If the most meaningful conversation you've had with your partner this week was about who's doing Thursday pick-up, you're in very good company. I often meet couples who love each other and also still really like each other too. But somewhere between the night feeds, the school lunches and the Saturday sport, they've become co-workers. Very efficient co-workers, running a small, chaotic business with no weekends off. As a mum, I get it. What's going on Children change almost e

Picture a 14-year-old girl. She has a small group of friends, gets good marks, and her teachers describe her as "a delight". She is polite, a little quiet and works hard. Then she walks through the front door at 3.30pm. Within minutes she is snapping at her brother, melting down because dinner has changed, or disappearing into her room until morning. Weekends are spent recovering. Her parents are confused. School says she is fine. So why isn't she? A common presentation to ou

There is a moment we see in the Clinic regularly. A child comes in wound up from school, buzzing with leftover stress, and the parent says, “They’ve been like this all afternoon. I don’t know what to do with them.” What’s often happening inside that child is a nervous system that’s been running on stress chemicals, cortisol especially, for hours. What they need, more than a talking to or a screen, is a gentle reset. These strategies are fundamental for all kids. Every child,

Families come into my clinic describing a strikingly consistent pattern. A three, four or five year old whose intensity, impulsivity and emotional volatility has gradually taken over the household. Transitions produce meltdowns reliably. Bedtime negotiations run to an hour. Play with siblings or peers turns physical quickly and unpredictably. By the time parents seek help, they are not managing this badly. They are managing a genuinely demanding clinical presentation without

It often starts quietly. A teenager decides to “eat healthier”. Dessert goes first, then lunch at school. A morning run becomes a morning and evening run. Suddenly she has very firm opinions about which foods are “good” and which are “bad”. As a parent, it can be hard to tell whether this is a phase, a health kick or something more serious. In my experience, parents usually sense something isn’t right well before anyone says the words “eating disorder”. That instinct is worth

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