Parenting

One in seven Australian mothers experience postnatal depression, and thousands more suffer in silence. For Jackie Hall, that suffering culminated in a terrifying incident which saw a kitchen knife narrowly miss her two-year-old son’s head. Jackie started feeling depressed after the birth of her first son, and the feelings only intensified when her second was […]

According to a study by researchers from Melbourne’s Swinburne University, published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, a family history of ‘pink disease’ is a strong risk factor for developing autism. Never heard of pink disease? Its official name is infantile acrodynia, and it was a form of mercury poisoning that was quite […]

Women often talk about their desire to have a little girl and some go to extreme lengths to make it happen. Jolanda Waskito was the opposite; she wanted a boy. When she set out to understand why she felt this way, the answer was surprising. I was 34 when my husband and I decided it […]

As we get lost in the hustle bustle of life it can be difficult to get together as a family to eat meals, especially as children get older and have activities that keep them busy. But the importance of family meal time should not be underestimated, with studies showing that regularly eating meals at the […]

It’s far easier to be a rubbish parent than a good one, the struggle to parent effectively without falling out with your kids can sometimes just feel too hard. The older they get the more you have to worry about and it sometimes seems much easier just to let them run riot, horrible though the […]

Since the first series of Big Brother Australia aired in 2001, the nation has been in the grips of reality TV fever — but are the constant arguments and vicious gossip captured on today’s hit shows making our kids mean? Parenting expert and psychotherapist Robi Ludwig is convinced the bad behaviour flaunted in popular programmes […]

Each morning, a large number of Australian children are leaving the house without having eaten. Of more concern is that one-quarter go on to have soft drinks and one in 10 eat chocolate, ice-cream or potato chips as their first meal of the day. Nutritionally, they are loading up on foods high in salt, sugar […]

Some of our children’s favourite cartoons are damaging their ability to concentrate, a new study has claimed. Psychologists in the US found that four-year-olds shown clips of modern fast-paced animations, such as the popular Spongebob Squarepants, performed significantly worse in memory, attention and logic tests than those who spent their time drawing instead. Related: Overprotective […]

Overprotective parents are raising a generation of anti-social, obese and excessively cautious children, experts have claimed. Two parenting experts discussed the impact of ‘hovering helicopter parents’ in an article in the American Journal of Play. The claim that today’s children have virtually no opportunity for unsupervised ‘free play’, leaving them prone to obesity, poor physical […]

Placing children in the care of the teenager next door or a trusted young relative has long been a preferred alternative to hiring expensive agency-provided babysitters, both by money-conscious parents and teens looking to pocket some extra cash. But nanny agencies are calling for the NSW government to enforce a minimum age for child minders, […]