Stay ConnectedHormones. Anxiety. Angst. Raising teens is tough.
Parental As Anything: Teens gives you practical tips on how to navigate your teen-sized problems, from porn to partying, body issues to bullying.
Rebecca Sparrow, teen educator and author talks to parents and experts to unpack the biggest challenges of parenting teens.
Learn how to support your teenager while staying (mostly) sane.
Copyright: © Copyright 2023, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. All right reserved.
Do you hate your thighs? Your skin? Your post-baby body? Around 80 per cent of women within the normal body mass index range are dissatisfied with their bodies and those rates are increasing in men too.
So how can we make sure our kids don’t develop the same negative body image we have? Maggie talks to Natasha Devon, a Body Image Campaigner, about how you can help your child love themselves just the way they are.
Is your child kind of obnoxious... always wanting to be the centre of attention? Or are they so sensitive they're missing out on opportunities to shine?
These traits are part of a temperament spectrum that Maggie calls the Rooster and Lamb Continuum. She talks to parents about how to identify a rooster or a lamb, how to manage their most extreme traits like anxiousness or arrogance, and how to gently nudge them towards the middle of the continuum.
Sometimes the hardest part about raising a child is the disagreements you have with your partner, or ex, about how to do it. Whether you're sharing custody, navigating the politics of a blended family or simply co-parenting in a stable relationship with your child's other parent, getting on the same page can be HARD. Maggie chats to author and family therapist Susan Stiffelman about how to keep the peace with a co-parent.
Around 14 per cent of Australian families have a sole parent. Some parents planned it that way, while others never imagined they'd cope without a co-parent until they had to. Maggie chats with a solo mum with three children and a solo dad with one daughter, about their unexpected journeys to sole parenthood, their tips for survival and what they wish everyone else understood about raising kids alone.
Scary fact: kids learn their money habits at home. So how do you help them avoid the mistakes you made? What's the going rate for pocket money, and how do you bring in ideas about spending and saving?
Maggie dusts off a classic episode of The Pineapple Project money season, in which presenter Claire Hooper finds out how to use glass jars to send subliminal money messages to her kids, and learns the one thing every teenager needs to tick off their money education list.
"How many times do I have to ask you to...?" Sound familiar? There are lots of reasons why parents don't make their kids do chores. Children can be bad at cleaning and the nagging to get them to do it is like torture. So why bother? Author of How to Raise an Adult, Julie Lythcott-Haims, and Maggie Dent make the case for why you should persist and give you great tips on how to get them to do it (without the nagging!)
Telling a child someone they love has died will be one of the toughest things you'll ever have to do. Grief counsellor Karen Ferry explains why talking to kids honestly about death and helping them navigate their feelings will mean way more to them than putting on a happy face and pretending everything is fine. And you'll meet Maddie Cross, a mum who had to support her children while coping with her own unimaginable grief after her youngest son died.
This episode includes a discussion about how to talk to children about suicide. For support contact Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14 or visit https://www.beyondblue.org.au/
Online gaming is massive and if your child loves playing them, you'll know the struggle to get them to do anything else is real. Maggie talks to Good Game Spawn Point host Rad Yeo about how gaming isn't all bad. And she taps into the brain of addiction specialist Brad Marshall on how to find the right balance, and what to do if you think your kid has a gaming problem.
We get it dads. You're sick of people who say you're 'babysitting' when you look after your own kids; you feel like a fish out of water when you join parent groups full of mothers; and it's still too hard to find a change table in a men's bathroom. Apart from that, there's never been a better time to be a dad! Maggie Dent talks to TV presenter Osher Gunsberg, comedian Peter Helliar, musician Tim Rogers and parenting educator Clark Wight, about finding their feet, how they show their love, and what it's like being a dad in the 21st Century.
The queen of common sense — aka parenting educator and author Maggie Dent — is back with series three of Parental As Anything. She has more practical tips and answers to your parenting dilemmas — promoting positive body image in the age of selfies, helping kids deal with death and loss, avoiding problematic video gaming habits and why making kids do chores is worth the hassle.
Over eight episodes, Maggie will give you practical advice to help raise kids of all ages. The first episode is about being a dad and is out on August 18.
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