My son is the master of the teen meltdown. To be honest, he was also a master of the toddler meltdown, the preschooler meltdown and the beware-of-the-10-year-old-boy meltdown. You could say he's been building up to teen meltdown form for years and he's #nailedit....
AskReddit is often a good read for vox-pop type discussions. Someone asks a question and everyone opens up. I recently came across a thread about what people wish their parents had done differently. There is so much parenting gold in there. Here are the highlights....
A massive chunk of our role as mums is to be kind. But, while we get very good at treating others well, sometimes we forget to do the same for ourselves. Self-kindness is just not on a mother's To Do list as much as it should be. That was definitely me for a long...
I kind of get the whole lawnmower parents thing (called a 'snowplough parent' in the US; and dubbed 'concierge parents' by one Sydney principal). This is where parents 'prepare the road', rather than the child. They mow across any obstacle in their child's path,...
I completely dropped my parenting bundle one morning as we scrambled to get ready for school photo day. If school photo day isn't a reason for a mum to hate parenting, I don't know what is. So, of course, on this particular morning it was all about the hair. I was...
I've watched 100s of inspiring TED Talks and I've chosen these ones as being the best TED Talks for parenting teens. It is so, so easy to lose our way when the kids are teens. We are pulled between our own core values and what we perceive to be society's values; both...
While I’m not a perfect father, I think I’m pretty good at it. Mostly because I absolutely love it. I don’t consider myself a parenting expert, but I have helped raise six kids (along with their mothers), and being a father has been one of the most rewarding...
It's a fact of life that at some stage or another, our kids are going to have to tackle any number of difficult conversations. Matter of fact, many of the difficult conversations our kids will need to have will be with us. These are the kind of conversations that many...
By the end of last year, I felt totally depleted and fatigued by doing all the things that we mothers do. The mothering, the schooling, the working, the cooking, the washing, the emotional caring, the disciplining, the routine making, the routine keeping,...
When your kid is starting high school, it's almost as daunting as when they started 'big school'. Because, let's face it, high school is the real big school. Starting high school is the beginning of both the end and the beginning. Yup, it's a very confusing time. My...
used to be the kind of school swimming carnival mum who says, "go and support others, even if you don't participate", but not anymore. I don't make my kids go to the school swimming carnival anymore. I did for years, but I'm done with it. Even though I'm really...
It's no doubt the #1 response parents make when they ask what they want for their kids in life: "I just want my child to be happy." “I just want my child to be happy.” We mean it wholeheartedly when we say it. Then we leave that happiness to chance. We talk to our...
Do you feel guilty all the time about the way you have raised your children? I have always felt so guilty from day one: I didn't give my kids enough of my time and I escaped to work as soon as I could, because mothering was so hard. Now my daughter is self harming,...
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