Blog

By E K Wills Unusual times call for a new approach to schooling. During the lockdown, we are not officially obliged to keep our kids at home if we are essential workers, but many are deciding to keep kids out of school where they can. (Please, teachers, be kind to those parents who do not have an option to do so if kids are too young to stay home alone: just as others need to consider you are also at the forefront of this crisis.) If your children are old enough to stay h

By EK Wills 4 Dads In perfect timing for Father’s Day, an article in the SMH inspired me to expand on the theory that father’s have their own language. If you haven’t heard already, Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus. What this refers to is John Gray’s premise that the fundamental issues in relationships stem from psychological differences between the sexes. Even decades after this book was first a best seller, it is still valid. If you take this a step further, it st

By EK Wills Travelling with children who are now opinionated and have their own tastes requires a different type of planning than for little ones that need entertaining. Our trip to New Zealand (NZ) provided the opportunity to get our teen and pre teen and primary aged boy together in a confined space for 10 days to visit the North Island of New Zealand in preparation of my sister’s wedding to a Kiwi. How to carry money We looked at options such as travel card, traveller’s ch

By EK Wills Is Santa coming to your house? What if you don’t have a chimney? As we move into December, the Christmas list for each child is growing. Lego is a favourite for our ten year old and the teenaged girls are looking at earrings and clothing: all things they have to choose themselves or they won’t like them. Then we came up with a brainwave. Although it’s been four months since we moved, we’re still working out what we need and where it should go. The big-ticket items

By EK Wills Many people struggle with finances their whole lives. And many feel they don’t know enough about how to manage their money. It’s too hard and too complicated so why bother? But given how expensive today’s economy is for housing, the idea of owning your own home seems to slip from more people’s grasp at an alarming rate. I grew up in the excess of the 80’s so always thought at a windfall of success would enable the lifestyle I wanted. But the crash that came after

By EK Wills No matter what activity you decide to engage your children in they will not generally thank you. No matter how much you may encourage them to persist, a time will come when they will berate you for not choosing what they later want or that you let them quit something they weren’t prepared to persist with. We recently discovered this phenomena with music. The youngest is learning drums and he has now revealed that he doesn’t like loud noises which would explain why

By E K Wills Holiday time is when you let your guard down and let the kids have some fun. This is particularly true in Australia where they have a long break and the year comes to a close. But sometimes this can backfire when it comes time to going back to school. It means they have to stick to a routine again and may even need to do homework depending on what age and school they go to. In our household, they will need to help out to keep the family unit running smoothly, as

by EK Wills Ever wonder how to survive a 10 hour trip in the car with young children - without an electronic babysitter? Sounds challenging, but it is not impossible with some surefire ways to keep them entertained and interested. Now we are heading into the travel season, it’s the perfect time to think about the practicalities of the upcoming trip with support of handy travel tips. We regularly drove to Byron Bay from Sydney in the Christmas break utilizing these self help p