Growing Pains

Faz Gaffa says something most parenting platforms will not: it is okay to sit in a car park and scream before you walk back inside. She is the editor of Honey Kids Asia, a journalist known for opinions that make people uncomfortable, and a mother who has been rewriting what she owes everyone else since her father's cancer diagnosis gave her 89 days to say goodbye.

In this conversation, Faz and Stephanie go somewhere most interviews will not: the phone call that changed everything, the diagnosis nobody prepares you for, and the year she does not talk about publicly. They get into why an entire generation looks fine and feels empty, the parenting rule Faz will not bend on no matter how much her son begs, and the question she asks herself every time someone praises her for handling it all.

There is also a confession about anger neither of them expected to share on camera, and a line about discipline that will change how you think about the next time your child gets in trouble.

This one gets raw and spicy. Click play.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 | Cold Open: Real Conversations for Real Parents

00:38 | Meet Faz Gaffa: Ditching Beige Parenting Advice

01:54 | Beyond the Job Title: Redefining Personal Identity

04:24 | Postpartum Grief: Navigating 89 Days of Heartbreak

09:34 | Sandwich Generation: Surviving the Caregiver Guilt Trap

11:28 | Millennial Identity Crisis: Unpacking the Single-Path Fallacy

16:55 | High-Functioning Depression: Recognizing the Burnout Discipline

21:03 | Spicy Take: Why Moms Should Always Work

26:27 | Silent Struggle: Unpacking Postpartum Rage and Self-Erasure

29:56 | Tech Boundaries: Unsupervised Screen Time Is Neglect

39:39 | Future-Proofing Kids: Building Taste and Soft Skills

42:29 | Rethinking Discipline: Why Humiliation and Pain Fail

49:24 | Finding Hope: Breaking Cycles of Generational Trauma

50:44 | Stephanie’s Top Three Episode Takeaways

Faz Gaffa is the editor of Honey Kids Asia, a journalist and brand strategist. She built her career on saying what feels real over what feels safe, and now works as a brand storyteller and community builder, with a focus on diversity, inclusion, and raising race-conscious children.

Connect with Faz:

• Website: fazabdulgaffa.com
• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/fazgaffa
• Instagram: @fazgaffa
• Facebook: facebook.com/fazabdgaffa

• The rule Faz says she will never break, no matter how much her son pushes for more screen time
• What happened in the 89 days between her father's diagnosis and his death
• The Instagram message Faz keeps getting for talking too honestly about how she is doing
• Why she wrote that mothers should never leave the workforce, and the backlash that followed
• The postpartum condition neither Faz nor Stephanie had ever heard of before it happened to them
• What her son said to a boy holding a stick, and what happened next
• The one sentence her mother said about discipline that sent Faz into a rage

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.

She was topping charts across three countries before she could vote. Then the industry that made her famous told her to shrink, and she nearly disappeared trying to do it.

Ming Bridges gained forty kilos, lost herself for five years, and reached a point where she didn't want to be here anymore. What turned it around took her by surprise, and it happened faster than she ever expected.

Now she's a mother of two under two, running three businesses, and living with an ADHD diagnosis that came decades later than it should have. She talks about the moment a viral video turned her body into public property, the pregnancy sickness so bad it launched a business, and the parenting mantra she's trying to live by before her daughters are old enough to repeat her mistakes.

This is a conversation about fame, food, motherhood, and what it actually takes to come back from rock bottom. Click play.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 | The Impossible Standard: Why Are Women Never Enough?

00:35 | Welcome to Growing Pains with Ming Bridges

01:52 | "You Need to Lose Weight": The Dark Side of Teen Stardom

04:34 | 40 Kilos Later: Getting Kicked Out of the Industry

06:58 | 5 Years of Struggling vs. 2 Weeks of Healing

10:51 | Generational Trauma & The Danger of "Good Intentions"

13:40 | Why "You Look Pretty" is the Wrong Compliment for Our Daughters

17:03 | Launching a Business Out of Pure Pregnancy Rage

24:31 | "I Just Rotate What I'm Failing At": The Reality of Two Under Two

27:55 | Missing Brain Tabs: Navigating Motherhood with Adult ADHD

31:10 | The Viral Swimsuit Video & Dismantling the Toxic Male Gaze

37:29 | Quick-Fire: The Single Mantra to Cure Mom Guilt

42:52 | Episode Takeaways: Stop Glorifying the Rush

Ming Bridges is a two-time TEDx speaker and body positivity advocate who first became known as a teenage pop star, topping charts in Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia and winning Teenage magazine's Teenage Icon at 13. The pressures of the entertainment industry led to a severe eating disorder, one she has spoken openly about rebuilding her life from. She is now the founder of three businesses: sustainable fashion rental platform Rentadella, footwear line Bridge and Bella, and clean hydration brand Formi Wellness, which she launched during her second pregnancy.

Connect with Ming:

Tedx talk: Fat, Hungry and Desperate TEDx Talk

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_Xjm3CW-axf4CBAqmJmYRQ

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mingbridges/?hl=en

Find out more about her businesses:

Formi: https://itsformi.com/

Rentadella: https://www.instagram.com/rentadella/?hl=en

Bridge and Bella: https://www.bridgeandbella.com/

• How a modeling agency's four words at 18 sent her into a five year spiral
• The moment a viral video turned her body into a headline she never asked for
• Why she says her ADHD didn't fully show up until she became a mother
• What made her launch a supplement brand while too sick to leave her bed
• The question she asks first when her daughter says she hates how she looks
• Why recovery took her five years too long, and what changed in two weeks
• The mantra she repeats every day that reframes everything going wrong in her life

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.

She had four children, two marriages, and once lived in the same building as her ex-husband while married to her current one. Christine Amour-Levar built a life most people would call impossible: mother of four, social entrepreneur, climate investor, and leader of thirty all-female expeditions to some of the most extreme places on earth. But ask her which comes first, being a woman or being a mother, and her answer might surprise you.

This week, Christine sits down with Steph to talk about the guilt she carried when she chose ambition over staying home, the sea turtle story she used to help her children understand divorce, and the annual ritual she has kept for twenty five years that keeps her whole life on track. She also opens up about a decision so unconventional that even her own mother struggled to understand it.

What happens when you refuse to choose between the woman you are and the mother you became? And what does it actually cost to have it all? Hit play.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 | Why Motherhood Shouldn’t Erase Who You Are

00:31 | Meet Christine Amour-Levar: Mother, Investor and Explorer

02:44 | From Nike Executive to a Life of Purpose and Impact

05:26 | “I’m a Woman First”: Redefining Motherhood and Identity

08:33 | The Mum Guilt Behind a Successful Career

15:20 | How to Divorce Without Breaking the Family

22:44 | Why Self-Love Is the Key to Letting Go of Guilt

27:17 | You Can Have It All — Just Not All at Once

31:28 | Inside Christine’s 180-Page Life-Planning System

36:58 | How to Build a Career Around Everything You Love

41:45 | What Extreme Expeditions Teach You About Leadership

44:10 | Why Your Children Shouldn’t Always Come First

47:40 | The Three Biggest Lessons on Motherhood and Identity

About the Christine Amour-Levar

Christine Amour-Levar is a French-Swiss-Filipina social entrepreneur, climate investor, and bestselling author who has led thirty all-female expeditions to places like Antarctica, the Arctic, and the Danakil Depression, raising over $3 million for women and climate causes. She co-founded Her Planet Earth and Investors for Climate, is Founder of Women Beyond Limits, and is a mother of four.

Connect with Christine:

https://www.christineamourlevar.com/

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

https://www.instagram.com/christineamourlevar/

What You'll Take Away

• Why Christine calls herself "a woman first, and a mother second"
• The sea turtle story she used to explain divorce to a four and six year old
• What happened when she and her ex-husband lived in the same building, married to other people
• The annual ritual she's kept for 25 years, and why it runs 180 pages
• Why she thinks "always put your child first" is bad parenting advice
• What went wrong during a 50 degree desert expedition
• The one thing she says is the true opposite of love (it isn't hate)

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.

#GrowingPains #HoneyKidsAsia #ChristineAmourLevar #WorkingMothers #MumGuilt #WomenFirst #CoParenting #WomenInLeadership #PortfolioCareer #FemaleEntrepreneur #ConsciousParenting #WomenBeyondLimits #Podster

She built one of Singapore's most awarded agencies. She dressed the biggest names in fashion. She raised two boys. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, she stopped recognising the person in the mirror.

Tjin Lee, founder of Mercury and co-founder of Crib Society talks about what actually happens when motherhood and career quietly swallow your sense of self, and what it takes to hold on to it. This is not a story about burnout. It is about the slower, sneakier thing that happens when you spend two decades being everything to everyone else.

There is a label she says every working mother should stop using on herself. There is a red dress that changed the way an entire industry saw her. There is a caterpillar story she tells her sons that has nothing to do with insects and everything to do with why she refuses to make their lives easier.

If you have ever felt like you disappeared somewhere inside your own life, this conversation is for you. Hit play.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 | Losing Yourself to Motherhood

00:38 | Welcome to Growing Pains with Tjin Lee

01:56 | The Unexpected Journey to Motherhood at 40

03:57 | Facing the "Auntie" in the Mirror

06:37 | Why 50 is the Adolescence of Old Age

12:19 | Don't Let "Mom" Override Your Identity

15:23 | Why "Mompreneur" is a Label That Keeps Women Small

23:42 | Coloring Books to Minecraft: The Screen Time Dilemma

28:13 | Shielding Sons From the Toxic Manosphere

30:12 | The Red Dress Moment: Stepping Out of the Shadows

35:51 | Earning Your Battle Armor & Dropping the People Pleaser

41:07 | Stop Taking It Personally: Lessons for the Next Gen

43:00 | The Heartbreak of "Soulmate Parenting"

46:35 | Quick-Fire: Refusing the Tiger Mom Trap

52:24 | Episode Takeaways

About Tjin Lee

Tjin Lee is the founder of Mercury, a Singapore marketing agency she built over 23 years and sold at 49, working with brands including Burberry, Gucci and Cartier along the way. She also launched the Audi Fashion Festival, chaired Singapore Fashion Week, and co-founded Crib Society to support women entrepreneurs. She has over 120,000 followers on Instagram, where she is known for being outspoken about motherhood, identity and midlife reinvention.

Connect with Tjin Lee:

Instagram: @Tjinlee

Linkedin: Tjin Lee

Find out more about Crib Society

• The moment she stopped recognising herself, and what she did about it
• Why she says the word "mompreneur" quietly shrinks the woman using it
• The caterpillar story she tells her sons, and why she won't rescue them from the struggle
• What it actually took to separate "who I am" from "who my kids need me to be"
• The red dress story behind why she stopped hiding backstage at her own events
• Why she thinks women are taught to be uncomfortable with being seen
• What she wishes she had understood about herself twenty years earlier

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.

#TjinLee #GrowingPains #HoneyKidsAsia #MotherhoodJourney #WomenInBusiness #ImposterSyndrome #SingaporeEntrepreneurs #MomGuilt #SelfLoveJourney #ModernParenting #EmpoweredWomen #ThrivingInYour50s

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.

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