Around the time my son turned 13, he started spending more time away from our home. School activities kept him busy after school, and he and his buddies would take turns hanging out in basements to play video games on the weekends.

In the last two years, most of his time spent away has been spent supervised by teachers or other parents, but as he crossed over to being a full-fledged teen, he developed a social life right along with a heavy case of acne.

Yesterday I wrote a story about how to help your sons navigate “Mean Boy” relationships. It got me thinking: There are a lot of bullies roaming around out there. How do you make sure your kid isn’t one of them?

For the first time, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued guidance on safe tattoos, piercings, and scarification for young people. They aren't saying not to get tattoos — kids still have to ask Mum or Dad about that in most places, anyway. But they have some advice if you're thinking about it.

For parents of kids with birthdays close to the cut-off date for kindergarten registration, the debate can start almost as soon as they’re born: Should we red-shirt him? Will she be ready for kindergarten that soon?

As we descend upon the holidays (or do the holidays descend upon us?), it feels like the right time to get into the holiday-hacking mindset by revisiting all the top-notch advice we’ve dispensed in the past.

A tired and overwhelmed (new) parent recently asked me for help: Rather than searching through all of Offspring’s content to find the hacks he needed most — newborn, newborn and more newborn — could I do it for him?

I won't sugarcoat this. Trying to work while taking care of a baby is usually a mess. You're exhausted. You can't formulate coherent thoughts. You feel guilty all the time because you're thinking about your baby while you work, and your work while you parent. You rely on that Almighty Nap, but it's unpredictable, and even when it happens, there are a hundred house chores waiting to be done.

You feel like you have two different bosses in two different worlds - and one of them keeps begging for milk.

The Tooth Fairy came up in our Offspring Facebook Group recently when one parent asked whether it was OK to skip the whole “A Fairy Brings You Money For Your Teeth” thing. In the course of the discussion, one parent had a great suggestion for trading teeth for money in a slightly non-traditional (but easier) way...

It’s been well-documented that fighting excessively in front of the kids isn’t a good idea — it’s not only emotionally distressing for them, it can impact the way they process emotions and how they build relationships in the future.

Choosing a bad baby name is like choosing a bad tattoo - except you're not the one who's stuck with it. While there's no evidence that a rubbish name will affect your child into adulthood, it probably doesn't help either. Just sayin'.

Here are 40 baby names that are tipped to be popular in 2019. Depending on your life views, this could either make them top on your list, or names to desperately avoid.

It started with a Christmas gift for my sister-in-law (or “Auntie,” as she’s called) several years ago: In trying to choose gifts for all the members of our large family, I was running out of creative ideas. I asked my then four-year-old son what he wanted to give Auntie.

Over the holidays, my entire extended family travelled to Disney World. Six adults and four kids trekking our way first across several states to get there, and then across four different parks over the span of a week.

The thing about kids is that their little feet keep growing into slightly bigger feet that constantly need new shoes.

My daughter was a crier. From the second she emerged from my body and until she turned about six months old, she cried on a regular basis. (You may be thinking, “All babies cry!” And that’s true, but my second child cried maybe a quarter of the amount my daughter did. So there.) She cried because she was hungry. She cried because she was a “gassy baby.” I swear sometimes she cried just to mess with me! (I’m kidding.)

Most of the students at one North Carolina private school in the US didn’t get the chickenpox vaccine. Now that school is the epicentre of the largest chickenpox outbreak in 20 years.

Here's a wild statistic: 65 per cent of mothers with children under the age of 18 are employed. This means that a staggering 35 per cent of mothers in Australia have not returned to the workforce after having a child.

For many in this camp, it's not because they have lost their drive, or they're incapable of juggling sippy cups and sales calls, or that they suddenly feel destined to spend every waking moment gazing at their babies like they're trapped in a Pampers ad. More often, it is because our traditional structures shut them out.

The conventional guideline for sharing the news of a pregnancy is that you should wait until the ceremonial 12 or 13-week mark, the endpoint of the most anxiety-ridden first trimester when most pregnancy losses are diagnosed. What the rule is really saying is: Don't get too excited. But what if you do have a miscarriage? You're left alone to navigate your tragedy, one that you did nothing to cause, one that so many others have experienced, too.

As parents, the list of things we want to teach and instil in our kids is endless. We want them to grow up to be people who brush their teeth twice a day — and floss. We want them to clean up after themselves and do their best in school (while also not being too hard on themselves). We want them to surround themselves with people of high character and replace the roll when the toilet paper runs out.

When my father died suddenly six years ago, I wasn't prepared for the waves of grief that washed over me in the aftermath of his death. In the midst of funeral preparations, I waded through decisions over flowers, services and gravestones as though in a fog. It was all I could do to keep it together as we went through the painful process of saying goodbye.