‘It's about empowering moms and dads, with them knowing there is no judgement’

After almost a decade in the UK where the Irishman Abroad podcast became a huge success, comedian Jarlath Regan and his Navan-born wife Tina, have returned home and are collaborating together on a new parenting podcast ‘Honey you’re ruining our kid’.

Described as the first zero judgement parenting podcast that gives solid advice, parents send in their questions anonymously and Tina, a child behaviour expert with 20 years of experience, will answer them.

Jarlath is well known through his Irishman Abroad podcast and stand-up comedy shows, but up to this, Tina has very much been in the background, supporting Jarlath while working as an early years teacher. Now Tina finds herself out of her comfort zone and taking centre stage with Jarlath on the weekly podcast which drops every Monday.

She laughs that she was somewhat lured into it by Jarlath but that the positive feedback she has been getting has been giving her more confidence and she is really enjoying the show.

Jarlath told how the podcast first came about from a comment from a parent at the school where Tina taught in St Alban’s outside London.

“Every day Tina would be late home, dealing with parents asking questions about toilet training or tantrums and they knew that Tina had the behaviour background and all this training,” recalled Jarlath.

“So she would deal with all these queries. And one of the moms said, you should do a podcast on this. And she came home laughing about it.”

Before Tina knew it, Jarlath had the microphone out. “I thought this is great idea, because there are not enough parenting podcasts that offer solid help, while having some fun,” he said.

“It's either- our kids are crazy. Let's all drink Pinot Grigio, or really finger waggy very straightlaced, this is how it's done.”

“So we try and marry the two,” added Tina. “Jarlath lured me in because he said we would only have it on Patreon for six episodes and I felt safe that it was only the supporters of the Irishman Abroad show that were going to hear it. Then it went well and Go Loud got in touch and wanted to produce a full season running from September to December, 18 episodes altogether.”

The timing worked well as the couple were already planning a move back to Ireland with their 11-year-old son Mikey. Tina explained that when they moved to the UK it was always with the plan to move home for Mikey to go to secondary school here.

She said: “First of all, the secondary schools are just better here. And secondly, if you if he goes to secondary school, you are just never coming home. You’re stuck. And he has established friends for life and everything”.

While it was initially hard moving to the UK in 2013, Tina said she found she quickly made friends with other mums when Mikey started Montessori, and it started to feel like home.

“We made some really special friends there. Mikey went to a really lovely school that he adored, so it was really hard to leave. But we always knew it was the plan and would be better in the long run to come home. But we are missing it quite a bit.”

Tina grew up in Navan and went to school in St Paul’s NS and afterwards to St Joseph’s Mercy Secondary School. Her parents, Michael and Noreen Rowland moved to Curraha 20 years ago and Tina and Jarlath have decided to settle locally there too. Tina’s older brother David and younger sister Geraldine also live nearby and Jarlath had lots of Meath connections. He told how his grandparents were Dunboyne natives and his grandmother Mary Regan, was a principal in the local school and went on to be the oldest person to qualify as a barrister after she retired from teaching. His uncle also runs the Grasshopper Inn in Clonee. “Setting into Curraha has been fun, to re-establish all these old connections and to meet new all these new parents from the school who only know me from the podcast and bits I’ve done on television,” he said.

Mikey has joined sixth class in St Andrew’s NS in Curraha and Tina said he is settling in well and everyone has been really lovely to him.

“It’s tiny, so it's very different for him. He went to a non-religious, very big city school, and now he's in this tiny little country school. But they've all been so lovely. The principal's incredible there. They check in with us all the time.”

Jarlath told how Mikey is a big basketball fan playing with the county team in the UK and has joined the Dunshaughlin Rockets. He is also “taking grinds in GAA” football and is already playing with the school team.

At the moment, the podcast is pretty much all consuming for Tina who has been blown away by the amount of emails to the show and Jarlath told how she replies with a voice note to every single query.

“I haven’t gone back to teaching yet, so I do it full time while Mikey is at school and it has given me a great direction. With being home, I’m able to settle him into school and still feel like I have a purpose to my days as well,” said Tina.

They have also got lots of messages of gratitude from parents who have replied to say the advice really worked.

“It spurs me on to be braver, too, because I'm quite shy and Jarlath, he’s the opposite of that. But getting the feedback from these moms and dads and step moms and sometimes aunts and uncles that ‘Oh, actually, this is working’ has been amazing. “

She added that if people have questions they want to send but don’t want read out on the podcast, they can still get in touch and she will give them a strategy and an intervention.

“It's all about just empowering moms and dads, with them knowing there is no judgement. Nothing you send in is going to be something we haven't seen before. And it's all anonymous.

“When you reply to the mom or the dad, they're just so relieved that you even took it seriously and that you replied. It’s just magic to be able to do that for someone, to know that mom breathes out a little bit more that morning and thinks, Okay, this isn't so hard I can get through this. Because parenting is hard.”

Jarlath added that in this cost of living crisis, that level of free expertise is something anybody could do with.

“I know a lot of parents who said they listen to it, with no intention of offering a question, but just want to feel like they are not alone,” he added.

While Jarlath has plenty of experience behind the mic and doing stand-up comedy, it is a totally new departure for Tina but one she has proven to be a real natural at.

“She's blown me away on the mic, in the podcasts and on the TV,” said Jarlath. “She knows her stuff, its her specialist subject and her voice on the microphone is pretty perfect. She has got a lot of great feedback from people in the industry going- what she’s Never done a podcast?”.

“She is a total natural, which is very annoying given that I’ve spent so long trying to get good at it.”

Tina and Jarlath met while both were studying Arts in UCD. Jarlath dipped his toe into comedy while in college and then went on to do a masters in business and found himself in an office job soon realising it was a “huge mistake”.

Tina went on to study Montessori at AMI for three years, followed by two years of behavioural science while working as an early years teacher in special schools and behaviour units.

Jarlath recalled: “During the time that Tina was studying, I was kind of getting my foot in the door in comedy. And that was where it all began.”

Jarlath got signed by an agent in the UK and they moved there with Mikey as a toddler in 2013.

“London is centre of the comedy world at that time so we always knew that when the comedy started to go well, that was where I’d end up.

“When we moved, we both felt very alone, in that, where's the guidebook for doing it? So I knew a lot of people that had moved and I felt like there was loads of Irish people that were moving at that time. So we created An Irishman Abroad out of nothing with a view to getting advice from people on how to do well abroad and it just took off and was one of the first Irish podcasts. 600 episodes on and it’s still going strong.”

Central to ‘Honey You’re Ruining Our Kid’ is the idea of having a bit of craic and relating their own situations and Tina and Jarlath aren’t afraid to disagree. Indeed, Tina says she “disagrees with Jarlath a lot”.

Jarlath said: “My suggestions are usually terrible. Oftentimes I just marvel at how Tina can answer them or know what to do. I would be like why don’t you tell that kid to cop on.”

He added that in no relationship, whoever the couple is, are they going to be on the same page exactly and it was important that he didn’t just nod and agree with everything Tina said.

“What we want is whoever is listening to be laughing in a better mood and thinking, Okay I’m not alone. I can do this,” said Tina.

You can email your parenting queries to honeyyouareruiningourkid@gmail.com