Mum's The Word! With Georgia Jones & Kelsey Parker

This week Kelsey Parker sits down with Lee Parkinson MBE. Teacher, three-time Sunday Times bestselling author and one half of Two Mr Ps in a Podcast for a chat about school readiness, raising triplets and why we've all been worrying about the wrong things.

Lee gets real about becoming a stepdad at 21, the scan where the nurse went silent before revealing it was triplets, and the "bath, bottle, bed" routine that got all three sleeping through by six months.

Then it goes deeper: why 63% of children aren't ready for school, how scrapping Sure Start centres left a hole nobody filled, and why the little things like doing up their own shoes & putting on a coat actually matter far more than reading or counting before day one.

Plus the lighter stuff: the ex-pupil who bought him a pint 15 years on, getting his MBE ("the world's worst kept secret"), and the show-and-tell Tupperware box that accidentally exposed an affair.

Grab a cuppa and get comfy.

A Create Podcast
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Georgia & Kelsey get right into it this week.

Kelsey's partner Will's about to become a dad for the first time: and he's walking into it the hard way.

Kelsey raised Bodhi's baby years almost entirely alone, so this time feels completely different: parenting as a two. But she reckons Will's had it tough: plonked in at the deep end with a five and seven-year-old, made to "man up" fast, and now rewinding all the way back to a newborn he's never experienced. She's bracing for the arguments, the emotions, and Bodhi already insisting he's still the baby.

Then there's Cooper's big school shake-up. New class, new year, friends split up and reshuffled. Cooper came skipping out (mostly because the kid who wasn't nice to him got moved), and the mum group chat descended into chaos when Danny accidentally added himself to the wrong one.

Plus, this week's Mum's The Word Top Fives: the things your own mum and dad do that wind you up.

The "he ate all his potatoes" fib no grandparent will ever admit to
Insisting you were the perfect baby while your kid is apparently impossible
Retired parents somehow being busier than you'll ever be

Grab a cuppa. This one's close to home.

A Create Podcast
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This week Kelsey Parker sits down with Shaughna Phillips for an honest chat about motherhood, grief and the beautiful chaos of raising two little girls.

Shaughna gets real about the jump from one to two, why baby Sofia has just had to "slot in", and why she's chosen to keep three-year-old Lucia home instead of sending her to nursery, five years full-time is all she gets, and she's determined to be selfish with it.

Then it goes deeper: losing her dad to pancreatic cancer at 22, the promise she made to keep his diagnosis from her mum, looking after him through his final months, and how grieving him as a daughter became something else entirely once she became a mum herself.

Plus the lighter stuff: Love Island auditions and every green light going her way, a pension committee job with 900 applicants after she left, and the psychic who told her Lucia "came out the sunroof."

Grab a cuppa and get comfy.

A Create Podcast
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Georgia & Kelsey aren't holding back this week. Gentle parenting? A generation of "snowflakes"?

Kelsey thinks we're raising kids who can't sit a driving test or face a job interview, and she's got the receipts. When Bodhi begged not to go to his gymnastics competition, she made him go anyway. He came home with a medal.

Georgia, the reformed shy kid, shares a story about her own dad refusing to let her quit a beauty pageant.

Inside this episode:

Why saying "no" makes your child feel safer, not sadder
The one parenting label that could be quietly damaging your kid
The gentle-parenting "trauma" myth and what actually causes it

Plus: a homeopathy kit vs. a full Boots haul, feral camping toddlers, and the Skye Newman lyric no mum wants blasting from the back seat.

Top five holiday-packing regrets included, starting with the first aid kit Kelsey flat-out refuses to bring.

Grab a cuppa. This one gets spicy.

A Create Podcast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Georgia Jones sits down with comedian and mum-of-three Hannah East for a chat that goes so far off-piste they have to remind themselves they're actually recording a podcast.

Turns out these two go way back: Georgia handed Hannah her prize at Miss Scarborough nearly two decades ago, and they've somehow retraced almost the exact same path from pageants and presenting to parenting content ever since.

Hannah gets real about building a following of hundreds of thousands from filming herself in wigs in her bedroom, the lactating video that changed everything after nobody cared about her fitness content, and going from five-people-and-a-bottle-of-red comedy gigs to a sold-out theatre tour her dad genuinely thought was a trip to the pub.

Plus all the good stuff: why Center Parcs is basically contraception parks, dressing your kids in high-vis so you don't lose them, the mental load nobody warns you about, husbands and their paddle elbow, and exactly what to do (and never do) in a school WhatsApp group.

Oh, and one of them may have fallen into a bush.

Grab a cuppa and get comfy.

A Create Podcast
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.