Episodes

Ask Rachel anything Just over a week ago, my daughter was badly burned when her hot water bottle split along the seam. She needed specialist care at the Queen Victoria Hospital burns unit which became famous for Archibald McIndoe’s work treating badly burned WWII airmen. Instead of going back to university, she spent her 20th birthday recovering at home, unable to walk. In this community catch-up episode I’ll tell you what happened, what we learned about treating burns, and what I want ...

Ask Rachel anything What’s behind a teenager’s struggle to get to school—and how can parents help without turning every morning into a battle? In this episode, journalist and host Rachel Richards talks with clinical psychologist Dr. Naomi Fisher, author of The Teenagers’ Guide to Taking Control of Your Education, about school avoidance, burnout, demand avoidance, and the questions parents often have about autism and ADHD. Drawing on her own experience of struggling at school and decades of wo...

Ask Rachel anything Has your teenager come home upset because their friends have suddenly turned against them? Or have you heard that your child is part of a group chat where everyone is being urged to stop talking to someone? When a friendship conflict spreads through a whole group—and onto social media—it can be hard for parents to know what to say, when to step in, and how to help without making things worse. In this episode of Teenagers Untangled, I’m joined by Dr Dominique Thompson, a ph...

Ask Rachel anything It’s one thing hearing what experts think, but I’m always left wondering how their advice translates into the real life of a parent. If you’re wondering too then you’re going to love this chat between Katharine Radice and me. In it, we discuss what was said in my interviews with Dr Leonard Sax and Dr Tara Porter. Basically we cover the reality of setting healthy boundaries around gaming and phones, talking with teens about online risks, choosing supportive schools, m...

Ask Rachel anything If your son seems apathetic, glued to gaming, or strangely unbothered by school, you are not alone, and you are not imagining it. I decided to create this discussion because I have been contacted by so many parents about the lacklustre attitudes they are seeing in their sons, looking for advice on what to do. Around the world, boys are falling behind academically, drifting socially, and retreating into screens. Meanwhile, girls are outstripping boys at school and universit...

Ask Rachel anything Are you trying so hard to be a good parent that you might be doing too much for your tween or teen, and accidentally making life harder for both of you? In this episode of Parenting Teenagers Untangled, Rachel Richards talks with clinical psychologist and author Dr. Tara Porter about her new book "Good Enough" and why good enough parenting is actually the best kind of parenting. Drawing on more than 25 years working in adolescent mental health, Tara explains how so many te...

Ask Rachel anything We’re living through an age where it can feel like our teenagers’ entire lives are happening behind a screen we can’t see. Meanwhile mental health problems in teens are a rising problem that is being blamed on their devices. The instinctive response for many of us is to clamp down: ban certain apps, monitor every move, or take away devices altogether. But as Professor Candice Odgers put it so powerfully: “You can’t ban your way out of a mental health crisis. Yo...

Ask Rachel anything Are smartphones and social media really damaging our teenagers’ mental health – or are we looking in the wrong place? In this episode, Rachel Richards talks with Professor Candice Odgers, a leading expert on adolescent mental health in the digital age, to unpack what decades of research actually show about teens, tech and wellbeing. We explore why today’s teenagers are doing better than many headlines suggest, the real size of the link between phones, social media, anxiety...

Ask Rachel anything As a teenager, I grew up in a home with almost no routines. No one talked about what needed to happen when, and I remember constantly thinking, “What am I supposed to do now?” Life felt like reinventing the wheel every day. I didn’t feel safe, and I felt a lot of energy went into trying to cope in the chaos. Now, as a parent and host of Teenagers Untangled, I’ve come to see routines not as dreary box‑ticking exercises, but as powerful tools for connection, calm, and joy. I...

Ask Rachel anything If your teenage daughter says, “I have anxiety,” “my ADHD was out of control today,” or calls a friend “toxic,” it can feel both strangely sophisticated and oddly shallow at the same time. She has language. She has labels. But somehow, you’re still not sure what’s really going on inside her. In this episode with psychiatrist Dr Suzanne Garfinkel-Crowell, author of Girlhood Translated: Understanding Girls in the Age of Therapy Speak and Self-Diagnosis, we pulled back the cu...