Most parents of teenagers have had the experience of watching their child fall apart over something that seems, from the outside, relatively small. A friendship drama. A failed test. A perceived slight. And somewhere in that moment, you might have thought: why can't they just handle this? The other version is quieter, and in some ways more worrying. Your teenager has gone somewhere you can't reach. They're present in the house but absent in every way that matters. Monosyllabi

You have been doing bedtime for fifty minutes, again! You have done the routine, the cuddle, the kiss. You have checked that the nightlight is on the right brightness and that her water bottle is within reach and that the door is open at exactly the angle she needs. You have whispered that you love her and that everything is okay and that tomorrow will be a good day ... and she is still calling for you. Not because she is naughty. Not because she is manipulating you. Not even

Picture a six year old. She is lying on the kitchen floor, very seriously explaining to a wooden spoon that it cannot come to the tea party because it was rude to the fork. This is not messing around. This is not killing time. This is, if you look at it through the right lens, one of the most cognitively sophisticated things a small human can do. We live in an age that is quietly suspicious of play. Especially unstructured play — the kind with no clear outcome, no app, no coa

This is one of the topics I find most important to write about, and one of the most painful to sit with in the therapy room. The mother-daughter rift in adolescence. It comes up constantly in my work with teens and families and it rarely arrives quietly. It arrives in the form of a mum who is exhausted and heartbroken, telling me she doesn’t recognise her daughter anymore. Or a teenager who insists her mum is the problem, but cries when she talks about feeling so far away fro

Picture this. You and your partner are standing in the kitchen, having what should be a simple conversation about whose turn it is to book the car service, and somehow, somehow, it spirals into a loaded silence that lasts the rest of the evening. Neither of you quite knows how you got there. You both go to bed feeling vaguely unseen and a little bit alone. If that sounds familiar, you are not in a failing relationship. You are in a human one. Relationship health ebbs and flow

Picture this. It's 5pm. Your kiddo has been asked, for the fourth time, to put their shoes on. They are not putting their shoes on! Instead, they are doing something inexplicable with a piece of string and appear to have completely forgotten that you, the request, shoes, and the outside world, exist. You're not angry. You're something beyond angry. You're exhausted and confused and wondering, for what feels like the hundredth time this month, whether this is normal. Whether s

Last week I joined a theatre full of parents in Sydney to hear Dr Shefali Tsabary speak about conscious parenting. I walked in as both a psychologist and a mum, curious about how her ideas would land in real life parenting, not just in theory. Dr Shefali is a clinical psychologist known for her books "The Conscious Parent", "The Awakened Family" and more recently, "The Parenting Map". Her approach blends Western psychology with Eastern philosophy and mindfulness. Within the

In many families, mums often become the “go to” parent. They may spend more time managing day to day needs, emotional care, and school life, and can feel like they understand the children best. Dads can start to feel like the secondary parent, stepping in to help, enforce rules, or manage behaviour, but not always feeling as emotionally connected. Sometimes this division happens naturally. Sometimes it grows out of work schedules, family patterns, or cultural expectations. An

When a child is being silly, melts down, shouts “no,” ignores instructions, or seems deliberately difficult, it can feel personal, disrespectful, or simply bad or naughty behaviour. Many adults were raised with the belief that children "should know better,” “toughen up,” or “just do as they’re told”. But the science of child development tells us something very different: Behaviour is communication. Especially the behaviour that challenges us the most. Children and teenagers d

Screens are part of childhood now. They are how children relax, socialise, learn, compete and connect. For primary school children, roughly between six and twelve years old, digital life is woven into friendships and play in a way that simply did not exist when most of us were growing up. As parents, we see this reality every day. Screens are not going anywhere, and for many children they are genuinely fun, creative and social. At the same time, many parents notice something