Dear Maxine, I struggle with being assertive and worry about it affecting my children. I have always feared confrontation and have never had assertiveness modelled to me growing up. Often, I feel like I will cry (or do cry) and feel panicked under such circumstances. As a result, I tend to avoid situations where confrontation…
Dear Maxine, With lockdown easing, I’m really pleased I can now have some freedom and go back to eating in restaurants and visiting cafes. However, I’m now terrified of taking my daughter to a restaurant. How will she behave? What if she has a tantrum? Or just gets a bit over-excited and starts to disturb…
Dear Maxine, I know this isn’t necessarily on the topic of ‘mum guilt’ or even parenting, but I was wondering if you had any thoughts on how I could make peace with my post-baby body. There are parts of my body that I used to be quite proud of and now they look totally different…
Dear Maxine, As lockdown eases, I’m feeling increasingly anxious about losing control of my baby. That may sound intense but she was born during lockdown and it’s only been me and her for this whole time. Now that more and more people are allowed to come into our lives and our home, I’m starting to…
Dear Maxine, My mum says she feels like she can’t talk to me about parenting because I take it as criticism and she’s not wrong, I do feel criticised when we speak about what I’m doing with my baby. This upsets my mum because she says she’s been looking forward to discussing parenting for years…
