The Parent Squad

The cost of having or raising a child is often the most considered issue among couples planning to start or grow their family.
It's not just the shopping trips for prams and cots and nappies - it's the income loss over the months of parental leave and the endless sick days once daycare starts up.
Plunket estimates a medium-budget cost for raising a child for the first year comes to just under $16,000. That works out to a whole lot of sacrifice.
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There's a new trend sweeping through social media - when your child is lost in a tantrum or a pre-teen spiral, you call out for your imaginary helper named Jessica, and more often than not it will confuse them enough to stop them in their tracks.
Distraction methods like this one have been used for years and years, but why do they work?
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Doctors are seeing an increasing number of young people coming in with unexplained symptoms.
The prominent ones parents are probably seeing most frequently are the random headaches, stomach aches, difficulty sleeping or sleeping too much.
Parents will often treat their children with panadol and electrolytes, take their devices away before bed to avoid blue light, and hope the problem resolves itself.
But these are all common signs something more could be going on - different ways mental health problems present physically.
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You always hear stories about the different ways a person's childhood has had an ongoing impact throughout their life.
There are some horrible stories out there, but it could even just be the way your parents would cook growing up, or how the way they would react to you relaxing results in habits that follow you into adulthood.
So at the end of the day, are we all doomed to mess up our children in one way or another?
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It's school holidays, and boredom is setting in...
While it can send parents into a bit of a spiral hearing their children complain about how bored they are all day long - being bored is one of those skills we all need to learn at some point.
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