Category: Parenting
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Graduation Photo Smugness and The Sacrifice of Parenting
The big day came and went last Friday when NC graduated from her university with her degree in Advanced Science. Three years of hard work for her and eighteen years of hard work for us culminated in an hour-long ceremony. The Dean reminded his graduates to go and do what they feel passionate about –…
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Graduating With Your Child
Thank you to Em Rusciano for the inspiration for this post. See the video on my Facebook page about her being a NEXT LEVEL, FORMAL MUM on 2Day FM. You see, there can be no better prize as a parent than those academic award days when your child’s achievement is unveiled publicly and you can…
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Tomorrow Is Another Day for People With ADHD
So much negativity surrounds people with ADHD and that judgement can be paramount to their poor self-esteem. But something no-one can take away from the ‘differences’ in their mindset is their relentless enthusiasm for life, when they aren’t reeled in by the constraints of a society that is at odds with their strengths and personality…
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Has Western Society Compromised Community For Adventure?
I read this article by Hugh Mackay this morning, and it reinforced my view that one of the main reasons behind the increase in mental illness in the modern world is a disappearing sense of community and isolation. The accusation that perhaps we’ve got our priorities wrong in terms of our lifestyle choices makes perfect…
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Role Modelling: When You Get Tired Of Being The Responsible Parent
One day over the holidays, after lunch out with the old man at our local pub, NC and and I continued to paint the town red while he disappeared to check the cricket scores. Obviously we didn’t leave the house – because that be supremely awkward for her – and the focus of our “session”…
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My Son Has Never Read A Book
To have to admit that at the age of nineteen my son has never read a book fills me with the sort of bad-parent angst and shame that I imagine I would experience if I stood in front of an AA meeting and admitted to being an alcoholic. He reminded me of this fact yesterday…
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‘Tis The Season Of The Family Holiday
It’s that character-building time of the year when all those carefully thwarted irritations caused by living with people you didn’t choose to live with, are thrown squarely into the spotlight on the family holiday. Why I insist on instilling this week of hell bonding I have no idea, but I get sentimental after I watch…
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Suicide, And Making Men Understand That They Don’t Have To Be Heroes
It seems a million shades of wrong to be preparing for Christmas drinks when a week or so ago another family lost their son, in his early twenties, to suicide. I cannot imagine their ongoing suffering as I worry about whether we’ll run out of wine or if I’ll poison everyone with my Thai chicken…
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This Time Last Year My Son Should Have Been Sitting His HSC
Don’t worry, I’m not torturing myself with this fact, but this post is one that I’ve wanted to write for a long time about my son. It’s similar in vein to the piece Jenny Lawson, “The Bloggess”, wrote on election day in the US – It’s Going To Be Okay. It’s about holding onto the…
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When Your Kids Selfishly Decide To Become Vegetarian
For the third time in her short life, NC has decided to give up meat and become a pescatarian. She is an environmental vegetarian which is apparently the practice of vegetarianism or veganism based on the indications that animal production, particularly by intensive farming, is environmentally unsustainable. Industrialised agriculture contributes on a “massive scale” to global warming, air pollution,…
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Teenagers, Privacy and Door Slamming
A friend once bragged how when her daughter went through that special teenage phase when she used to ram home her opinions by slamming her bedroom door, she finally reached her tipping point one day, found a screwdriver and removed it. When her daughter returned home from school, she explained to her that privacy is…
LOUISA SIMMONDS 