Sharon Wong walked away from a high-flying corporate career with zero retail experience and built one of Asia's leading mother and baby brands across four countries. Twenty-eight years, one pandemic after another, and an expansion into China that started with doors slamming in her face. She calls it insanity. She might be right.

Now, at 60, she's not slowing down. She's scaling faster than ever, and she's rewriting what everyone assumes about age, ambition and rest.

In this episode, Sharon talks with Stephanie about the real cost of chasing having it all, the mindset shift that let her treat every crisis as just another season, and the parenting philosophy that shaped three kids who still call her their best friend.

There's a secret recipe behind her success, a rapid fire round that gets brutally honest about the worst parenting advice she's ever received, and one theory about luck that has nothing to do with money.

Can women really have it all? Or are we asking the wrong question? Sharon has an answer. You might not expect it. Click play.

What You'll Take Away

• Why the founder of one of Asia's biggest baby brands says she's never actually been stressed
• The real formula behind her success, and why one letter in it changed completely
• What it took to get a single Chinese mall to finally say yes after every other door slammed shut
• The parenting rule she and her husband set before they even had kids
• Why she thinks "having it all" is the wrong question entirely
• The rapid fire answer that flips conventional parenting advice on its head
• What her ten year old son did with his Christmas presents that turned into a decade-long family tradition

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 | Can Women Really Have It All?

01:05 | Welcome to Growing Pains

01:22 | Meet Sharon Wong: Building Motherswork From a Personal Mission

02:20 | Why Every Entrepreneurial “Down” Is Really Change

06:55 | Entering China With Courage, Naivety and No Funding

09:07 | How to Keep Moving When Life Feels Overwhelming

15:08 | Raising Children With Kindness, Courage and Clear Values

19:29 | Sharon’s Formula for Success: Passion, Product, People and Luck

27:03 | Stop Asking Whether Women Can Have It All

32:48 | Why Sharon Believes in Seasons, Not Mum Guilt

36:23 | Scaling at 60: Reinventing Yourself at Any Age

41:30 | Writing Whoa, Mom and Choosing Vulnerability

44:00 | The Giving Tree: Teaching Children to Lead With Kindness

48:00 | Legacy, Motherhood and the Advice Sharon Lives By

50:00 | Stephanie’s Top Three Episode Takeaways

About the Guest

Sharon Wong is the Founder and CEO of Motherswork, one of Asia's leading premium mother, baby and kids' retail brands, with stores across Singapore, China, Vietnam and Thailand. She left a career as a Regional Tax and Treasury Director to build the company from scratch with zero retail experience, and 28 years later her team calls her "the CEO who bakes." She's the author of Wo(Mum): Living My Life as a Warrior, Woman and Mum, Chairwoman of MITAS (Maternal and Infant Trade Association of Singapore), and a mother of three.

Connect with Sharon and Motherswork:

https://www.motherswork.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharon-wong-motherswork/

https://www.instagram.com/motherswork/

Connect with Growing Pains

Growing Pains is HoneyKids Asia's podcast for the conversations you want to have after the kids go to bed.

YouTube: @growingpains.honeykids

Instagram: honeykidsasia

Website: https://honeykidsasia.com/

Hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. If this one hits home, send it to a parent who needs it.

Growing Pains is produced in partnership with Poddster, Singapore's podcast studio.

#GrowingPains #HoneyKidsAsia #SharonWong #Motherswork #WomenInBusiness #WorkingMothers #MumGuilt #FemaleEntrepreneur #MotherhoodAndCareer #ScalingAt60 #Parenting #Entrepreneurship #Podster

Your brain takes in 11 million bits of information every second. You consciously process about 50. The rest gets filled in by beliefs, and those same beliefs, the ones you don't even know you have, are quietly shaping your children right now.

Nir Eyal is a former Stanford lecturer, New York Times bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable, and the kind of person who will tell you that your to-do list is making you worse at life. His latest book, Beyond Belief, started with a simple question: why do people not do the things they know they should?

The answer had nothing to do with willpower, screens, or discipline. It had to do with the invisible stories we carry about ourselves, and pass on.

This one will make you think differently about your own brain. Press play.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 | The Limiting Beliefs Quietly Running Our Lives

00:54 | Why Our Beliefs Shape How We Parent

02:30 | How Emotional Eating Shaped Nir’s Life

03:47 | Why Distraction Starts Inside Your Head

09:44 | The Hidden Problem With To-Do Lists

09:52 | How Time Boxing Rebuilds Focus and Control

15:13 | Turning Your Values Into Protected Time

18:40 | Why Knowing Better Does Not Create Change

22:59 | When Beliefs Start Feeling Like Facts

26:11 | A Four-Step Method to Change Limiting Beliefs

33:30 | Pain Is Inevitable, Suffering Is Added

37:10 | How to Raise Self-Regulating, Resilient Kids

42:41 | When Manifestation Helps — and When It Backfires

48:35 | How Labels Quietly Become Personal Limitations

54:54 | The Best and Worst Parenting Advice

About Nir

Nir Eyal is a globally recognised authority on behaviour change and human potential. A former lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, he's the New York Times bestselling author of three books that between them have sold over one million copies in more than 30 languages.

• Beyond Belief: geni.us/beyondbelief
• Indistractable: geni.us/Indistractable
• Hooked: geni.us/hooked
• Free belief change guide: nirandfar.com/beyond-belief-live
• 30-Day Belief Transformation Journal: nirandfar.com/beyond-belief
• Website: nirandfar.com
• Instagram: @nireyal
• LinkedIn: Nir Eyal

• Why your to-do list is secretly working against you
• Four questions that can dissolve a belief you've held for years (Nir uses his mum as the test case)
• Why "I am" are the most dangerous words in English
• The labels you put on your kids become the ceilings they live under
• What the science actually says about manifestation
• How to raise “indistractable” kids (it has nothing to do with screen time limits)

Connect with Nir:

https://www.nirandfar.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nireyal/

https://www.instagram.com/nireyal

Growing Pains is HoneyKids Asia's podcast for the conversations you want to have after the kids go to bed.

• YouTube: @growingpains.honeykids
• Instagram: @honeykidsasia
• Website: honeykidsasia.com

Hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. If this one hits home, send it to a parent who needs it.

Growing Pains is produced in partnership with Poddster, Singapore's podcast studio.

#GrowingPains #HoneyKidsAsia #MillennialParenting #SandwichGeneration #MaternalMentalHealth #DigitalParenting #IdentityCrisis #HighFunctioningDepression #Podster

Every self-help book tells you to love yourself first before you can be loved by anyone else. Yana Fry, founder of the Academy of Love, says that advice is a trap, and she has watched it keep high-achieving women stuck in the same loop for years. Her own work traces back to a single moment at age 8: her parents' divorce, a dog-eared relationship book, and a promise she made herself in a notebook.

In this episode, she unpacks the archetype framework built from that promise, nine patterns that explain why some of us repeat the same relationship over and over, and why kids pick up on all of it long before they have the words for it. Yana gets unusually honest too: a panic attack in the middle of the Namibian desert that decided something for her before she'd consciously decided it herself, a confession about what her own date nights actually look like lately, and a story from her late 20s she doesn't tell often, the moment she says was quietly driving everything before she understood why. Your kids are watching how you love. This episode is about what they're actually learning.

• Why "love yourself first" might be the worst advice a high achiever can follow
• What decided itself in her body during a panic attack in the middle of the desert, before her mind caught up
• What her own date nights actually look like these days, and why she's not hiding it
• The moment in her late 20s she rarely talks about, and the wound it revealed
• The nine patterns that explain why you keep ending up in the same relationship, romantic or otherwise
• What her toddler is already absorbing about love, without a single word being said
• The one thing she hopes her daughter never has to unlearn

Yana Fry is an internationally recognized speaker, transformational coach, and founder of the Academy of Love. She built a nine-archetype framework for identifying love patterns after her own upheaval: a marriage at 22, a cancer diagnosis three months later, a divorce, and a full rebuild of her life from there. She now lives in Singapore, is 17 years into an intercultural marriage, and works primarily with high-achieving women untangling how they love, parent, and lead.

Find out which love pattern your kids are learning from you. Sign up for Yana's masterclass here.

00:00 — Meet Yana Fry

01:15 — How her definition of love has shifted over the years

04:55 — Healing old patterns, choosing motherhood

12:40 — Parenting without projection

22:00 — Why self-love is hard for high-achieving women

24:35 — The nine love archetypes

27:20 — Building self-care and connection into real life

38:15 — Teaching the next generation what healthy love looks like

48:40 — Quick-fire advice

51:55 — Host takeaways

Growing Pains is HoneyKids Asia's podcast for the conversations you want to have after the kids go to bed.

YouTube: @growingpains.honeykids

Instagram: @honeykidsasia

Website: honeykidsasia.com

Hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. If this one resonated, share it with a parent who needs it.

Growing Pains is produced in partnership with Poddster, Singapore's podcast studio.

#YanaFry #GrowingPains #HoneyKidsAsia #ConsciousLove #SelfLove #LoveArchetypes #ParentingAndLove #HighAchievingWomen #RelationshipAdvice #FatherWound #AcademyOfLove #ConsciousParenting #SingaporeMoms #PersonalDevelopment #HealthyRelationships

Krystal Clavier-Choo is an applied psychologist and two-time TEDx speaker who once built a tech company, then one day, things changed. A brain cyst erased her Type A identity overnight, on top of eight years of clinical depression that began in childhood.

What she found on the other side became a framework she now uses with CEOs, mothers, and teenagers who look fine on the outside and are quietly falling apart.

In this episode, Krystal tells us about a pattern that's been studied since 1992, one that quadruples a person's risk of dying young, and it isn't a habit most people would think to change. She walks us through the three domains that decide whether you burn out or hold steady, why "happy wife, happy life" is a trap, and the millimeter by millimeter method she uses to help people stop silencing themselves before it costs them their health.

If you've never said no when you meant it, press play.

About Krystal Clavier-Choo

Krystal Clavier-Choo spent years building tech platforms before an unexplained illness stripped away her ability to work, walk steadily, or trust her own mind. She holds a Master of Science in Psychology and Neuroscience from King's College London and has since built the Dimensional System, a framework she uses to coach C-suite leaders and parents through burnout, identity collapse, and the mental load nobody names.

• Website: dimensionalsystem.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/krystalchoo
• Instagram: @metakrystal

What You’ll Takeaway

• The medical risk tied to the good girl complex, and why it isn't just a mindset problem
• The three domains that quietly decide whether you burn out, and why most high achievers are missing two of them
• Why "happy wife, happy life" might be doing more damage to a marriage than either partner realizes
• A boundary-setting method that works one millimeter at a time
• The real opposite of play (it isn't work)
• Why building a joy shelf might be the fastest way back to yourself
• Why the way you praise your kids could be setting them up for the same patterns you're trying to break

00:00 | Three Questions That Frame Everything

01:27 | Brain Cyst, Identity Collapse, and Surviving on Cheese Fries

06:34 | What Eight Years of Childhood Depression Taught Her

11:02 | The Safety–Challenge–Play Domains

15:19 | Why High Achievers Don't Know How to Play

21:23 | High-Functioning Burnout and the Cost to Your Kids

24:25 | Gender Patterns Are Cultural, Not Biological

26:55 | Mental Illness and Mental Health Are Two Different Continuums

29:15 | Reframing the Inner Critic and the Family Dynamic

32:21 | "Happy Wife, Happy Life" Is a Trap for Everyone

36:12 | The Good Girl Complex Is a Medical Problem

41:47 | "You Are Already Good" — Raising Non-Compliant Daughters

44:47 | Best Parenting Advice and Closing Thoughts

#GrowingPains #KrystalClavierChoo #StephanieDickson #GoodGirlComplex #BurnoutRecovery #MentalHealth #HighAchievers #WomensWellness #PlayTherapy #DimensionalSystem #PodcastForMoms #ParentingAdvice #SelfSilencing #WomensHealth #PsychologyPodcast

The Happiness Scientist Who Stopped Pretending to Be Happy

Sha-En Yeo is Singapore's first happiness scientist, a two-time TEDx speaker, and author of the upcoming Penguin book I Miss Feeling Like Me. She holds a master's in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied under Martin Seligman, Angela Duckworth, and Adam Grant, and has reached over 25,000 people across APAC.

• Social media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaenyeomapp/ https://www.instagram.com/shaenyeo/
• Website: https://happinessscientists.com/
• Book: I Miss Feeling Like Me (Penguin, forthcoming)

• Why "tomorrow will be a better day" is one of the worst things you can say to a struggling parent
• The difference between happiness and joy, and why only one of them actually lasts
• The CALM framework: a four-step tool for responding to a child's big emotions without toxic positivity
• Why gratitude journaling can backfire, and what has to come first before any strategy will work
• What standing on a stage in a red dress on one of the hardest days of her life taught her about authenticity
• Why self-compassion, not gratitude, is the bridge when you're too miserable for strategies to land
• The five-step path back to yourself when you've lost track of who that actually is

• 00:00 — Cold open
• 01:10 — Bullied, pessimistic, and asking "is this it?"
• 03:30 — The teacher who changed everything with a note
• 06:00 — Fear of becoming a parent, and why she almost didn't
• 09:00 — How she ended up at UPenn with a 10-month-old
• 12:00 — Happiness versus joy: why the distinction matters
• 14:00 — What toxic positivity actually does to people
• 16:30 — The CALM framework for parents who snap
• 20:00 — Emotions are data: how to regulate before you react
• 23:00 — Pain is inevitable. Suffering is what we add.
• 25:00 — Her father's illness and the labels we carry from childhood
• 29:00 — Self-compassion as the bridge
• 32:00 — The stage, the red dress, and the Chinese New Year dinner
• 36:00 — The five-step path back to yourself
• 40:00 — The hedonic treadmill and the $2,000 prom dress test
• 43:30 — When the system does not fit your child (PSLE, and being honest about it)
• 47:00 — Quick fire

Growing Pains is HoneyKids Asia's podcast for the conversations you want to have after the kids go to bed.

• YouTube: @growingpains.honeykids
• Instagram: @honeykidsasia
• Website: honeykidsasia.com

Hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. If this one resonated, share it with a parent who needs to hear it.

Growing Pains is produced in partnership with Poddster, Singapore's podcast studio.

#ShaEnYeo #GrowingPains #HoneyKidsAsia #PositivePsychology #Joy #Happiness #Parenting #ToxicPositivity #SelfCompassion #CALM #ParentingAdvice #MentalHealth #Singapore #Wellbeing

Maggie Dumra films her family for content and after over 78,000 followers later, she still won't let her own daughters near social media. The contradiction sits at the centre of this episode.

She spent twenty years in marketing, watched K-pop idols starve themselves to be on camera, and knows exactly what the algorithm does to a girl's body image before it happens to her own kids. Ange and Maggie go inside Sephora Kids trend, the one that put ten-year-olds on a retinol routine and racked up 331 million views on one hashtag.

Maggie opens up about what happens at the dinner table when the comments turn nasty, shares the strange Sunday-night ritual that keeps her girls from ever needing a credit card, and the one brain-development analogy that finally got her tween to back off the begging.

If you're raising a daughter anywhere near a smartphone, you need to hear what Maggie does differently.

Maggie Dumra is the founder of Jaedals, a Singapore footwear brand that works with underprivileged women to make comfort-driven sandals. Before that she spent twenty years in marketing and advertising, and now in between business and family, she creates family content online with over 78,000 followers. She is a mum of two daughters, 8 and 13, neither of whom has her own social media account.

Keep up with Maggie and Jaedals on:

• TikTok: @mrsdumra
• Instagram: @shopjaedals

• Why Maggie's daughters aren't allowed on TikTok even though she’s a content creator with over 78,000 followers herself
• What actually happens when a someone recognises her daughter in public
• The Sephora Kids trend explained, and the uncomfortable question it raises about who's footing the bill
• The Sunday-night ritual that keeps her girls from ever touching a credit card
• The brain analogy Maggie uses to explain "you're not ready yet" without a single lecture
• How Maggie gets her point across without turning into a naggy mum, and why it works better than any rule she's set
• What her 13-year-old would say to parents who post their kids online

IN THIS EPISODE

00:00 | Your Child Watched How Many TikToks?

01:11 | Why This Creator Bans Social Media

02:22 | Raising Kids Inside The Algorithm

04:41 | The Duality of Working Mom And Content Creator

05:17 | The Surprising Rule In Her House

07:04 | Before Posting Kids Online, Hear This

09:27 | The Internet's Dark Side Up Close

12:16 | What TikTok Is Doing To Girls

15:12 | The Skill Every Child Needs Online

18:00 | The Influence Parents Can't Control

20:20 | When Every Other Kid Has TikTok

22:06 | Is Your Child's Brain Ready Yet?

23:04 | Why 13 Is Still Too Young

24:54 | What Most Parents Don't Realize

25:57 | The Truth About Sephora Kids

28:45 | Why Her Kids Can't Buy Whatever They Want

29:57 | The Unexpected Good Side Of Screens

32:46 | The Real Problem Isn't TikTok

Growing Pains is HoneyKids Asia's podcast for the conversations you want to have after the kids go to bed.

• YouTube: @growingpains.honeykids
• Instagram: @honeykidsasia
• Website: honeykidsasia.com

Hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. If this one hits a nerve, send it to a parent who needs to hear it.

Growing Pains is produced in partnership with Poddster, Singapore's podcast studio.

#Parenting #SocialMediaKids #ScreenTime #DigitalParenting #RaisingDaughters #TikTokKids #SephoraKids #ParentingTips #OnlineSafety #FamilyPodcast #Motherhood #ParentingAdvice #KidsAndTechnology #DigitalWellbeing #GrowingPainsPodcast

Every parent in Singapore thinks about it. Not everyone says it out loud.

The pressure our kids are under to perform, to get the grade, to stay ahead, starts earlier than most of us realise and shows up in ways we don't always recognise. A child reaching for the eraser to hide a mistake. A kid who looks fine on paper but is quietly falling apart inside.

Greg Wilde is Head of Primary at Sir Manasseh Meyer International School in Singapore, and before that led schools across China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and the UK. He's spent his career watching how pressure builds in children, and what actually helps.

In this conversation he gets specific: the language that quietly destroys confidence, why failure is a skill, and what you can change at home this week. This one is for the parent who wants their child to do well but isn't sure where encouragement ends and pressure begins.

Practical, honest, and genuinely useful. Press play.

Greg Wilde is Head of Primary at Sir Manasseh Meyer International School (SMMIS) in Singapore. He has led schools across the UK, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines and has spent his career building learning environments where mistakes are part of the process, not something to hide.

• Sir Manasseh Meyer International School: smmis.edu.sg

• Why the kids who look like they're coping are sometimes the ones who aren't
• The age pressure starts showing up in classrooms (it's younger than you think)
• Green for growth, pink for think: why Greg's school replaced red pen entirely
• The Power of Yet
• What to say when your child comes home with a bad grade (and what not to say)
• Why "you didn't try hard enough" quietly destroys confidence
• The one thing Greg would tell every Singapore parent to do this week

• 00:00 — Cold open
• 01:00 — Welcome to Growing Pains
• 02:00 — What fear of failure actually looks like in primary school
• 04:00 — The telltale signs parents should watch for at home
• 06:30 — Where the pressure is really coming from
• 09:00 — When pressure helps and when it starts doing damage
• 12:00 — The Power of Yet
• 14:30 — Green for growth, pink for think
• 17:30 — Participation awards: helpful or harmful?
• 20:00 — Is Singapore more high-pressure than other countries?
• 23:00 — How schools support anxious kids
• 26:00 — Social media and academic pressure
• 29:30 — AI in schools: where the line is
• 34:00 — The language that helps and the language that hurts
• 37:00 — Teaching failure as a skill
• 39:30 — Actionable things parents can do this week
• 42:00 — Quick fire
• 46:00 — Steph's three takeaways

Growing Pains is HoneyKids Asia's podcast for the conversations you want to have after the kids go to bed.

• YouTube: @growingpains.honeykids
• Instagram: @honeykidsasia
• Website: honeykidsasia.com

Hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. If this one hit a nerve, send it to a parent who needs to hear it.

Growing Pains is produced in partnership with Poddster, Singapore's podcast studio.

Why Women Become Angry in Their 40s — And Why That's Not A Bad Thing

46% of women aged 40 to 54 face the highest burnout risk of any age group. More than half screen positive for depression and anxiety. Over 60% of later-life divorces are initiated by women.

In this conversation, Ange sits down with Amanda Lim and Jasmin Dhillon, hosts of The Forties Formula, who’ve had the conversations about “midlife” that most people still aren't having. Amanda is a Harvard-certified health coach and mum of three who had her third child at 41. Jasmin, is an Integrated Health Strategist who hit perimenopause at 36 after giving birth to her twins.

Together, they’ve spent years collecting stories and what they keep hearing, from hundreds of women, is the same thing: everyone thinks their experience is unique, everyone thinks something is wrong. The rage, the shame, the loneliness. Everyone thinks they're the only one. And the good news is, they're not.

They get down to raw and real emotions, talking about the anger that arrives in your 40s and what it's actually telling you. The rage is real, and it's not the same as stress. And it's not a breakdown either. They share stories of identity crisis, the fear that no one talks about, and what doctors don’t tell you about the changes in the body. Is it just age and can we do anything about it?

This is not the fabulous-at-forty version talk, but it might be the most useful conversation you’ll need in your 40s. Press play.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 | Why Am I So Angry?

01:15 | The Conversation Every Mum Needs

02:17 | Meet the 40s Experts

03:24 | Nobody Warned Us: It’s Not Age!

04:13 | The Problem With "Midlife"

05:24 | Perimenopause at 36?!

06:28 | The Symptoms That Are Usually Missed

07:46 | Is Your Rage Actually Hormonal?

10:08 | The Identity Crisis No One Talks About

12:00 | Identity Synthesis vs Identity Replacement vs Identity Dissonance

13:49 | The Life-Changing Stove Analogy

14:40 | Why Women Leave Relationships After 20 Years

16:08 | Don't Wait Until It's Too Late

16:50 | Geriatric Pregnancy: Myth vs Reality

18:13 | The Fear Nobody Talks About

19:24 | Stop Surviving. Start Thriving.

21:35 | Your Kids Will Leave One Day

22:44 | What Your Doctor Isn’t Telling You

24:59 | The Impossible Standard for Women

27:02 | How to Find Your People Again

29:52 | The Truth Women Whisper In Safety

31:17 | Hot Takes on Aging & Menopause

33:07 | What Every Woman Should Remember

The Forties Formula is an award-winning podcast named Best Health and Wellness Podcast in Asia 2025 and featured by CNA as one of Singapore's best podcasts for women. It's hosted by Amanda Lim and Jasmin Dhillon, two health coaches and mothers who bring both personal experience and science-led insight to the conversations most people still aren't having about midlife. Amanda is a Harvard-certified health coach and Director of Singapore's first metabolic health clinic, where she and her physician husband co-manage patients through fitness and nutrition. Jasmin is an Integrated Health Strategist specialising in gut health, hormone balance, and sustainable nutrition for women in their 40s.

The Forties Formula: https://www.youtube.com/@thefortiesformula

Jasmin Dhillon: Eat with Jasmin

Amanda Lim: Lift Clinic

• Perimenopause can start at 36. Jasmin thought her symptoms (wrist pain, anxiety, heart palpitations, no sleep) were just because of her newborn twins. They weren't.
• The rage is hormonal, but not in the way you think. Dropping estrogen doesn't create new anger. It removes your ability to keep masking the feelings that were already there.
• Identity in your 40s doesn't have to mean replacement. Amanda's framework: synthesis, not dissonance. The burner analogy will stay with you.
• The mental load doesn't explode because women suddenly become unreasonable. It explodes because the hormones that helped us stay quiet stop doing that.
• Muscle will save you. Skeletal muscle and the functional strength to use it. Your GP probably hasn't said this clearly enough.
• Making friends in your 40s starts with knowing who you are first. Show up in places that reflect who you want to be, and stay long enough to become part of it.
• What you think is weird, shameful, or too lonely to say out loud, everyone else is feeling too. That's the whole point of this conversation.

Growing Pains is HoneyKids Asia's podcast for the conversations you want to have after the kids go to bed.

• YouTube: @growingpains.honeykids
• Instagram: @honeykidsasia
• Website: honeykidsasia.com

Hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. If this one moved you, share it with a parent who needs to hear it.

Growing Pains is produced in partnership with Poddster, Singapore's podcast studio.

Dr. Elaine Kim spent years in palliative care sitting with people in the last days of their lives. What her patients kept saying at the end changed everything about how she thinks about the beginning.

By age seven, a child's trajectory is already largely set. 90% of brain development happens in the first five years. And 250 million children around the world never get access to quality early education during that window.

Elaine left medicine to do something about it. She built Trehaus, a preschool redefining early education in Singapore and Jakarta, and Little Lab, an AI powered platform bringing that same education to communities that have never had access to it, including 10,000 children in rural Pakistan. She is also a mum of four.

In this conversation we dive into the science of early brain development, what AI actually means for the skills our kids need, why empathy is not just a feeling but something that can be taught, and what it means to raise children for a world being reshaped by forces neither of us fully understand yet.

This one will stay with you. Press play.

Dr. Elaine Kim is a medical doctor, former palliative care physician, co-founder of Trehaus (Singapore and Jakarta) and Little Lab, an AI powered early education platform. She is a mum of four and a former UN ambassador for initiatives against the oppression of women.

• Treehaus: https://trehaus.co/
• Little Lab: littlelab.com

• Why a child's trajectory is largely predictable by age seven (and what that means for the years before school)
• The Nobel Prize winning economist's finding on early education RO
• What 250 million children not having access to a classroom actually costs the rest of the world
• Why empathy is a skill, not a sentiment, and how it can be deliberately taught
• The one question we should stop asking children (and what to ask instead)
• What dying patients kept wishing for at the end, and what Elaine decided to do with that
• Why female empowerment, to Elaine, now means something deeper than it used to

• 00:00 — Cold open
• 01:00 — Welcome to Growing Pains
• 02:40 — From palliative care to preschool: connecting the dots
• 04:50 — What the dying taught her about what matters
• 06:30 — Why a child's future is largely decided by age seven
• 09:10 — 250 million children, one window, and why it closes fast
• 11:00 — What Little Lab actually does (and why it is not replacing teachers)
• 16:50 — Raising kids for an AI world: what skills actually matter
• 23:10 — Why empathy is the most important thing above everything else
• 25:00 — The question we should stop asking children
• 27:55 — Climate, AI, and what they talk about at the dinner table
• 29:00 — How to hold the heaviness of the world for your kids without breaking
• 32:55 — What Elaine wants her daughter to know about being a woman
• 35:20 — Quick fire
• 37:28 — The reconciliation moment that got Steph in tears

Growing Pains is HoneyKids Asia's podcast for the conversations you want to have after the kids go to bed.

• YouTube: @growingpains.honeykids
• Instagram: @honeykidsasia
• Website: honeykidsasia.com

Hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. If this one moved you, share it with a parent who needs to hear it.

Growing Pains is produced in partnership with Poddster, Singapore's podcast studio.

#EarlyChildhoodEducation #ParentingPodcast #BrainDevelopment #ChildDevelopment #EarlyLearning #AIinEducation #Empathy #ParentingTips #EducationInnovation #FutureOfEducation #RaisingKids #PreschoolEducation #DrElaineKim #Trehaus #LittleLab #GrowingPainsPodcast #HoneyKidsAsia #ParentingJourney #EducationForAll #Podcast

Most parents wait for belonging to happen. James Sweeney says that's exactly the problem.

James is the head of One World International School's Nanyang Campus, with students from over 70 nationalities. He's also spent his whole career watching children walk into rooms where they don't know anyone and figuring out how to make that okay.

In this conversation, he unpacks what schools that get this right actually do differently, what parents say on the hard nights that help versus hurt, and how to tell the difference between a rough week and something that needs action.

He also goes on record, carefully, about what school is actually for. And it is more than just grades.

"I don't think I fit in." Few things hit a parent harder than those words. This episode is the conversation to have before, during, or after your child says them.

James Sweeney has led schools across the UK, South Korea, China, and Singapore. He knows what belonging looks like when it's working, what it looks like when it isn't, and what the difference usually comes down to. Spoiler: it isn't luck, personality, or finding the right buddy on day one.

Steph brings her own experience too, moving to Singapore at 13, crying every day for months, and the buddy assigned to her who she didn't connect with at all.

James Sweeney is Head of One World International School, Nanyang Campus, Singapore, a school of over 70 nationalities built around a single core value: kindness. He began his career as an early years and primary school teacher in Birmingham and has since led schools in South Korea, China, and Singapore.

• One World International School: owis.org

• 00:00 — Cold open
• 02:30 — Belonging is by design, not luck
• 04:40 — How schools spot the child who is struggling
• 07:20 — What to say to your child that night
• 09:00 — Kindness across 70 nationalities: defining it when it means different things
• 12:00 — The quiet child who sang Japanese rock on stage
• 13:00 — When a best friend leaves: friendship grief is real
• 16:00 — The difference between a hard day and bullying
• 18:20 — What school is actually for (a Singapore school head goes on record)
• 22:00 — Rapid fire

Growing Pains is HoneyKids Asia's podcast for the conversations you want to have after the kids go to bed.

• YouTube: @growingpains.honeykids
• Instagram: @honeykidsasia
• Website: honeykidsasia.com

Hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. If this one helped, send it to a parent in their first few weeks of new school fog. It might be exactly what they need.

Growing Pains is produced in partnership with Poddster, Singapore's podcast studio.

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