As kids start school and become more aware of how their skills and abilities stack up against their peers, building confidence can be a difficult task.

All kids go through behavioural rough patches, even kids with terrific parents. Sometimes rough patches are developmental, but they can also be a symptom of parenting traps.

Anxiety is exhausting. It’s worrying about events outside your control and worst case scenarios that’ll probably never eventuate - but it’s not just that, it’s physical too - headaches, nausea, feeling tense and on edge are common symptoms.

We all know that what you look like isn’t important. And yet we’re surrounded by messages and images that tell us that appearance is important. Eating and exercising to lose weight, can start a toxic cycle.

Whether you have a formal depression diagnosis or not, living with low mood is hard going. And the worst part is, symptoms of low mood are self-maintaining. Low mood drains you of energy and motivation, and feeling down makes everything feel hard, even activities you’d usually enjoy.

We all do it. We say ‘yes’ when we really want to say ‘no’ and we find ourselves doing things we don’t want to do - and that we don’t really have time to do - all because we don’t want to upset and disappoint the people around us - our family, friends, and colleagues.

Little minds can house some pretty big worries. From a young age, anxious kids can worry about everything from getting questions wrong on school tests and not having friends, to falling ill or even terrorist attacks.

As a parent, you want to do whatever you can to protect your child from feeling upset. Which can be a good parenting philosophy to follow…except when it comes to anxiety.