Parent Pause

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...

Ever opened your mouth at your child and heard a fourteen-year-old version of yourself come out? If so, this week’s audios are for you. We’re returning to your inner teenager - because some of you asked to - and because she’s livelier and far more involved in your parenting than you might like to admit. You may think you’ve grown past her, but she hasn’t gone anywhere. She’s simply been waiting fo...

If you’ve spent years forecasting everyone’s moods, no wonder you’re tired. Most parents don’t realise they’ve become the household’s emotional meteorologist, scanning for storms before they form, watching for the slightest shift in tone, bracing for impact before anyone else has even noticed a cloud. This audio looks at that habit, and why it wears us down. Many of us grew up needing to predict t...

If tiredness were paid by the hour, most parents would be earning overtime before breakfast. If that sounds uncomfortably familiar, you might want to listen to this one. Today’s Pause looks squarely at the ghost jobs of parenting - all the roles you never signed up for but somehow do anyway. Emotional bomb disposal unit. Homework supervisor. Bedtime negotiator. Lost property seeker. The one who pa...

Ever feel like you accidentally signed up for twenty jobs you never applied for? If so, this audio might feel like a deep exhale. Today’s Pause looks at the ghost jobs of parenthood - all the invisible roles you somehow ended up doing as part of being parent. Taxi driver, short order chef, detective, emotional buffer, sock-locator-in-chief... the list is endless, and most of it goes unseen. Naming...

What if the most restorative rest is the kind that brings you joy? In this Parent Pause, Kim gently challenges the idea that rest must be dutiful, disciplined or part of an endless ‘self-care routine.’ Instead, she invites us to reclaim rest as something simple, playful, and deeply human. When culture tells us to push harder and measure our worth by productivity, we risk passing the same message o...

What if you didn’t have to earn your rest? In this Parent Pause, Kim explores the radical idea that rest isn’t a reward for productivity, it’s a basic human need. Many of us come from long lines of hardworking people who equated rest with indulgence and collapsed only at the end of the day. Without realising it, we’ve inherited that pace, pushing harder and faster until our bodies shout for a paus...

What if the smallest pause could change your whole day? This week’s Parent Pause explores the idea of resting without permission - something most of us were never taught. We’ve grown up in a culture addicted to doing, where rest is treated as a reward we earn only after the dishes, the emails, the bedtime routine… except the list never ends. In this episode, Kim invites us to try “rest snacks”: ti...

What if the feelings you think are about your child... are actually echoes from the teenager you once were? Today’s audio continues this week’s theme of looking at our past experience of being a child is often just beneath the surface. The teenager you once were - the one who felt exposed, or embarrassed, or left out - is still inside you. Not in an old photograph, but in your nervous system. And...

What if the person reacting to your child isn’t the adult you think you are... but the teenager you once were? Today’s audio looks at a part of parenting we rarely talk about. Your teen self - the version of you who once slammed doors, felt misunderstood, fought for space, or promised never to become like your parents. That part of you is still in the room. And more often than we realise, it is th...

What if the part of you reacting to your child isn’t the adult at all... but the teenager you used to be? This week I want to explore something many of us don’t realise is happening in the background of our parenting. Our inner teenager - the part of us that once slammed doors, or hid in silence, or tried very hard to look like we didn’t care - still lives inside us. And that part often shows up i...

What if your daughter isn’t lacking confidence at all... she’s just exhausted from pretending she has it? Today I’m talking about something I’m seeing everywhere in preteen girls. Confidence fatigue. Girls who look fine on the outside but feel overwhelmed on the inside. Girls who have learned to perform confidence instead of experiencing it. They feel pressure to look confident in photos, to seem...

What if “be kind” is the very reason your daughter struggles with confidence? If that makes you pause - good. This week my three audios are focusing on something few of us were ever taught to question: the Nice Girl script . Many of us grew up with the same job description:Smile. Share. Don’t make a fuss. And now we’re layering “Be confident!” on top of that… creating a tangle of mixed messages, e...

What if your daughter’s “confidence problem” isn’t a lack of confidence at all? This week’s audios dive into something I’m seeing everywhere - girls who are too anxious to enjoy life, or girls who look confident on the outside but are quietly crumbling under the pressure to appear that way. And the more we tell them to “be confident!”, the worse it seems to get. In this week’s series, I explore th...