We finally got Jacqlin Richards on the pod and she did not hold back.

Parenting Alchemist. Award-winning educator. Author of the best book title we have ever heard: F*ck Up Your Kids with Grace & Humour.

Jacqlin used to be the fun police, the sugar police, the screen police. Blow-drying her hair before a run. Holding it all together while falling apart behind closed doors. Now she actually enjoys her kids, and in this episode she tells us exactly what changed.

We talk about:

✨ the perfection trap and why it keeps mums isolated

✨ the love languages exercise her whole family did (steal this one)

✨ why losing your sh*t isn't the problem, the repair is what counts

✨ screens, fear, and getting your kids' buy-in instead of policing them

Her book hits Amazon on 28 July and there are a handful of signed pre-order copies left. Pre-order also gets you free access to her live workshop series. Link in bio, or head to jacqlinrichards.com/preorder.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Then share it with your village 💛

@jacqlinrichards

#HotMessesBigVisions #ParentingPodcast #NZPodcast #RealParenting #MumLife #TheVillageCo

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This week we're joined by Nicole Retter, founder of PAM (Personal Admin Manager), one of New Zealand's top-ranked apps and a product built entirely from lived chaos.

Nicole takes us right back to the origin story: COVID, a husband who couldn't use either arm, two preschoolers, a piece of 4x2 wood wedged against a bedroom door, a panic attack, and then a concussion that gave her 12 months on the couch to figure out what she actually wanted to build.

In this episode we talk about:

• The mental load that never actually ends (it just changes shape at every life stage)
• What "supermum" really means, and why Nicole thinks it's the most insidious thing ever invented
• Burnout canaries, recognising your personal early warning signs before you hit the wall
• Why she deliberately limits what AI does inside PAM, and why throwing an LLM at a problem is not a strategy
• The overlap between mum mode and founder mode, and what snapping at your kids at the kitchen bench taught her about boundaries
• Authentic pitching vs scripted presentations, and why cookie-cutter kills personality

Plus Nicole's actual messy moment of the week: a logistical nightmare involving swimming pools, an Uber, a scooter, a closed Butterfly Creek, and a very sugar-hyped eight-year-old.

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What would you actually do if your baby choked right now?

In this episode, we sit down with Charlotte from And Breathe First Aid, a paediatric ICU nurse with over a decade of experience and the founder of NZ's only parent-specific first aid education. We talk about the gap between knowing first aid and actually being able to act in a crisis, why choking is less common than you think (and what to do when it does happen), and the one stat about CPR that stopped us both in our tracks.

We cover:

• The difference between gagging and choking, and the one question to ask yourself
• Why baby CPR is nothing like what you learned in a workplace course
• Febrile seizures: what they are, how common they are, and why no one talks about it
• How to stay calm when it's your own child
• The free Baby CPR mini course you can do right now from your couch

Charlotte also shares the story of her own daughter going blue at 2am, which is equal parts terrifying and reassuring.

Free Baby CPR Mini Course: https://www.andbreathefirstaid.co.nz/pages/baby-cpr-mini-course

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