Parent Pause

Just pause for a moment and imagine this. Your child has something on their mind - friendship trouble, anxiety, a question about their body. And instead of turning to you, or a friend, they ask a machine. Not because they prefer the machine. But because it’s always there. Always polite. Always attentive. A teenager said to me recently, “It’s easier to talk to AI. It doesn’t judge you.” And that sa...

Before you add one more thing to the Mother’s Day list - pause. What if we stopped being the family’s emotional project manager? I remember a Sunday lunch - not even Mother’s Day - when I realised I was orchestrating everything. Who liked gravy. Who didn’t. Who hadn’t eaten enough. Who needed prompting to say thank you. Who might spill something. Who was about to sulk. I was exhausted before we’d...

Mother’s Day can ache. Not because our children forget the card. But because it reminds us of the mother we didn’t have. I once sat with a woman who came to talk about her daughter. But somewhere in the conversation she whispered, “I don’t know how to mother her without becoming my own mother. And I don’t want to do that.” So many of us are parenting from a blueprint drawn in pencil. Some of us we...

Before you roll your eyes at another post about flowers and forced gratitude - just give me a moment. A few years ago, I came downstairs on Mother’s Day quietly hoping for magic. Handmade cards. Effort. Some visible proof that all the invisible labour had been clocked. Instead - crumbs. Squabbling. And a whisper of, “Oh no… is it today?” And there it was. That small, sharp voice - Do I matter? But...

That question has been quietly needling me. I watched a teenager type into AI, “Make this sound more sophisticated.” And it did. Instantly. Part of me was impressed. That’s modern literacy, isn’t it? Adaptable. Efficient. Smart. But another part of me wondered - does she know what sophisticated actually means? Could she have done it herself if the machine wasn’t there? We’re shifting from knowing...

A mother told me recently how proud she was of her son’s polished, structured essay. Then he admitted he’d used AI for most of it. She said, “But it’s so good.” And I remember thinking - yes, that’s the problem. Education isn’t about producing something that looks impressive. It’s about becoming someone who can think. I remember writing terrible essays at university. Pages of muddle. Books everywh...

If your child can produce a perfectly polished essay in 12 seconds, should we be impressed - or worried? I asked girls how they were coping with the homework load goes up in secondary school and one said, very matter-of-factly, “Oh, it’s fine, I just get ChatGPT to write it and then I change a few words.” No shame. No secrecy. She genuinely thought she was being sensible, efficient and ahead of th...

Wait. Before you scroll. Who told you that pleasure was dangerous? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself - and asking other women - ever since our Women’s Hour this week. Because if I’m honest, for so many of us, pleasure feels risky. Too much food. Too much laughter. Too much rest. Too much wanting. Somewhere along the way we absorbed the idea that if we let ourselves enjoy things properly, we...

Here’s my confession - I find it almost impossible to lie down in the afternoon. Even when I’m bone tired. Even when I’ve worked since dawn. Even when, if I’m honest, nobody actually needs me. There’s this little voice that says, you haven’t done enough yet. Wait until this evening. Earn it. Maybe you know that voice too. It sounds responsible. Productive. Moral. But it’s not kind. I work with hun...

I used to eat biscuits standing up at the kitchen counter. No cup of tea. No plate. No sitting down. Just a quick, almost defensive bite, as if someone might walk in and say - oh no, that’s not for you. You haven’t earned that. Isn’t that strange? A grown woman. A mother. Running an organisation. And I couldn’t sit down and eat a biscuit with pleasure. I remember my daughter catching me once. “You...

W hen we talk about keeping children safe online, we often talk as if the responsibility sits mainly with them. They should log off. They should show restraint. They should manage what some of the most sophisticated behavioural technology ever created is designed to do: keep them scrolling. That’s a lot to ask of a developing brain. And what do they see us doing, as our children are watching us. I...

Screen time isn’t the real question - and it never has been. A few years ago I was watching a group of girls at break time. Not running. Not laughing. Not inventing games the way we used to. They were standing in little clusters, heads down, each in a world of their own, scrolling. Later I asked some girls in one of my groups if that was familiar. They said yes - and one of them shrugged and said,...

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...