Parent Pause

We spend years teaching our children how to cross the road safely. Hold my hand. Look both ways. Stay alert. Don’t assume the traffic will behave. But when it comes to the internet - a place far more persuasive, complex and psychologically powerful than any road - we often hand them a phone and simply hope for the best. A parent once told me, “I trust my daughter online.” And I understood what she...

Your child is so often anxious, and you’ve tried so many different ways to help, but they’re still so anxious so much of the time and you’re wondering if any of this is actually working. That moment when you think, honestly, is anything changing at all? Because from the outside it can look like we’re stuck. Still anxious. Still avoiding. Still frozen. In this Parent Pause I talk about how progress...

Your child is anxious… and suddenly you are too. When we love an anxious child, their worry doesn’t stay neatly in their body - it moves straight into ours. We start scanning, planning, catastrophising, lying awake at night listening to their breathing and imagining everything that might go wrong. And before we know it, their anxiety is running our nervous system too. In this Parent Pause I talk a...

Your child walks into the room and the anxiety gets there first. You know that moment when nothing has been said, but your shoulders tense and the air changes. Anxiety lives in bodies. In theirs, and then suddenly in ours too. This pause is about remembering that when a child is anxious, our job isn’t to make the fear disappear. It’s to offer our steady nervous system alongside their unsteady one....

What if you don’t bounce back from a wobble - but instead you wobble back? That’s what I’m thinking about in this Parent Pause. The idea that resilience isn’t about snapping back to who you were before as quickly and invisibly as possible. It’s about becoming someone slightly different because of what you’ve been through. Softer, braver, more honest about your limits. In this audio I talk about no...

Have you ever had a day that looks absolutely fine on the outside - emails answered, kids delivered, washing on - and then one tiny thing tips you over and you’re suddenly on the floor wondering how you got there? That’s what this Parent Pause is about. Those quiet wobbles that stack up without us noticing, until something small makes us collapse in a way that feels totally out of proportion. Not...

This week’s Parent Pause is about those quiet, easily missed moments when something inside us slips a few inches sideways and we’re suddenly a bit off-centre. Not falling apart. Not in crisis. Just not quite ourselves. And because life with children is so full, so noisy, so demanding, we can walk around like that for days without really noticing. In this audio I talk about how we spot those wobble...

Can I say something slightly heretical? Less stuff isn’t always the answer. If you’re living in a house that feels full to bursting with children’s things, your partner’s things and your own, this Parent Pause is an invitation to question the pressure to declutter our way to calm. I talk about how parenting isn’t a lifestyle aesthetic, and how the images we’re sold of serene, neutral family homes...

What if the mess isn’t the problem? What if it’s trying to tell us something. In this Parent Pause, I talk about the tyranny of children’s stuff - the piles, the chaos, the sense that the house is slowly filling up - and my resistance to becoming a sergeant major barking orders to tidy it all away. I explore the idea that our children are often telling us stories with their stuff, and that when we...

I want to start with a confession. Sometimes my children’s stuff makes me feel slightly panicky. Not because I’m a tidy person - I’m really not - but because when every surface is covered, it can feel like everywhere in the house is asking something of me. In this Parent Pause, I talk about that feeling of being pressed in by toys, clothes, half-made projects and plastic things with missing bits,...

A decision can change you before you ever make it; just that process of making a decision can change you. If you’re parenting with something big on your mind, this Parent Pause is an invitation to slow down and notice what making the decision itself is doing to you. In this audio I talk about how we so often focus on outcomes - the move, the job, the school, the yes or the no - and miss the quiete...

What if there isn’t a right answer? What if there never was. If you’re parenting with a decision circling your mind, hoping that one day it will suddenly become obvious, clean, and consequence-free, this Parent Pause is for you. I talk about the quiet pressure we put on ourselves to find the “best” choice, the one that doesn’t disappoint anyone, and how exhausting that is when you’re also raising...

You know that feeling when a decision won’t leave you alone? It follows you through the school run, sits beside you while you’re chopping vegetables, hums quietly while you’re trying to be present. In this Parent Pause, I talk about what it’s like to parent when a big decision is living in your body, even if it’s not yet urgent. About how, as parents, we rarely get the luxury of stopping life to d...

If you, or someone you know, is waiting to feel “back to normal” and wondering why it’s taking so long, this Parent Pause is for you. I want to talk about the getting-back part of a wobble - rather than the wobble itself. Resilience isn’t a personality trait you either have or don’t have, and it’s also not about how quickly you can snap back or pull yourself together. Resilience is about noticing...

Ever have those days where you don’t feel like a good parent at all? Not the dramatic, headline-grabbing failures. Just the quiet ones. The snappy day. The tired day. The day where everyone is fed and alive and that’s honestly all you’ve got. This Pause is for those days. It’s a myth that good parenting means being endlessly patient, present and emotionally available, and why that fantasy actually...

If you’ve ever thought, “Everything’s fine… so why do I feel like this?” this pause is for you. In this audio, I talk about the kind of wobbles that arrive without warning. No crisis. No big mistake. Just that flat, shaky, off feeling that can creep in when you’ve been holding everything together for a very long time. Wobbling isn’t a failure or a weakness, but information. A sign from your body t...

If you’re pinning your hopes on January to magically sort your life out, this pause is for you. Every year we’re sold this idea that at the stroke of midnight we’re meant to become upgraded versions of ourselves - calmer, fitter, more patient, more organised, better parents, better humans. And honestly... it’s nonsense. We don’t transform because a calendar flips. We change when something inside u...

I crashed the car this week. That’s how I knew I had to slow down and grieve. This episode of Parent Pause is about parenting while grieving. About what happens when someone you love dies and still the world keeps asking things of you. Children to parent. Plans to make. A festive season looming that demands cheer, organisation and energy you simply do not have. Grief does not arrive politely. It d...

What if you don’t want a new year? If that question makes something in you go “oh thank goodness, me neither,” then this pause is for you. Everywhere I look, people are shouting about fresh starts and reinventions, as if we’re all meant to leap into January with sparkling energy and a five-year plan. But what if you’re just… tired? What if, actually, you’re proud of what you held together this yea...

Ever wake up after the festivities and feel… odd? Not sad, not happy, just a bit blah? If so, this pause is for you. We talk about the festive rush - the lists, the logistics, the trays of mince pies and the endless wrapping - but almost never about the crash that follows it. The emotional hangover. Not the alcohol one. The one that comes from simply feeling so much . “Nothing’s wrong… but everyth...

If you’ve ever fantasised about walking out of the house for five minutes just to breathe, this pause is for you. Because despite what we tell ourselves, that urge to escape for a moment isn’t a sign you’re failing - it’s a sign you’re human. This time of year can feel like a perfect storm. Someone needs you, something burns, something spills, someone cries, and suddenly every cell in your body wh...

If you secretly hate parts of the festive season, this one is for you. Honestly. I think we need to say that out loud more often. Every December I hear from parents wondering if they’re the only ones struggling while everyone else seems to glide through it all effortlessly. And we need to hear: it’s not just you . I get overwhelmed at this time of year too, and so do children. The pressure, the ex...

If the pressure to “make it magical” is starting to make you twitch, this one’s for you. December comes with a whole load of demands: Be joyful. Be organised. Be creative. Be calm. Be the memory-maker, the peacekeeper, the present-buyer, the magic-generator. And do it all while looking serene. Meanwhile, our children don’t actually need curated magic, fifteen kinds of biscuits, or a social-media-w...

If bedtime feels like a battleground, the real struggle might not be happening in your child’s bedroom at all. It might be happening inside you. Today’s Parent Pause looks at the surprising truth that many bedtime clashes have very little to do with teeth brushing, pyjamas or lights out. Instead, they can awaken something much older, much more tender, and far more charged than the moment in front...

If your child’s eye roll affects you more than seems reasonable, there’s a reason. Not a modern-parenting reason. A much older one. Today’s Pause looks at why the tiniest thing - a sigh, an eye roll, a shrug - can feel so personal, even when your child hasn’t actually done anything much. We explore the uncomfortable truth that many of our strongest reactions have very little to do with our childre...