Tag: Teenagers
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Living Each Day And Surviving Every Parent’s Worst Nightmare
The most annoying thing about being the mother of a rebellious eighteen-year old is that you can’t always ensure they go out in their best underwear. That was one of the things that went through my mind on Thursday as we wove our way through city traffic to every parent’s worst nightmare… After the call…to say…
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Mental Illness: Crazy, Bad or Misunderstood
How did you spend your Sunday afternoon? I spent mine mine devouring a riveting series that I missed on the ABC last year about a mental health hospital in Sydney. That’s just the kind fun person I am. But what’s interesting, is where once the subject of mental illness was a taboo one, locked firmly…
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A New Year Of Parenting
And so another year of parenting has come around to challenge and age us prematurely. For those with ickle children, I hate to burst your bubble but nothing changes in the worrying stakes as your children get older. Just another reason it felt so fucking awesome to see that even Madonna can’t get parenting right. …
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Everyone Needs A Token Baby Jesus At Christmas
I’ve got earache. The Princess was too mature to adorn the silly moustache. Obviously, mine is real! It’s either payback for jumping into the pool for that revitalising swim on Christmas Day, (sometime between dessert and cheese), to celebrate the end of a glorious lunch that finally made it to the table in spite of…
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We’re Lucky Enough To Be Holidaying With Our Parents
It’s family holiday time and no, I never did manage to lose the three kilos I needed to semi-confidently wear my swimsuit in public. I wish I could savour this feeling of excitement and anticipation that I always experience in the weeks leading up to a holiday; that is, before we go. Before I remember the…
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The Question That Divides A Nation of Parents Of Teenagers
A lot has changed over the past thirty years in terms of what teenagers can and cannot do. happy young couple in bed at morning But nothing sets the cat quite as freely among the pigeons as the question of where parents stand on sleeping arrangements and privileges in the homestead, once teenagers enter into…
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How A Small Part Of You Celebrates When A Friend Fails At Parenting, Too
Just as a small part of you dies when a friend succeeds, (according to Gore Vidal), a small part of me celebrates triumphantly when a friend fails spectacularly at parenting, like I have so many times. Do you know what has truly kept me sane through all these troubled ‘Kurt years’? It’s the support of…
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Sometimes It Feels Good To Coast
For those of you who read my posts for my input on ADHD, I discovered the most fantastic read on ADDitude magazine last weekend by Frank South, aka ADHD Dad. It just so happens his post was about his twenty-three year old son, who sounds suspiciously like he is carving a similarly dodgy career to…
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Don’t Let Your Children Define You
I reach the other other end of another decade next week, which has given me pause for reflection. http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/566419105 I entered this last decade with a new life in Australia, but ‘life’ as such is rarely defined by the country you inhabit, rather the people you inhabit it with. Inevitably, my most recent decade has…
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When Hormones Get In The Way Of Your Work/Life, Family Balance
Ever feel like God was having some kind of sick joke when he coordinated the onset of menopause with the metamorphosis of happy children into entitled, grunting teenagers? We all strive for the perfect work/life, family balance but it’s not easy to get that balance right when there are effectively four adults living in one…
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The 8 Best Mother’s Day Gifts
As the excitement builds up in the commercial world for Mother’s Day, the suspense of how well my progeny will repay me for another year of self-sacrifice and doormat behaviour is almost killing me. Actually…not so much. Because the thing about Mother’s Day, if you have normal kids, is there’s only the tiniest glimmer of…
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Scoring Parenting Points
This photo makes me cackle bitterly. Photo by thegreenhouse2009 at flickr.com It seems a double standard to me that each time I have disciplined Kurt since my return from holiday, I have been accused of ‘nagging’; yet when the old man does the same thing, he calls it ‘confronting’ bad behavior. Do you and your…
LOUISA SIMMONDS 