going to provide in this podcast is relatable. No matter where you live, we might reference The Family Place. We might offer resources to people that are local, but you can always search out those same resources within your own communities to see what will work for you. And we will provide plenty of resources that are not only for those who are local. So, with that being said, why did we want to start this podcast, Jen?
Jen: Well, I think the main reason for me wanting to start the podcast was to have a place where people could, number one, have fun. I love to have fun at work now and try to incorporate that into everything that I do there. And so hopefully these podcasts can provide some information, a few giggles along the way, and things that you can really apply to your own life. I often wonder about that story, the starfish story, of making the difference to one, and I pondered on this of really, how will I ever know if I made the difference for one? And you know, for the most part, I probably will never know. But I had listened to someone share an experience about his same concern is if he had made a difference. And he had gone and was living in another country and was helping the people in that country. And once he left, he thought to himself, Did I really help anybody? And he decided years later to go back to that same area, and he took his wife and he met up with a man that he knew when he first went there and he had his entire family there, not just him and his wife, but his children, his children's children, and then their children. And he was able to see the difference that he made in that one man's life was a generational change. And so that is another reason why I'm so excited to do this podcast is hopefully the ripple effect could be can be just amazing, and maybe we can reach that one person that really needs that help or is looking for a solution to dealing with their kids, whatever it may be. I hope the ripple effect is enormous.
Sara: I love that! You're exactly right! We don't often think about how helping one person making a difference for one person can go beyond and reaching out to more and more people and have that ripple effect, like you said. So that is so incredible! I too have wanted to start this podcast for a long time. A big part of it is because I feel like it, The Family Place. We have so many resources and knowledge and information that can really make a difference for people! At the Family Place, that's our goal. That starfish story is part of our mission to make a difference for the one. So, we are always striving to make a difference. We know that we're not going to change the world, but to make a difference for even one person we feel is a job well done. So that's a goal with this podcast that it can make a difference for each of our listeners. Maybe not every single episode will resonate with you, but if even one episode that you listen to changes your perspective and how you approach being a parent or communicating with your children. Rain or whatever it may be, then we feel that this podcast has served its purpose because it made a difference in that one little way. So, we will often mention being a starfish thrower. That story that Jen just shared will often refer back to that. Because of the Family Place we consider ourselves starfish throwers. And we hope that this podcast will inspire you to also be a starfish thrower and do what you can to make a difference for somebody else. You may not be able to throw back every single starfish into the ocean, but if you can throw even one back, I promise you it made a difference to that starfish, by saving that one. We may have moments where we ask you to be a starfish thrower. And that's what we're referring to is making a difference for even one person in your life or in your community. Also, I think it's important to understand that while we try and we want to be starfish throwers, it's also OK to have times in our lives where we're the starfish and recognize that sometimes we need help and we need somebody else to come along and throw us back into the water. And there's nothing wrong with that! Often, we want to be the hero and save somebody else, but sometimes we need to be OK with being the starfish.
Jen: You know, that reminds me of a TV show I watched way back when called, Desperate Housewives, and there was an episode there that one of the ladies was having a really hard time. And she had made some poor choices in how she was handling those hard things. And her friends came to her, she was sitting in a soccer field and her friends came to her and said, “Why didn't you let us know that something was going on? This is what's going on in our life. We're having troubles too”. And her friend, the friend that was out in the soccer field, said, “Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you share with me?” And I think that's really important, as sometimes we do need to be the starfish and let someone else be the thrower. But it's super important that we have open communication. It's not a bad thing to have a hard time and need a little bit of help.
Sara: Right! Everybody has their hard days and their hard moments. And when we allow other people to see that we struggle, they recognize that it's OK for them to struggle sometimes, too. It just creates unity among people to recognize that we don't always have to be perfect all of the time. And when we try to put up that facade, it's exhausting and we're going to have a big crash. So, we hope this podcast will be exactly what you need to learn more parenting skills, add more tools to your toolbox so that you can be the best parent and the best person that you desire to be. So please join us for our next episode. I know you're going to love it! It's a topic that is really pretty hard to talk about, but information that every single parent needs! And we hope that it will provide information for you that is just going to excite you to keep wanting to listen to every episode after that.
Jen: So, Sara, I said that I like to have fun. So, there's this funny meme that I saw, and it says “The closest I get to a spa day is when the steam from the dishwasher smacks me in the face.”
Sara: That is awesome! That's so true! I think that most parents can relate to that. We've all been there. Don't you fret! We are going to have an episode about self-care to help you out with that so that your Spa Day can be more than just when you open up the dishwasher to put those freshly cleaned dishes away. So, stay tuned! More information and more jokes will be coming in our episodes to come!
Contact Us:
We have a new way to contact us since recording this episode. Instead of going to The Family Place website, you can now email us directly at parents@thefamilyplaceutah.org www.thefamilyplaceutah.org
Music by Joystock
- https://www.joystock.org
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