Today's guest is someone who writes straight from the trenches of parenting young kids where big feelings, bedtime battles, and those wildly beautiful, messy moments of connection all collide.

I’m Flora McCormick, licensed therapist and parenting coach, and I’m joined by author Julia Shaw, whose children’s book The Grumpy Wumpus was born straight out of real-life bedtime battles, public blowups, and those painfully relatable moments when a sweet toddler seems to morph into someone else.

Julia tells the story of her oldest flipping from easygoing to furious around the toddler years and how the standard emotional regulation advice didn’t land. From that frustration came a playful, powerful idea: externalizing big emotions by naming them. “The Grumpy Wumpus” creates a little space between a child and their behavior, helping kids understand “I’m having big feelings” without absorbing “I am bad.” We also connect the dots to clinical concepts therapists use with adults and kids, including how stress chemistry can hijack the brain and why connection often works better than correction in the heat of the moment.

We go deeper into the hard parts too, including Julia’s experience with postpartum depression and waves of rage that made her realize why some coping strategies feel useless mid-storm. Our shared takeaway is simple and freeing: big feelings don’t always need fixing. Sometimes the most sustainable move is to ride the wave, keep everyone safe, and trust that the peak will pass.

If you want practical support for toddler tantrums, emotional outbursts, and the messy middle between overly gentle parenting and overly harsh discipline, press play. Subscribe, share this with a tired parent friend, and leave a review so more families can find the show.

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