Tips to manage your child’s Smartphone activity – a review of the Family Link app
Tips for setting safe limits for young teenagers
Essential Tips for Starting Secondary School
Invaluable advice for your child, from those who’ve been there
Parenting Teens: Why I’m letting my 13 year old watch #LoveIsland
How to use the reality show as a parenting tool…
Mental Health and Suicide: Q&A with Jonny Benjamin
Suicide. The biggest killer of middle aged men, and of new mums. And now suicide amongst teenagers is at its highest rate in 14 years, with more than 4 young people per week taking their own lives. The problem is even worse amongst young women in their early twenties, and it’s estimated that most of the mental health issues leading to self harm have begun before the age of 14. One of the common themes I see discussed by mental health campaigners is that we just don’t talk enough about mental health, self-harm and suicide enough, that people feel isolated, …
Self Image and Body Confidence in Teenagers
*Updated: Missguided have now taken the item off sale and it no longer features on their website. Let’s hope it stays that way. Thanks to everyone who contacted them about this, and for all the support on Instagram. Body Confidence and Self Image. It’s a big theme right now, especially for mums – women whose bodies show the signs of what they have produced and nurtured. (Watch this video from my friend for a hilarious take on a serious message). And I’m wholeheartedly behind that. But what concerns me most at the moment is the message our teens are getting; …
Life: How Today’s Teenagers will Change the World (paid partnership with NCS)
How today’s teenagers will change the world for the better with NCS The radio is always on when I get in the car with my kids. And right now, I can’t seem to do a car journey without hearing about yet another stabbing of a young person in London. The kids get worried. Of course they do – they’re at an age where they’re getting some independence, going off into town, or to the park with their friends, and for all their confidence, they’re aware of risk. And that’s a good thing. But it’s not really enough, is it? …
Why teenagers need you more, not less as they grow up
When you’re in the thick of looking after your young child, and someone tells you teenagers need you more than toddlers, you laugh. But here’s why it’s true…
What’s all the Fuss about 13 Reasons Why?
Everyone is talking about 13 Reasons Why. Have you seen it? Have you deliberately avoided it, not wanting to go to that place where your child is 17 and no longer tells you anything? Has your 12 year old seen it? Did you ban her from watching it? 13 Reasons Why – the take-home message for parents If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, chances are you don’t have a child somewhere between the ages of 11 and 18. 13 Reasons is the Netflix drama about a girl who commits suicide, and the 13 tapes she records to …
Surviving Secondary School For Mums
Tips for parents on getting through their child’s first term at secondary school.
#TeenTalk: How to Talk Puberty with your Child
My best friend once confided in me that she’d recently asked her mum to get her some sanitary pads while she was at the supermarket. “The ones with wings please Mum.” she’d requested. Her mum was aghast. “They have wings??!” We collapsed in giggles at the thought of what was going through her poor mother’s mind at the thought of a flying period aid, and reminisced at buried memories of finding strange elastic belts and loops in our parent’s bathroom cabinets, next to the castor oil, and something called setting lotion. Though we laughed, it made us realise just how far women’s …
Why girls SHOULD be concerned about their appearance
Recently, I’ve overhauled my make-up bag. I’ve never been that big on cosmetics, and apart from a brief rebellious flirtation with blue mascara in the school toilets in Year 9, I’ve worn pretty much the same look for nearly 4 decades. But I have a twelve year old daughter, and she has an Instagram account. She knows exactly how to create the perfect eyebrow, and took me to task over my own straggly excuses until I gave in, and allowed her to do me a makeover. She was right. But I feel strangely uncomfortable. Strong women everywhere tell me that …
Parenting: Why Teenage isn’t a number
“She’s SUCH a Teenager!!” I’m betting every parent knows where that came from, even if their oldest child is only three. There’s even a term for it – threenager. Every exasperated mother who’s ever manhandled an obstinate toddler into a pushchair, or been struck speechless by her seven-year-old’s ability to hit a raw nerve understands the fear of what might come next. If she’s like this now, how bad is it going to be when she’s a teenager..? What exactly is a teenager? The thing is, teenaged isn’t really an age – it’s a process. Parenting society has come to use the word …
Minecraft or Minefield? Essential Help with Parental Controls
Parental Controls – Simplified It’s a nightmare, isn’t it? Knowing what your kids are doing online, and more importantly, knowing that they’re safe. Our children have grown up intuitively knowing how to operate devices, seeing them as sources of fun, interaction with friends, and even – as they get older – educational tools. They’re not scared of them, they’re not nonplussed by technology, and so it stands to reason that they’re not worried about living their lives online. But for parents – many of whom have had to learn alongside their children, and with media horror stories in mind – …
Keep Bodies Real, for the Sake of our Girls – Sponsored by Dove
When she was 7, my daughter came home and asked me if she could shave her legs. My heart sank, because I knew we were on the brink of a lifetime of concerns about her appearance. She had been teased at school, and in an afternoon, she’d gone from not caring two figs about her legs – beyond how fast they could carry her round the playground – to wanting them to conform to someone else’s expectations. Over the next few years, a whole bunch of other perceived flaws found their way into her awareness of herself, from moles to …
Daddy’s Girl: How a Father’s Support can Help a Girl Achieve her Dreams
Do you have a Daddy’s girl? Does she twist him round her little finger, engaging her best smiles just for him? Does it drive you mad that he can never say no, or manage any semblance of discipline when his daughter is around? Well read on, to find out why that may not be such bad thing. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the classic father daughter bond between my girl and my husband. It’s a common theme in parenting, the adoration that fathers have for their girls, the ability girls. The two of them are regularly in cahoots over …
The Best Summer Ever
Two years ago my then 9-year-old bounced out of school on the last day of the year, full of excitement for the holidays, and pronounced that it was going to be the best summer ever. For various reasons, it wasn’t, and the memory of that hopeful, thwarted statement has haunted me ever since. I’ve waited quietly for the best summer ever to tip up and lay that ghost to rest, biding my time, and watching my children as they unwind after a long school year. This summer was the one. This holiday has been the best summer ever. As we …
Helping Kids to Make Healthy Friendships
I’ll never forget the year my best friend send me to Coventry. There were six of us in our group, and I was completely oblivious of our status of ‘top dogs’ in the classroom, though I can see it now. We occupied the centre of the room, three double desks set together, making everyone else satellites to our clique around the edges. We’d been together right from the start, though Kaye and I were best friends. Both strong personalities, we probably vied for position, although conveniently, I remember her being the most confident. I’m the classic boiled egg – what …