The hardest parenting lesson I had to learn was to stop telling my kids what to do. It was much easier for me to bark out orders than to let them figure things out on their own. Doing so took time and patience, neither of which I had in abundant supply when my daughter and son were younger.

And the net result of that were two kids who relied heavily on me to tell them what they needed to do, when they needed to do it, and where they needed to be. They had become expert direction followers.

There’s a new app called YOLO that’s hugely popular among teens. It’s a free add-on feature for Snapchat — when users connect YOLO to their accounts, they can add a sticker to their Snapchat Story that invites their followers to give them feedback or ask them questions anonymously. Then, if they choose, the users can respond to those questions in their Stories. Think of it as an anonymous comment box about your life. “It’s so fun and exciting to see what people have to say about you,” one reviewer on iTunes writes.

Growing up, I’m not sure I ever heard the term “networking.” When I finally heard it in college, it sounded to me like a trendy buzzword that only a business major would use. It made me think of briefcases and fat rolodexes—definitely not anything that would be relevant to me. I was a music performance major and thought the only skill I needed to succeed was a perfect performance.

Kids, no matter how you’ve raised them, will find themselves in tough situations. You know these moments — the ones where they don’t want to be there, but they also don’t want to look uncool by ducking out. It’s great that you’ve reminded them that they can call you for help at any hour, for any reason, but that offer often gets lost once they’re put under pressure. You need a more specific plan.

I am no cap tryna get hip with the slang. Am I slaying? 

Each new generation seems to be more accepting of cannabis use, unsurprising trends show. For those in Gen Z, the population cohort born between 1993 and 2007, marijuana is perceived as healthier than alcohol. Kids are coming of age at a time when weed is depicted less as stoner drug that’ll lead them on a wild quest for mediocre hamburgers, and more as an aid that might help them calm down after a stressful day.

According to a Bloomberg survey, this young generation is twice as likely to use cannabis — either by smoking it, vaping it or eating it — than the national average.

Mike Adamick has a message for his fellow dads: Sexism exists, and if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. In his forthcoming bookRaising Empowered Daughters: A Dad-to-Dad Guide, he zooms in on how the seemingly innocent myths, tropes and sayings that fathers often pass on to their kids can coalesce into something much more damaging. The good news? You don’t have to let these things slide. Adamick, who is raising a 13-year-old daughter, shared with us how he parents.

When the other middle school kids go low, you want your kid to go high. You want your kid to be the one to stand up to the bully or to say, “No thanks, that (insert risky behaviour here) is dumb.”

As a parent, you might walk past your child’s room and see her happily typing away on a Google Docs page. “Lovely!” you think. “She’s probably working on her science report or finishing up her essay on the Whitlam dismissal.”

Or, she could be in a secret chat room.

As a parent, the idea that my kid — or any kid I know — could be thinking about suicide is one I’d like to push far, far away. No. God, no. Not possible.

When a teenager is really upset, parents often feel the need to do something — gather information (“Who hurt you and what’s their phone number?”), launch into a profound lecture, or maybe try a problem-solving technique they heard about in a TED talk.

Teen love can be sweet and all-encompassing and intense. It’s also, likely, temporary. Sure, there’s a chance your child’s first love could be their forever love. But, well, probably not.

Hey, hello! I'm going to start this column off with a concept that's been around for a while, but one I've been asked to explain at least once a month by the Olds in my life: finstas.

I can still remember the day I got my first period. I was 12 and I was home from school during the January holidays. Though I had been given books and “the talk” about the changes that were coming to my body, when I saw that splotch in my underwear, I genuinely thought I might be dying. Though I quickly realised what was going on, to this day, I can still vividly remember my preteen panic.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received for getting my then-preschooler out the door in the morning was to create a visual checklist to guide him. I made a clip-art timeline with a toothbrush (brush your teeth), a sweater (get dressed), a bowl of cereal (eat breakfast) and a newspaper (fetch the newspaper from the front porch... I don’t know, he liked to do this).

Teenagers can be notoriously hard to talk to. “How was your day?” “Fine.” “What did you learn today?” “Nothing.” “How did your—” “UGH HOW MANY MORE QUESTIONS ARE YOU GONNA ASK ME.”

Each stage of parenting has its challenges. There’s the newborn phase where you don’t know what the hell you’re doing, the toddler phase where they won’t stop screaming at you, and the school-age phase in which you have to re-learn how to do basic maths in order to help them with homework.

As a parent who works from home, screen time is always a topic of discussion in our household, especially during summer and winter breaks. Because my work requires me to actually concentrate without the sounds of kids asking for snacks and bickering over who has control of the Netflix queue, I had to come up with a strategy that worked for everyone.

And, a few summers ago, I had a stroke of genius.

As a parent raising a kid in The Time of the Screens, I am often trying to strike that balance between allowing him to explore age-appropriate technology while also determining how much is too much.