Delight in Parenting with Dajana Yoakley

About Delight in Parenting with Dajana Yoakley

Welcome to Delight in Parenting Podcast. Let's into the essence of peaceful, playful and emotionally intelligent parenting, where I share the insights, expert advice & research, and support necessary to transform your parenting approach from struggling to delighting. Say goodbye to conflict and embrace cooperation, creating a more joyful home environment. Join me as we embark on a path to deeper connection and more peace & play within our families. I'm excited to connect and share this journey with you through each episode! delightinparenting.substack.com (https://delightinparenting.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Empowering parents with peaceful & playful strategies to bring the delight back into parenting. 'Delight in Parenting with Dajana Yoakley' is your guide to a thriving family life.

Category

education · kids & family

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

7 Mar 2024

Latest episode

24 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

80 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   24 Sept 2026

   78. The Voice You Use With Yourself Is Being Copied

   Think about the last time you tried to calm your child down and it went sideways. Maybe you crouched down and said, in your most measured voice, “Let’s take some deep breaths together,” and your child screamed louder. Maybe you tried every tool you’ve collected, and the meltdown grew anyway, and underneath your patience you could feel your own frustration rising. And afterward, did you find yourself wondering what you were doing wrong? Have you ever noticed that the things you know perfectly well when everyone is calm seem to vanish the moment your child falls apart? My guest this week knows that feeling from the inside, and her story surprised me. Jamie Lynn Tatera was already a mindfulness educator when her first daughter was born. Her daughter was a little sensory sensitive, and she had meltdowns whenever she got overloaded. So Jamie Lynn did exactly what her training told her to do. She used her mindfulness techniques. She helped her breathe. And she felt like she was making things worse. So she went to see a therapist, thinking that maybe something from her own childhood was getting in the way of her parenting. Her therapist listened, and then said something Jamie Lynn wasn’t expecting: “I think you need self-compassion.” That sent her to California to train with Dr. Kristin Neff and Dr. Christopher Germer, the creators of the Mindful Self-Compassion program. And what she found there wasn’t a better technique for her daughter. It was something about herself. As she put it, she had a fix-it habit. When she was struggling, she would try to fix herself, to make herself better with all the tools she knew. Nothing wrong with those tools. But she had no practice with the other half. In her words: “I wasn’t so skilled at being with myself when I struggled. And therefore I was not so skilled at being with my daughter when she struggled.” Sit with that one for a second, because I did. Our kids don’t only need our strategies. They need us to be able to stay present with something hard without rushing to make it stop. And most of us can’t do that for our children because we’ve never once done it for ourselves. In our conversation, Jamie Lynn goes much deeper than I expected, and honestly, a few moments landed hard for me: * Why perfectionism in parenting comes from shame, and what that means for those of us who are trying so hard to do this right that we’ve made ourselves anxious. * Why she stopped calling it the inner critic when she works with families and started calling it “the unhelpful helper,” and what changes when you hear that voice and think, “I must be scared,” instead of believing what it says. * The two sides of self-compassion, the gentle and the strong, and why having only one leaves you off balance. * What happens in a child’s mind when a parent can’t show up consistently, and why children so often conclude that something is wrong with them rather than something is wrong with their parent. This part connects directly to how shame travels down through generations. * What to actually say to your child on the days your best is, in her words, two thumbs down. She gives the exact words she uses with her own kids, and they include the sentence most of us never heard growing up. * Why she says that when shame really has hold of her, she doesn’t try to practice self-compassion alone. She phones a friend. And why that counts. And her answer to the question I asked near the end, about the legacy we received and the legacy we’re choosing to leave. She also mentions that after more than a decade of teaching this work, she hasn’t mastered it. “If I start to think I’ve mastered it, I probably am losing it,” she told me, “because part of self-compassion is that I’m on the learning team.” That might be my favorite thing anyone has said on this podcast. Listen to the full conversation here. It’s worth your walk, your commute, or your folding-laundry hour. And if you’ve ever felt like you know exactly the parent you want to be and can’t quite reach her when it counts, I think you’ll hear yourself in this one. Jamie Lynn also shared a free resource with our listeners, her Feelings Habit Animal quiz (https://jamielynntatera.com/feelings-habit-animal-quiz/), which you and your kids can take together. Want to go deeper than one conversation? Everything Jamie Lynn and I talked about in this episode comes back to one thing: knowing about self-compassion and being able to reach for it when you’re flooded, ashamed, or exhausted are two different experiences. The first one takes an hour of listening. The second one takes practice. That’s exactly why I trained to teach Mindful Self-Compassion, and I’m hosting a free live session where we’ll look at this together. Free Info Session: The Voice Your Child Will Carry for Life (https://www.delightinparenting.com/selfcompassioninfo)Wednesday, September 30th at 12pm CT/1pm ETWith me and my co-teacher, Ariane Arpels- Josiah In about an hour, I’ll walk you through the three parts of self-compassion and why most of us have only ever tried one of them, the reason being hard on yourself makes the next hard moment harder instead of easier, and what your child is quietly learning from the way you treat yourself when you fall short. We’ll do one short practice together so you can feel what this is like, and I’ll share the details of my upcoming 8-week Mindful Self-Compassion course for anyone who wants to keep going. No meditation experience needed. Bring your coffee and your questions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit delightinparenting.substack.com/subscribe (https://delightinparenting.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   3 Sept 2026

   77. Bedtime Battles: What Anxiety Is Trying to Tell You

   Have you ever stood outside your child’s bedroom door at nine at night, completely done for the day, and thought, “Why is this still so hard?” If bedtime in your house comes with one more hug, one more story, one more “can you just stay a little longer,” this conversation is for you. I’m sitting down again with Clara Roulev, a Peaceful Parenting coach, mind-body coach, and the voice behind Share Peace Parenting. Clara found this work the way a lot of us do. She realized that everything she’d studied and believed about parenting wasn’t always available to her in the hardest moments, and that her own nervous system needed just as much attention as her kids’ did. Since then, she’s built her practice around helping parents understand what’s actually happening in the body during those tough moments, especially when anxiety shows up. And it shows up a lot at bedtime. In this episode, Clara and I talk about why bedtime asks so much of both you and your child. It’s completely normal to feel exhausted and touched-out by the end of the day, and it’s just as normal for your child’s nervous system to be running on empty too, just from a different angle. We walk through what’s really happening when a child who slept fine last week suddenly can’t fall asleep without you in the room: how separation, darkness, and a quiet, understimulated mind can all pull that need to stay close to you for protection. I know it’s hard when you’ve spent all day validating, connecting, and staying calm, only to hit bedtime and feel like none of it worked. Clara offers a reframe here that I think a lot of you will recognize yourselves in: calm and confidence are not the same thing. A child can learn to settle down and still walk away from hard moments believing they can only be okay once the scary feeling disappears. What you’re actually building toward is a child who can feel uncomfortable and still trust that they’ll be fine, and that takes something different than simply calming a child down in the moment. We also get into the practical side. Clara shares how she and her son came up with a plan together for the restless, wiggly energy that shows up right around bedtime, and why bringing your child into the problem-solving, instead of handing them a solution, makes such a difference. We talk about the difference between forcing a child through discomfort alone, which can leave a small trauma behind, and standing beside them while they do something hard. Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to face something scary when you know someone’s right there with you? That’s the whole idea. By the end of this conversation, you’ll have a clearer picture of what’s underneath your child’s bedtime resistance, and a few real starting points for building your own plan together, one that fits your specific child instead of a one-size-fits-all script. Clara is sharing a free resource (https://www.sharepeaceparenting.com/my-body-needs-movement) with the bedtime plan we talk about in the episode. Grab it using the link below. Want more support with bedtime struggles? Join us for the upcoming FREE Anxiety to Confidence webinar (https://www.delightinparenting.com/anxiety), where I’ll be sitting down with Dr. Christopher Willard to go deeper into why anxiety shows up the way it does in our kids and what actually helps. Save your seat at delightinparenting.com/anxiety (https://www.delightinparenting.com/anxiety). To learn more about Clara Roulev: https://www.sharepeaceparenting.com/ (https://www.sharepeaceparenting.com/) Connect with Dajana Yoakley Delight in Parenting (https://open.substack.com/pub/delightinparenting) Step #1 — Get the 3 Steps to Reset Your Nervous System FREE Guide or book a FREE 20 minute consult. https://www.delightinparenting.com https://www.delightinparenting.com/book-online (https://www.delightinparenting.com/book-online) Step #2 — Connect With The Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/delightinparentingfree (https://www.facebook.com/groups/delightinparentingfree) Step #3- Follow me on Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/delightinparenting/ (https://www.instagram.com/delightinparenting/) https://www.facebook.com/delightinparentingcoaching/ (https://www.facebook.com/delightinparentingcoaching/) https://www.youtube.com/@DelightinParenting (https://www.youtube.com/@DelightinParenting) https://www.linkedin.com/in/delightinparenting/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/delightinparenting/) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit delightinparenting.substack.com/subscribe (https://delightinparenting.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   27 Aug 2026

   Why Mindful, Connected Parents Can Still Feel Stuck With Their Child’s Anxiety

   Have you ever done everything the books told you to do, and your child is still anxious anyway? You validate. You get low and slow. You say things like “I can see this is really hard” and “I’m right here.” You’ve read enough to know that shaming a scared kid never works, so you don’t shame them. You stay calm. You connect. And somehow, the anxiety is still there tomorrow. Sound familiar? I want to tell you about a mom I’ll call Sarah, because her story is the one that kept coming up as I recorded this week’s podcast episode. Sarah isn’t new to this work. She knows what co-regulation means. She knows behavior is communication. When her son gets anxious at bedtime and doesn’t want her to leave, she stays, because she doesn’t want him to feel abandoned. And it helps, in the moment. He calms down. So the next night, he needs her again. And the night after that. Then he doesn’t want to go to his friend’s house unless she stays close by. Then there’s a field trip he says he can’t do, and she doesn’t want to push, because she knows forcing him could backfire and rupture the trust she’s worked so hard to build. Every single thing Sarah is doing comes from love. From real, hard-won knowledge. And her son’s world keeps getting smaller anyway. It’s completely normal to feel confused by that. I know it’s hard when you’re doing everything “right” and the fear just keeps finding a new door to walk through. Bedtime. Then school. Then friendships. Then anywhere you’re not standing right next to him. Here’s what I’ve come to believe after years of sitting with parents like Sarah: this usually isn’t a knowledge problem. It’s a calibration problem. You already know how to validate. You already know how to regulate yourself before you react. What nobody quite tells you is what comes after the validating. Your child says “I still don’t want to go,” and now what? Do you encourage him forward? Do you let it go for tonight? Do you hold the moment a little longer? That gray zone right there is where the real work lives. And it’s where even the most conscious, connected parents get stuck. Because here’s a distinction that changed everything for me: calm and confidence are not the same thing. A child can become very good at calming down and still walk away from every hard moment believing, “I can only be okay once this feeling stops.” What we actually want for our kids is different. We want them to be able to say, “I’m anxious, I’m not sure how this is going to go, and I can still handle this.” That’s a whole different kind of strength, and it doesn’t come from comfort alone. Calm isn’t the goal. Confidence is. If any part of Sarah’s story sounds like your house right now, I don’t think you need more information about validation. I think you need help with the gray zone, the part in between “I hear you” and “now what do we do.” That’s exactly what Dr. Christopher Willard and I are covering in our free live workshop: → From Anxiety to Confidence (https://www.delightinparenting.com/anxiety) We’ll walk through why the same fear keeps showing up in new forms, how family life can quietly start revolving around anxiety without anyone meaning for that to happen, and why so many mindful, connected parents still feel stuck. Most importantly, we’ll talk about what actually helps a child move from “I need you to make this go away” to “I can handle this.” This is live, and it isn’t getting recorded and sent out later, so if you want to be there, now’s the time to grab your spot. → Register free here: delightinparenting.com/anxiety (https://www.delightinparenting.com/anxiety) When you register, you’ll also get the free Anxiety Pattern Finder, a quick check-in to help you notice where anxiety may already be showing up in your home in ways that don’t always look like fear on the surface. If you’ve been carrying that quiet question, “I should know how to do this by now,” I want you to hear this clearly: the problem was never that you don’t care enough or haven’t learned enough. You have. What you need now is the next layer, and that’s exactly where we’re headed together. Warmly, Dajana P.S. Connection matters. Regulation matters. And they were never meant to be the finish line on their own. The real goal is a child who can feel scared and still know, deep down, “I can handle hard things.” That’s what we’re building toward in this workshop. Save your seat: delightinparenting.com/anxiety (https://www.delightinparenting.com/anxiety) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit delightinparenting.substack.com/subscribe (https://delightinparenting.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

Who has been a guest on Delight in Parenting with Dajana Yoakley

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Tatiana Goded
• Lori Sugarman-Li
• Leah Guzman

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

4,371

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

6 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 73 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

89

Social presence

0

YouTube

74

Engagement

68

Contact Delight in Parenting with Dajana Yoakley

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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