Parenting has never felt more stressful, and picture perfect Instagram families aren’t helping! So have we raised the parenting bar a little too high, and could this hyper parenting be blamed for the lack of resilience and the entitlement we see in some kids today? Host Amelia Phillips talks to Dr Susie O’Brien, author of ‘The Secret of half-arsed parenting’ to find out how we can raise our kids with half the guilt and twice the joy!
Below is an unedited transcript of the podcast episode:
I had an overachieving parent fail the other day. Lockie had to give a class talk on his favorite book character. He chose Willie Wonka and I worked with him on the speech so hard. I wrote out his palm cards and I came up with this great idea that he could plant golden tickets in some of the kids’ desks and do a big reveal at the end of his.
Now I could see that he wasn’t too sure about this, and my husband was in the background giving me one of those raised eyebrow looks, but I really felt that this was his time to shine. The next morning I couldn’t find the tickets anywhere, and after working myself into a leather lock, he finally confessed that he’d thrown the tickets away cuz he thought it was a bad idea.
I cracked it. He burst into tears. And then after I dropped him off, I just sat there and I thought, What the hell am I doing? He’s in year two. I’ve just ruined both our days. And for what? For some golden bloody tickets and a good mark in his talk.
This is healthy. Her with Amelia Phillips, kids anxiety levels are on the rise. US parents are stressed, we’re exhausted. We’re guilty, yet we have more access to information and support than ever before. Is going on. Could it be that we have raised that parenting bar just a little too high? Could this hyper parenting be blamed for the lack of resilience and the entitlement that we see in some of our kids today?
Dr. Su O’Brien has a strong theory on this. For the last 19 years, Dr. Susie has been writing about parenting and social issues for the Herald. She has a PhD in education, appears weekly on Channel seven Sunrise, and has recently released the book titled Half Asked Parenting, Raising Kids With Half The Guilt and Twice The Joy.
Susie, you sound like just the woman I need. Thank you for joining us on Healthy Her. Thank you so much. Now you and your hobby have five kids in your blended family. Tell me what was your inspiration to go half-assed and to write this. Well, I think I’ve probably been half-assed for years , but I, I really understand that thing about the golden tickets.
Like how many times have our kids been doing homework and you watch them and they’ve gotta do a poster and they get an a four piece of paper and a lead pencil and they draw some pathetic little diagram. And you say, Where’s the poster board? Let me get out the crayons. Let me get out the pains. I know I’ve got a great idea.
And they look at you and they say, Mom, this is my homework, not yours. You think, Well there’s something wrong with that. I could do a better job than you. Come on . I know. So I think I really get that homework thing. And I remember my son, I’ve got a 12 year old and a couple of years ago they had to do a planet from the solar system for their homework.
And his was, he chose Uranus. Of course he did. Yes. Hilarious. And ended up being this brown kind of misshape and mis painted paper mache sort of ball. But I noticed when I was dropping him to school that day, or there were some parents with not just one planet, but the whole solar system, and they prayed, basically had to go in sideways through the school gate to fit it in.
And you. These days, so many of us, you know, we’re over parenting our kids. We don’t say no. We take photos of every damn inconsequential thing that they do. We stop talking so they can say whatever it is they need to say, and we do their homework for them cuz we think they’re not gonna do a good enough job.
And so I wrote this book because I think something’s gotta give in modern parenting. Well, I mean, you’ve been on the cutting edge for the last 19 years, you know, writing and researching and recording all the trials and the tribulations that us parents have to go through. What do you think some of the biggest culprits are that make us feel so stressed as parents?
Well, you know, I think social media is a massive issue because I’m pretty sure when my mom was raising me in the seventies and eighties, she didn’t really care what anyone thought about her parenting. No. And if they did to express an opinion, they could probably go get stuffed. Yeah. Whereas these days, social media turns parenting into the most effective.
Competitive sport, and it’s the easiest way to see how everyone else is doing an amazing job and how we are just flailing around. Mm. And you know, there’s just so much on social media, you know. Hashtag Blessed and I think, oh my God. Hashtag full of crap . You know, we’ve got all these social media mums and they’re basically turned parenting into a full-time social media exercise.
Yeah. And they say, you know, your contribution to the universe isn’t something you do, but someone you raise. And I think, well, my contribution to the universe is raising kids who aren’t dickhead , and that’s because they don’t have a mother who’s socially in. And makes them pose with kale and avocado cupcakes that match their $500 T-shirts.
You know, the only time my kids have food that matches their shirts is when they spill something down the front. I, you know what? Social moms, I’m so, I don’t care about retaining my sensuality or finding my femininity. I care about retaining my sanity and finding my daughter’s mouth guard cuz it costs me 120 bucks
So I say it’s time to stop following people on social media who make us feel worse about what the job we’re doing as parents. And can I just throw in there that the people that are posting those things aren’t doing it to make us feel bad. They’re not sitting there with this evil cackle going, Ha ha, ha.
Here you go, Half ass parents, I’m gonna make you feel like crap. They’re actually feeling really proud of it. So I also wanna say in defense of those women, it’s not their fault per se, but it’s just the barrage of it, I think. And I don’t think that there’s this massive amount of, of parents who are judging each other the way we think they probably are because all the moms putting those amazing things on social media probably get up feeling like crap at the beginning of the day and presenting this sort of, even if it’s a bit false in each of their parenting on social media, might be just helping them get through the day.
And we have to not get sucked into their vortex. And we also just have to. I’m just gonna take you as you find me, find you and you can do the same to me. And you know, the mum’s at school pickup or school drop. You know, with the two times few pants and the beautiful thigh gap and, and the perfect hair, they’re not looking at me thinking, You middle aged dag
They’re looking at me thinking, I hope she doesn’t realize that I’ve got these pants out of the dirty clothes basket and they’ve been wearing them for three days straight. You know, we have to assume that other people are feeling the same way as us and that. With the thigh gap doesn’t wanna judge me and put me on a diet.
She is hoping that I’ll invite her around for a coffee and maybe it’ll turn into a champagne. Yeah. So I think we have to see people not as competitors and enemies, but as friends. Yeah. Cuz we’re all in it together. Mm. And look, a lot of the time, you know, the enemies are ourselves as well because we put these unrealistic expectations on ourself.
And I think that, you know, we, we have these unrealistic expectations and these goals. And what that can cause is us to just be so in our heads all the time. And you see that with helicopter parenting. Now tell me your thoughts on helicopter parenting. How would you define a helicopter parent? Because there’s shades of gray, obviously.
Well, you know the teachers all know the helicopter parents cuz they’re the ones at the school every single day knocking. The classroom door, wanting to manage their kids’ friendships, wanting to know why they got a certain grade and not a higher grade. They are looking through everything that their kid posts on social media.
They’re analyzing every single thing that those kids do, and they don’t have any time just to be kids because the parents are hovering over them and you know, I understand it. So many of us are working more now than ever, and so the time we spend with our kids is so precious. But what’s happened is that the measure of parenting these days has become how hands on you are.
So if you just let your kids be and you don’t see them much on the weekend and they do their own thing, then somehow we feel like we are failing if we don’t offer. A range of nonstop activities that are curated by us and chosen by us, and all the play dates we line up for them and all the parties we throw for them.
The idea is that more is better, and I’m actually saying to people, Let’s do less. Let’s work less if we can, Let’s do less around the house and let’s do less parenting. And it doesn’t mean to. And that’s where half US parenting comes in doesn’t mean to drop your standards and you know, let neglect the kids or give them less love.
It means less of the time consuming, competitive, boring stuff that isn’t making them or us happy. It can be hard for. A parent, particularly a helicopter parent, to let go of some of those things that you mentioned. How would you suggest a helicopter parent? And I have to say, I think I might fall in the category of that.
I would like to say that I don’t, because in many ways I’m very freestyle, but then I, you know, I do talk to the teacher probably a lot more than other people do. What’s a first step in the right direction of letting go of that helicopter parenting and hyper parenting attitude. The first step is to look at what we do in a day and see what could go by the wayside without anyone suffering in any way.
Mm-hmm. And reassessing how we’re spending our. I mean, people have been saying to me since I’ve been promoting this book for about the last six months or so, mm-hmm, they ask me all these questions like, I’m the font of all Wisdom . Um, and they say, Oh, do you think my kids are doing too many activities? And I say, I don’t know.
Do you think they are? If you’re asking the question, then you probably think they are. So recess, how many activities your kids are doing. Perhaps it’s the thing that’s making them the happiest, or it could be something that you are spending your whole weekend trying to find their mouth guard, trying to find their soccer boots.
Trying to remember what team there is in as you’re hurtling down the highway. Oh my goodness. Thinking that you describe my school. Primary school. Yeah. Trying to work out what primary school. I mean, I’ve had so many times where we are downloading the app as we are driving to the. And you’ve gotta remember you’re logging your pin, what team they’re in, cuz it’s brown, X, y, um, 57 G under twelves.
And you think, oh I, you know, it becomes a chore. And the thing is, kids don’t see a lot of those activities as play. They don’t necessarily even see them as fun. And so maybe something like that is, is what can give in in your family or parents are saying to. Oh, do I need to cook from scratch every night?
And I say to. If it’s making you happy and it’s filling them with joy, then go for it. But if you are finding that you don’t have time to have a bubble bath or see your friends or have a proper conversation with your partner at the end of a night cuz you are still wooly grading the soup or whatever it is, spiralizing the zucchini , um, and starting to prepare tomorrow night’s dinner from scratch, then perhaps that’s something that can give in your family.
Yeah. Let’s talk about guilt for a moment. Is described as a mismatch between reality and desire. So you’re scrolling through Instagram and you see the perfect clean mommy blogger’s house, and you desire that, that the reality of your house is very, very different. And guilt can be such a common trap for parents.
How do we ditch the guilt? I think as I say, that guilt is really a mismatch between how we want to raise our kids and how we think. Want us to raise our kids. Yeah. And the job that we do on a day to day basis. And I think what we have to do is let go of other people’s expectations and other people’s standards because they’re not inside your house and your family.
They have no real idea about the constraints that you are parenting within. And you know what? They don’t really care. Yeah. We’re assuming that everyone is around standing by to judge us and, Mm. Tuck, Tuck. Tuck. Oh, I’ve seen those pants before. , or, Mm. That’s a, that’s a cupcake that isn’t home made. You know, some of it is so ridiculous.
I was on my kid’s school kinder committee for years. Yeah. And every year we had a bake sale, you know, a cup, a cake store to raise money on the open. And every year we issued the list of what you had to bring, what you had to do. Mm-hmm. , It was four pages long. Oh my goodness. And I am, I, I look back in absolute agony, thinking what I put other parents through, because you had to bake it from scratch.
It couldn’t have nuts, BPA and soy and nuts and, and gluten and all the rest of it. . And I think they, you know, some mum. Who had been up all night with a newborn or whatever, the last thing they needed was someone like me, some other mom who should be on their side telling them that they had to walk through the gate that day with a picture.
Perfect lot of cupcakes, when in fact buying something from the seven 11 and you know, roughing it up, roughing up the edge. Would probably do.
I laughed in your book when you said, not just stress about the fact that your child’s first words were bluey rather than mama . But in reality, we know that too much screen time is bad for kids. So I’m trying to kind of work. Balance between being half ass, but also, you know, there are some areas that we do need to improve on.
How are you suggesting we walk that line? Every single person I know deals with the screen issue in a different way. And I think it’s probably fair to say that there are quite a lot of kids out there who do spend too much time on screens, and it’s, again, along with food and activities, it’s one of the biggest issues that parents raise today.
Yeah. Is my kid spending too much time on the screen? And if you are asking that question of yourself, then it’s probably the answer is yes. Yeah. And you know, there are times when screens are an absolute lifesaver, and I think one of the messages is that we know when it’s okay, and if you’re in a long car trip, hand them that iPad and let them go crazy.
But you know, if it’s a two minute trip to the supermarket, then maybe they can stay off the screen for, you know, a couple of minutes so you can get round the aisles. We have to stop judging each other for the way that our kids use screens. And also not to be afraid to say no to our kids. I think we’ve got to the point where kids have become so good at throwing the tantrum when you take the iPad off the two year old that parents have stopped trying and we have to reimpose the boundaries on our own kids.
And it’s like I say, it’s not for me to say, We, when you need to take the iPad away or whatever. But there has to be boundaries because otherwise kids will stop playing Minecraft in 2026 because they spend so many times saying, Oh, one more game. Oh, I’m not out yet. Just a minute, Mom. I’ll be at dinner in a minute.
And you know, it’s like the game never ends. These games never end. So each of us has to have the courage of our own convictions and not be afraid of our kids, not be. To turn off the wifi, to put the devices in our boot and lock the car to just say, No. Let’s talk about entitlement. This is a topic that really fascinates me.
You believe that we’ve actually got an entitlement epidemic going on at the moment, thanks to a generation of children who don’t hear that word know enough. , Describe what. See as entitled kid and how do we ensure that we’re not raising one? It is so, so hard and you know, we are giving participation medals for kids just turning up these days,
And I really was, um, prompted to write this book because I had one of those aha moments. A bit like your golden ticket moment. Yeah. And my son was doing soccer and he wasn’t even, he hadn’t won a match or. But they just came to the end of term and they were lining up and they were getting medals just for turning up.
And they, all they had to do was turn up and do an hour each week of soccer skills, Not even play game. Yeah. And they got a certificate and they got a medal at the end of term. And I remember sitting there and one of the other parents said to me, Oh, do you want me to take a photo of your son? I can tell you’re really.
And I thought, I’m not gonna take any more photos of my son. I’m so overtaking photos of every minor thing that happens in his life, like recording this, everything that happens for posterity. And it made me realize, like, talk about entitled, made me realize that actually we need. The parents need the participation medals.
Oh yes, Lee. And so this book is my participation medal for Parents . So the things that we need to start giving parents medals for, like top effort for finding my library books under my bed, even though I told you I’d already looked there. Or thanks a bunch for remembering Bastille Day and drawing me a mustache with your favorite eyeliner.
Or how about this one? You’re a hero for remembering footy tryouts and making me get off the PS4 even though I told you I didn’t wanna go. And thanks heaps mum, for helping me not kill anyone while I was on my elbow plate. So, Oh, I love it. You know, we, we feed this entitlement in our kids because we worship everything they do, and we stop our conversations to listen to their, you know, miners of usher.
And do you know, that is actually my pet hate and Jeep as I try not to do it. But when I’m talking to a mom and their kid, Banging on their arm and they just stop mid conversation and start talking to the child. I feel like bending down to that child and saying, Excuse me, do you see that your mommy is in the middle of a conversation right now and you are being very rude,
I do say it to my kids, but, um, , you just, and as a parent, it’s kind of like the frog and boiling water analogy. You don’t realize that it’s happening because you’ve just been in this hyper parenting mode for so long where your child is. Absolute number one priority. And I love this idea that we need to shift that.
And you know, of course our kids are priority and we absolutely need to listen to what they’re saying and you know, cater for their needs, but not always at the expense of our own. And my parents in the 1970s and eighties, we’re not organizing their work hours around. Schedule of after school activities that, what’s unheard of that then?
Yeah. And these days it seems like the kids’ needs come before the family’s needs and before the parents’ needs. I mean, we would never forget Saturday morning soccer or Tuesday night Jazz ballet. But we’ve forgotten to have a life of our own. Teach us high functioning parents, please, Susie. How we can be more halfassed like what are, what are some of your top tips to live this more halfassed and, you know, less pressurized life?
Well, I’ve got some, I’ve got a lot, quite a few, um, tips in the book. I bet you do. And it’s about things like blocking people on social, Who don’t make you feel good about yourselves, it’s about picking your friends so they don’t greet you at the door with a catalog of your failings. It’s about taking the pressure off those around you so you’re not automatically assuming that all the mums at the school G are judging you and trying to see you as failing.
And I think we have to accept that doing less parenting. Is a good thing because the level of parenting that we are doing at the moment has become so over the top that we can’t fit everything in, and that’s what’s making us stress and that’s what making our kids anxious. So I say, Do half as much knowing that it’s more than enough.
Pick your battles. Adopter. She’ll be right attitude because mostly it is. I love that adopter. She’ll be right attitude because I think one of your other tips was to quiet your head down and I think one way to quiet your head down is to adopt that she’ll be right. Which is, you know, just relax about it.
Tell your head to quieten down a little bit. And I think for a lot of parents that, you know, do feel a bit pressured and hyper parent or helicopter parent, just telling your head to quieten down and they’ll be right is just a really nice calming mantra and, and that idea that it’s okay to be a good enough parent.
I mean, you don’t have to be a perfect parent. And you know, if you are the kinda parent who, as I said, ruffles up the edge of cup. So that the Mummy mafia thinks they’re homemade. You know, the problem isn’t your baking skills. The problem is the people that you’re hanging around with and probably your attitude, because as I say, they’re not judging you, and I think we have to ignore bad advice.
And we have to trust our instincts and trust our gut to know that we got here, the kids are still alive. We not doing a bad job. We have to trust our own instincts. It’s like all the people who are asking me questions about the food or the activities or the screens, they actually know the answers to those questions anyway.
So I think also social media, as I’ve said, you know, don’t believe people who say they’re hashtag. Because they’re probably hashtag full of crap and its OK to do less. Yep. It’s ok to cut corners, to diminish expectations, and to underwhelmed your loved ones. You don’t have to be hyper parents all the time and let your kids be bored as well.
I loved that tip because. It’s so true. You see your kids go through this phase of I’m bored and they’re frustrated, and you see that, and then you see them come out the other side with this creative mind and they’ll go and find something creative to do. It might be a bit messy, but you do see them go through that process and it’s also calming for them as well, which.
And also in them being bored and finding something to do often doesn’t involve you. Whereas, you know, you compare it to the 1970s and eighties, you know, we did a lot of Lego as kids and we would just be given a box of Lego. You know, we were making our. Wonky constructions on the living room floor these days.
You know, the Lego is a $200 box of, you know, Mandalorian X-Wing staff, rider kids can’t even do by themselves. It takes 12 hours of parental input, and you know, you can’t miss a page and you can’t miss a step house. It doesn’t work out. Yeah. So at every turn it almost feels like things are stacked against us as parents, and we have to step back and say, Here’s a box of Lego.
Yeah, go for. And then you don’t want your kid to play with a Lego afterwards because it’s cost you so much money and you don’t want ’em to break it. So it sits up on the shelf and collects dust and they never even get to play with it. That’s exactly right. And it’s way too value to be played with. No.
Cause it might get broken cause it costs you 200 bucks and it’s, you took 12 hours to put together. Finally, Dr. Susie, for a mom listening who might be like me, a self-confessed slightly hyper, hyper parent who is also drowning in pressure, guilt, and worry, what’s the first step she can take to feeling better and adopting a little bit more of a half asked approach?
Well, at the end of the book, I’ve got some tips and here’s a few of the. Just because it’s on, you don’t have to go just because it exists. You don’t have to have it just because the kids want it. You don’t have to buy it just because they ask you. You don’t have to say yes. And it’s time that we take care of ourselves, the way we take care of everyone else, and I’m hoping that’ll make people start feeling a little bit better.
Oh, Susie, I am smiling and feeling a lot better just having had this chat with you today. What a great book. What a great life mantra. I am definitely gonna adopt some half-ass parenting. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
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