Juggling it all as a busy mom

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Juggling it all as a busy mom

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Many moms are hanging on by their fingernails. They've got jobs. They've got multiple kids. They got a husband, or a house or whatever. Being a parent is the toughest job you will ever have. Trying to work while you're a parent is even tougher and so this notion that you're always supposed to be up on the latest research and go to authorities for help to tell you exactly how to do it right, only makes us more anxious. It doesn't really help us at all. I remember when my three sons were young, I came across the work of Donald Winnicott who I think is the most important child developmental specialist. And he is the guy who coined the term, "The good enough mother". And he said, the ordinary mother in her ordinary loving care of her children is doing the best job possible. And I put that up on my mirror and it stayed there for years. ANd I think he's absolutely right, that most of us intuitively know how to raise our children, how to love our children, how to support our children and if we can let go of the anxiety of getting it right and turning out superior kids, then the job we do for the most part is more than adequate. It's absolutely fine.

View Madeline Levine, PhD's video on Juggling it all as a busy mom...

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Madeline Levine, PhD

Psychologist & Author

Madeline Levine, PhD, is a psychologist with close to 30 years of experience as a clinician, consultant and educator. Her New York Times bestseller, The Price of Privilege, explores the reasons why teenagers from affluent families are experiencing epidemic rates of emotional problems.  Her book, Teach Your Children Well, outlines how our current narrow definition of success unnecessarily stresses academically talented kids and marginalizes many more whose talents and interests are less amenable to measurement. The development of skills needed to be successful in the 21st century- creativity, collaboration, innovation – are not easily developed in our competitive, fast-paced, high pressure world. Teach Your Children Well gives practical, research- based solutions to help parents return their families to healthier and saner versions of themselves.

Dr. Levine is also a co-founder of Challenge Success, a project born at the Stanford School of Education. Challenge Success believes that our increasingly competitive world has led to tremendous anxiety about our children’s’ futures and has resulted in a high pressure, myopic focus on grades, test scores and performance. This kind of pressure and narrow focus isn’t helping our kids become the resilient, capable, meaningful contributors we need in the 21st century. So every day, Challenge Success provides families and schools with the practical research-based tools they need to raise healthy, motivated kids, capable of reaching their full potential. We know that success is measured over the course of a lifetime, not at the end of the grading period.

Dr. Levine began her career as an elementary and junior high school teacher in the South Bronx of New York before moving to California and earning her degrees in psychology. She has had a large clinical practice with an emphasis on child and adolescent problems and parenting issues. Currently however, she spends most of her time crisscrossing the country speaking to parents, educators, students, and business leaders. Dr. Levine has taught Child Development classes to graduate students at the University of California Medical Center/ San Francisco. For many years, Dr. Levine has been a consultant to various schools, from preschool through High School, public as well as private, throughout the country. She has been featured on television programs from the Early Show to the Lehrer report, on NPR stations such as Diane Rheems in Washington and positively reviewed in publications from Scientific American to the Washington Post. She is sought out both nationally and internationally as an expert and keynote speaker. 

Dr. Levine and her husband of 35 years, Lee Schwartz, MD are the incredibly proud (and slightly relieved) parents of three newly minted and thriving sons.

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