Some call it the "good kids' high." Children and teens are playing the so-called "choking game" - an activity in which they strangle themselves or friends for an instant shot of euphoria - believing it's cheaper, quicker, easier and more legal than buying booze or pot. The game, which goes by many different names, is not new, but in an age of stupid teen challenges on social media, hospitals are warning parents about it once again.

You may have heard of mums and dads giving their teenagers alcohol as a parenting tactic - rationales include 1) it's safer to buy it, serve it and monitor it in a controlled environment than to have them sneak off with their friends to scull goon in some sketchy parking lot, and 2) it normalises alcohol so they won't see it as something taboo and therefore something they must ingest in mass amounts as quickly as possible.

Getting kids out the door in the morning can go one of two ways: They wake up early and then dawdle, forcing a last-minute scramble, or they wake up late, forcing a last-minute scramble. I know very few people who get to school or day care on time and with serenity - maybe those folks who have a late start time and a short commute? But after a particularly spectacular late-fest in our household last week (late waking, breakfast eaten one crumb at a time, generic dawdling, forgotten backpacks), I decided to look around for some time-saving tips. Here are seven.

If you think your kids aren't getting any kind of sex education, you're wrong: They're getting plenty of it - from pornography. Doesn't that sound horrifying?

When I was a teenager smartphones weren't a thing, and neither was sexting. You aren't exactly going to take some tasteful nudes with a film camera and drop the roll off at your local pharmacy to get developed so you can pass them to your significant other between classes.

There are a lot of numbers you have to keep in mind when you're raising a kid: Their height and weight. How many millilitres of milk they're drinking, at first, and then how many fruits and veggies they're eating, how much outdoor play they're getting, and of course, how many minutes a day they spend glued to a device.

Anxiety in adolescents is on the rise, reports the New York Times: It is now the most common reason university students request counselling services, and numerous surveys indicate that kids in high school and university are feeling overburdened and overwhelmed. Hospital admissions for suicide attempts in the US have doubled in the last decade, and Times describes in-patient facilities for severely anxious teens.

Consent isn't all that complicated. And yet according to a study from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, there's still lots of confusion over what "counts" as sexual assault. Case in point: Harvey Weinstein.

Adolescence is a rough time. Teens are acutely aware of relationships and social status, but they don't yet have the psychological and emotional fortitude to let social struggles roll off their backs. They also don't have the life experience to know that setbacks or failures are temporary and can be overcome.

If you've been alive in the last, say, 10 years, you've been subject to the spate of articles claiming that smartphones are destroying a generation. Today's young people, the argument goes, are more isolated, have shorter attention spans, and...

There's a reason teens are nodding off in class, and it's not just that last lecture on polynomials. They're sleepy. And a reason why they're sleepy is that school starts too damn early.

Few adolescent experiences are as liberating as being granted a smartphone The bond I felt with my first phone (a Nokia 6610), bordered on covalent and that was sans access to today's veritable buffet of games and social networks -- not to mention the internet at large.

Oh, that boy. You gave him life, and now he writhes in agony every time you get jiggy with it while driving him and his buddies to footy practice. What gives?

Remember how high school felt like one big popularity contest?

There are a lot of tips out there for talking to young kids about sex. Today, I'm sharing some advice about talking to older kids.

Harvard University recently rescinded its acceptances of 10 students for posting "obscene memes". Evidently some members of the class formed a Facebook group in which they posted images and memes that mocked the Holocaust, sexual assault and child death (child death aimed at particular ethnic groups, as if plain ordinary child death weren't bad enough); were busted for it; and are... going somewhere other than Harvard for university.

They sound like great kids, right? Leaders of men.

If you have a teenage son or daughter, you're more than a decade into the same routine: Take them to the doctor, do all the paperwork, answer the doctor's questions, and ask your own. But as your kid grows up, they need to learn to take over those jobs. It's time to get out of your rut.

Tax time is a fun time of year as most of us lodge our returns and then wait patiently for our tax refunds to arrive from the ATO. But preparing and lodging a tax return can be intimidating for some; particularly younger taxpayers who are less familiar with the process. Here are six common tax mistakes that younger people often make -- and how to avoid them.