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ASK SANDY IN THE PICTURE New routine

a must to ROBINSON ANNA

manage life PICTURE

Our family is so busy during the week. We both work and have school commitments, and juggle family life like everyone else does. Weekends should be for regrouping, but I’m now finding that my anxiety is CHILDHOOD ramping up and I’m feeling exhausted, run I’m the youngest of five children. down and getting pretty miserable. This 01 This is the only real family portrait can’t be my life for the next decade. How we have of all of us with Rowena when she do I change things around? was relatively well. It was taken two months Mum, via email before she moved into the Royal Children’s Hospital. It’s perhaps the most precious You are so right — don’t make this your life for photo in my whole world. The extra precious the next decade. Weekend anxiety cranks up part is that Mum hand-sewed our outfits. because there are now so many competing demands, expectations and obligations, all of which take away spontaneity. There is no time left to recharge. This intensity can be referred to as a “time famine”. The lack of time we have affects our physical and psychological health, productivity and happiness. You need to create “time affluence” for activities that are personally meaningful to you, give you joy and are leisurely. There are no short cuts. You have to decide other ways to manage the demands in the family. Offload more work to your partner, get up half an hour earlier and decrease some of the expectations and this will help some of the anticipatory anxiety that is probably now kicking MARTY AND I in. You don’t have to be present for every sports We’re 23 here. This was taken in match — your family needs you and that 02 the recording studio that was happens through self-care. The anxiety will Marty’s bedroom, and it’s us before we were then diminish. even a couple. We still have this excellent creative tension and we’re always giving I’ve probably written this email too late, but each other a little bit of lip. I think that’s the can you give me some tips on managing our secret to why our relationship still feels alive. son’s VCE exam anxiety. He’s been really good at preparation and has consistent study habits but he puts lots of pressure on Life's himself. What should we do? Year 12 parents, via email

Helping your son manage exam anxiety is certainly at the tail-end of time. However, it sounds like you’ve already done an excellent job and he’s also been really diligent. Exam prep is songbook actually years in the making, not just at Year 12 or the few months leading up to exams. Your son may want to consider downloading apps such as Calm or Smiling Mind. Good sleep, Struggles with mental health and tragedy are exercise, eating well and two-hour study blocks are essential. As parents, don’t be overly central themes in Clare Bowditch’s new memoir This photo would’ve been taken intrusive or engage in any helicopter parenting. 03 around 2013. Offspring was my He knows what he needs to do. Create a stable, favourite television show and I couldn’t consistent home life. Exam stress and anxiety is CHRISTINA KARRAS believe my luck when I got a role on it. I miss normal and not something that should be Eddie (Perfect) and the cast, but I’m so thought of as evil and to be eradicated. Learning RITING a book was a health and her weight, and the death of her proud of the work each one of them is coping strategies (as opposed to being acopic) is long-held vow Clare sister Rowena when Bowditch was five. doing. a wonderful life skill. Stress can be a great Bowditch set for herself “It’s about the long tale of childhood motivator to meet challenges. Finally, ensure when she was 21. grief, and what we do with our love when he knows there are so many choices to a career But the ARIA- the thing that we love isn’t there anymore,” after Year 12 exams. It is just one Wwinning musician, Logie-nominated actor she says. pathway. and radio broadcaster can now happily add It also chronicles her love affair with her author to her list of accolades, with her new former bandmate and now husband, fellow memoir Your Own Kind of Girl. musician Marty Brown, with whom she Need some advice? Young and riddled with self doubt, she lives in Fitzroy with their three children. Send your questions to hoped one day she would find it within Despite the book being filled with deeply psychologist Sandy Rea at sandy@sandyrea. herself to write a book filled with her personal stories, Bowditch, 44, says the com or c/o Weekend, stories, passing on the knowledge she most difficult part of writing wasn’t so much Herald Sun, PO Box 14999, collected on the way. revisiting the memories, rather keeping on Melbourne, Vic 8001. “It’s not about the famous people I’ve top of life in the meantime. Sandy will read all letters, slept with or anything particularly “Creative endeavours can be all but regrets she cannot FAMILY answer them personally. glamorous like that,” Bowditch says. consuming. Between Marty and myself, I 04 This is me with my family on a trip sandyrea.com “It’s about recovery from the self doubt need to make sure we’re putting dinner on out for ice cream. Asha is 16, and that plagues so many of us who want bigger the table, and still signing the permission Oscar and Elijah are our 12-year-old identical things for our lives.” slips and so on.” twins. We love cooking and eating together, Bowditch writes about growing up in YOUR OWN KIND OF GIRL (ALLEN & UNWIN, and ribbing each other. Just lately we’ve Sandringham, her struggles with mental RRP $29.99) IS OUT ON MONDAY started doing some jamming together too.

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