About Our Guest:

Gabby is the Co-founder and CEO of Cooper, a parenting mecca offering parents (and parents to be) with the tools and resources to build their parenting muscle and become the parents they want to be. Cooper offers on demand access to leading experts in child development and likeminded parents, 24/7. Group sessions, live events/workshops and “always on” one-on-one support are spearheaded by top tier experts including PhD’s, educators and licensed clinical social workers with decades of experience. Cooper’s mission is to equip parents with more effective ways of seeing and solving parenting challenges at home.

Prior to founding Cooper, Gabby spent her early career working with founding teams at multiple e-commerce startups including Rent the Runway and  Primary.com. From there, she founded her first company out of Columbia Business School - Ollie, a DTC subscription dog food company.  As Co-founder and Chief Experience Officer she grew Ollie to over 65k members, 100 employees and raised $75M in venture capital financing. During the heart of the pandemic she brokered a large strategic investment which has put Ollie on the path to acquisition, allowing her to step out and move on to her newest venture. As mother to Sasha (5 years old) and Asher (3 years old), and Rayah (8 months old), she knows the challenges parents face and the need for a partner in the parenting journey such as Upright.

Gabby earned her B.A. and MBA from Columbia University and currently lives in New York City with her husband, three young children and dog.

You can more information about Cooper here.

You find out more information about Gabby here. 

About the Episode:

Gabby and Dr. Whitney talk about the pressure moms feel to do parenting “right” and how unrealistic (and ultimately damaging) that is for parents and for kids. If you want to be an effective parent, it’s all about paying attention to who your individual child is and to the five major parenting “must dos:”

1. Be sensitive and responsive.

2. Model self-regulation.

3. Set limits for yourself and your kids.

4. Allow space for unrestrained skill development.

5. Support internal motivation and resilience over external motivation.

6. Develop healthy routines.

Episode Takeaways:

• There’s no one size fits all when it comes to parenting. All kids are different, so cookie cutter parenting suggestions often fail. What worked 50 years ago (even 10!) just isn’t the same now, and when there’s so much information out there, it’s way too hard to digest on your own and make the decision that’s right for you and your family.

• Consider this blanket permission to streamline your efforts with your kids because children really only need a few things for long-term health and resilience: unconditional love, safety, attunement, and a growth mindset. And, if you invest in your children’s well-being in those meaningful ways now, you’ll watch them develop into the successful, unique, world-changing adults they were meant to be and enjoy the strong, life-long connection we’re building with them.

• Parents all come into their parenting journey with incredibly different backgrounds, baggage, and stories. So you need to give yourself grace when taking advice from other parents. Just because one person is stellar at bedtime doesn’t mean you should be too.

• Finding your parenting village is incredibly important, but it’s not just the people that surround you physically, like your neighborhood or at your kids’ school. It’s more important to “surround” yourself (even virtually!) with people who are in or have been in the same situation as you--like other moms who work/work from home/stay at home like you, or who have kids the same age, going through the same things you are.

More Blogs on this Topic:

• The doctor is in with your most pressing questions answered
• Here’s the reason everything feels hard right now
• You get to choose: taking control of your life

More Podcast Episodes on this Topic:

• How to regulate your children’s emotions by regulating yours
• Parenting your children based on who they are, not on fads
• How mindfulness can transform your motherhood