Pen in hand, my ten-year-old son is slowly, methodically writing out his Christmas wish list. For the uninitiated, it is a confusing read – Beyblade Burst Quadstrike, Yo Gi Oh trading cards and a pair of moon shoes from K Mart. I console myself with the thought that it could be worse; I’m not raising a tween girl with an inclination for a $100 Drunk Elephant whipped cream moisturiser from Mecca. I recall my first makeup purchase, a kissing gloss, a sticky and sweet rollerball that bestowed a shiny sheen to the lips and cost a mere six dollars from Granny Mays. Though I digress. My son has fini ..read more

Just last week Mia Freedman made the statement that the problem with helicopter parents is the helicopter children they create. Deep in my bones this resonated with me. Hello, my name is Tracey, and I am a helicopter parent. My son is many wonderful things but what he typically isn’t, is fearless. He radiates joy and is forever in motion, he is also cautious. I once had to bribe him with a packet of pokeman cards to encourage him down a waterslide and at a recent visit to a theme park, he stubbornly refused my valiant attempts to coast him on to a rollercoaster. That is until I remember readin ..read more

Having faced the real and agonising possibility of never having a child, the idea of having more than one child was not something I could entertain. It was inconceivable, literally and figuratively. Undergoing IVF, I made bargains with the universe. Give me one baby and I will never ask for anything ever again. I will always be happy. I will always be grateful. I will never complain. To ask for more than once child was asking already for so much, I reasoned that by limiting what I was asking for I figured I would have more chance of getting what I was so desperate to have. I made peace a long ..read more

“I think I f*cked up” “Oh my god” “So sorry!!!” I read the text messages and instantly I knew. Disco club tickets. A week earlier my friend and I shared a text exchange confirming that she would be tasked with purchasing the tickets for the next Disco Club to be held in August. Tickets were going on sale when I was to be in the middle of the Coral Sea where the internet would be patchy at best. Tickets are coveted, nothing could be left to chance. Stakes were high. For reasons unclear but nothing to do with them selling out so quickly, my friend did not get the tickets. So without the need for ..read more

About a year ago I started to feel as though I had forgotten who I was.  In a state of perpetual preoccupation, trying to keep up yet feeling like I am being left behind. I am surrounded by women who are smart, aspirational, connected, savvy and educated. Trail blazers and social entrepreneurs.  It wasn’t as heavy as hopelessness but a feeling of being unremarkable, peripheral. The opinions of those around me were more interesting and not only did it feel as though I had nothing to say, but I also wasn’t even sure if anyone was listening. I felt somehow stuck and for a self-described ..read more

The day my son started school is one I recall vividly. Admittedly, it wasn’t all that long ago, though sometimes the 5 years feels like 5 minutes. Of course there were tears, but not as expected from my son, but from me. I found the first day, the first morning to be this weighted milestone that my head knew was a good thing, but my heart felt otherwise. There was an ‘ah ha’ moment when I realised that the obligatory yet seemingly unhelpful advice of being told to ‘enjoy this moment, the time goes so fast’ was finally making sense. On the one hand I wanted to bundle him up and take him home w ..read more

Last week my son gave me a performance review and I don’t remember reading the bit in the parenting book that said that there would be a time in your life that your child might complain about your parenting techniques. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the receiving end of a performance review so this meeting with the nine-year-old Head of HR was unexpected and seemed unnecessary. I’m not entirely sure what inspired him, I hadn’t requested any professional development opportunities and I wasn’t aware I needed performance management.  But I know the value of constructive feedback, s ..read more

There is a universal law that exists that states that the end of a school term pretty much sucks. The level of suckiness depends on whether it is term one or term four, but overall, the week leading up to school holidays is long and exhausting and, in my case, rarely my finest work. At the end term four last year, in our final week, my son was defeated and ready to crack. For a school loving kid this was new ground for us, the morning routine was precariously close to being derailed. Drop off time was rapidly approaching, and Charlie was languishing on the couch, the to the whereabout of his s ..read more

Charlie turns nine this year. One moment I’m  the mother to a sweet and funny little boy who is agreeable and trusting, who calls me mummy, who places his sticky, squishy little hand into mine, who demands back tickles and songs about sunshine and who would delight in entertaining me with glorious stories full of wonder and imagination. He is still there, still sweet and funnier than even, though far less agreeable, still joyously kind hearted but equally suspicious of my parenting abilities, regarding me with benign disinterest. These days he calls me mum or occasionally and disturbingly ..read more

Last week, whilst standing on the footpath, waiting for an Uber, a man, that I did not know, paid me a compliment. I love a compliment, I happily give them and almost always will take one, but this time, it made me feel….. uneasy. I had just dropped my car off for a service, dressed for work, I was simultaneously listening to a podcast, untangling my ear phones and watching the Uber tracking app, wondering, not for the first time, if the little picture of the car in the far corner of the app is a replica of the car I was to wait for. Unless that’s just me? I was also wondering if I had taken t ..read more