EPIC Families

Your Child Isn't Lazy. The System Just Wasn't Built For Them.

What happens when a 23-year-old who left school early, worked 13 jobs, and got labelled ‘lazy’ and ‘entitled’ decides to do something about it? She builds a business that fights for every young person the system wrote off.

Nicole Hoeata is the CEO of Growth Hungry. She’s on a mission to bridge the biggest generational divide in workplace history, and make sure that neurodiverse, misunderstood, and square-peg young people finally find their place in the world.

This is for every parent who has ever worried about their child's future. And for every young person who has ever been told they just need to fall in line.

In this episode, you'll hear:

🔎 Why Gen Z are not lazy or entitled…and what's really going on beneath the surface

⁉️ The staggering stat that puts it all into perspective: the average young person today carries the same level of anxiety as a psychiatric patient in the 1970s

🚫 Why 70 to 80% of companies hire people into the wrong role…and what that means for neurodiverse young people

🏢 The generational divide playing out in workplaces right now…and why neither side is wrong

🤒 Why workplaces need to stop worrying about employees faking sickness and start worrying about employees faking wellness

❤️‍🩹 The one question Nicole asks after every experience — good or bad — that puts you back in control

🔀 Why every rejection is just redirection — and why no experience is ever wasted

📈 Should every neurodiverse young person just skip the job and start the business? Nicole gives her honest answer

If you have a young person in your life who is struggling to find their place — in school, in work, or in the world — this conversation will give you both hope and a roadmap.

Discover more about Growth Hungry here and connect with Nicole here .

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EPIC Families is part of Bay Paediatrics, New Zealand’s leading child Neurodevelopmental clinic. We believe every family deserves to be an EPIC family with Extraordinary Parents and Incredible Children.

Discover more about our award-winning ADHD and ASD assessments, family therapy support, and our free tools and resources here: https://baypaediatrics.com/

Join the free EPIC Families community here. Be seen, be heard and discover strength in neurodiversity.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Giving tween queens the confidence to build a kingdom.

For so many girls, the journey from childhood to teenage years doesn't feel like growing up. It feels like losing themselves. The body changes. The friendships get complicated. The social media comparisons start. And nobody — not school, not mum, not anyone — quite prepares them for what's really happening.

Mariana Sala decided to change that.

In this episode, you'll hear:

🎂 What the "tween years" actually are…and why this window between ages 7 and 12 is one of the most critical and overlooked stages of a girl's development

🪞Why body image issues are starting younger than ever, and what mums might be doing without realising that makes it worse

❤️‍🩹 How neurodivergent girls experience this transition differently…and why masking, shame, and fitting in hit harder for them

🌹The "Rose and Thorn" ritual that gets girls opening up about things they'd never say at home

💥 Why mum and daughter conflict at this age isn't a crisis, it's biology

🤫 The double transition nobody talks about: when a daughter hits puberty at the same time mum hits midlife

🫶 What dads can actually do, and why father-daughter time matters more than most dads realise

👑 Queen Language, the Glowing Bubble, and the Inner Compass: the tools Mariana gives girls to own their voice and protect their peace

If you have a daughter, know a daughter, or were once a daughter who could have used someone in your corner during those uncertain in-between years, this conversation is for you.

Discover more about Mariana and Tween To Teen Queen here and connect with Mariana directly on Instagram and LinkedIn

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EPIC Families is part of Bay Paediatrics, New Zealand’s leading child Neurodevelopmental clinic. We believe every family deserves to be an EPIC family with Extraordinary Parents and Incredible Children.

Discover more about our award-winning ADHD and ASD assessments, family therapy support, and our free tools and resources here: https://baypaediatrics.com/

Join the free EPIC Families community here. Be seen, be heard, and discover strength in neurodiversity.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stop Talking. Start Playing

What if the most powerful thing you could do for your struggling child wasn't another appointment, another assessment, or another parenting book…but simply getting on the floor and playing with them?

Melanie Gilbert-De Rios has spent 35 years working with children and families. She's a registered social worker, a child-centred play therapist, and a family therapist. Most importantly, she believes something that might just change the way you see your child forever: that play is not what children do instead of healing. Play IS how children heal.

In this episode, you'll hear:

🧸 What play therapy actually is…and why it's SO much more than toys in a room

🚀 Why breakthroughs never happen in uncomfortable chairs in clinical rooms...and what to do instead

🧠 The concept of Filial Family Therapy…and why psychologists once tried to ban it for being too powerful

🪁 How 30 minutes of protected, intentional play time each week can transform your relationship with your child

💥 Why the behaviour you're seeing is just the tip of the iceberg...and what's really going on underneath

🫣 The one thing most parents do that quietly teaches their kids NOT to take responsibility (Freddie is guilty as charged…)

❤️‍🩹 Why empathy isn't something you teach a child, it's something they catch from you

🎁 The gift that matters more than Robux, more than screen time, and more than any toy in Mel's incredible playroom

If you've ever wondered whether your child is OK, whether you are OK, or whether things are ever going to feel less chaotic, this is a conversation you need to hear.

Discover more about Mel and Play Therapy Tauranga here: https://www.playtherapytauranga.co.nz/

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EPIC Families is part of Bay Paediatrics, New Zealand’s leading child Neurodevelopmental clinic. We believe every family deserves to be an EPIC family with Extraordinary Parents and Incredible Children.

Discover more about our award-winning ADHD and ASD assessments, family therapy support, and our free tools and resources here: https://baypaediatrics.com/

Join the free EPIC Families community here. Be seen, be heard, and discover strength in neurodiversity.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

She Almost Lost Everything. Then She Built a Village.

What do you do when the system fails your child?

When Lisa Cowan's son Luca was five, he was being sent out of class almost every day. She had no idea. It wasn't until a little girl in his class asked, "So Luca, are you going to stay in class today?" that Lisa found out what was really happening. What followed was years of waitlists, wrong turns, stand-downs, and moments so dark that Lisa didn't know if she could keep going.

But she did. And what she built on the other side will move you.

In this episode, you'll hear:

💥 How Lisa fought the public system for years — falling off waitlists, being told "that's just normal" — until she finally got Luca the diagnosis that changed everything.

🫶 Why she started It Takes a Village Papamoa…and how 56 local businesses showed up before she even had an audience

🛠️ The LEGO moment that told her the medication was working

🧠 Why lived experience might be more powerful than any parenting course

🎓 The school assembly that made her cry…four years in the making

🧩 Her vision for one place where neurodivergent families can come and never feel like a number

❤️‍🩹 And the stat that should shock every parent: up to 95% of young people in the worst statistics — crime, imprisonment, self-harm — are diagnosed or undiagnosed ADHD

This is a raw, honest, and deeply human conversation about what it really looks like to fight for your child when no one else will. It's about shame, exhaustion, isolation…and the extraordinary things that happen when you simply refuse to give up.

Connect with Lisa on Facebook: It Takes a Village Papamoa here.

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EPIC Families is part of Bay Paediatrics, New Zealand’s leading child Neurodevelopmental clinic.

Discover more about our award-winning ADHD and ASD assessments, family therapy support, and our free tools and resources here: https://baypaediatrics.com/

We believe every family deserves to be an EPIC family with Extraordinary Parents and Incredible Children.

Join the free EPIC Families community here. Be seen, be heard, and discover strength in neurodiversity.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is the Internet Stealing Your Child's Brain? | Rory Birkbeck, SafeSurfer

What happens when a tech entrepreneur realises the very industry he works in is disproportionately harming neurodivergent kids like his own son?

Rory Birkbeck, co-founder and CEO of SafeSurfer, is one of New Zealand's leading voices on online safety. He's also a dad navigating life with an ADHD child. In this raw, honest, and eye-opening conversation, Rory joins Freddie to talk about what it's really like raising a child whose brain runs like a Ferrari with BMX bike brakes... and why the internet was built for exactly the wrong kind of kid.

In this episode, you'll hear:

🎁 The moment Rory realised his son's ADHD wasn't a problem to fix...it was a gift to understand

🧠 Why ADHD kids are disproportionately affected by online harm (and what's really going on behind the screen)

🚫 The stat that stopped Rory in his tracks: by age 10, ADHD children may have heard 10,000 more corrective statements than their neurotypical peers

📣The creator vs. consumer distinction that every parent needs to hear

❤️‍🩹 Why "it's not that we don't trust our kids...it's that we don't trust the internet" might be the most important reframe of 2026

⚒️ Practical, real-world tips you can use tonight to create healthier tech boundaries at home

🏄‍♂️ What SafeSurfer's Kid-Safe Smartphone actually does...and why Rory built it

🛟 Where online safety is heading, and what parents need to know about AI, legislation, and the fight for our children's attention

If you've ever wrestled with your child's iPad, worried about what they're watching, or wondered whether you're winning or losing the battle for their attention, this episode is for you. You can discover more about Safe Surfer here and connect with Rory here

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EPIC Families is part of Bay Paediatrics, New Zealand’s leading child Neurodevelopmental clinic. We believe every family deserves to be an EPIC family with Extraordinary Parents and Incredible Children.

Discover more about our award-winning ADHD and ASD assessments, family therapy support, and our free tools and resources here: https://baypaediatrics.com/

Join the free EPIC Families community here. Be seen, be heard, and discover strength in neurodiversity.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.