Growing Pains is a podcast from HoneyKids Asia for the conversations parents want to have after the kids go to bed.
In each episode, we speak to experts, parents, and people with lived experience about the realities of raising kids today — from relationships, identity, mental health and screen time to school pressure, family dynamics, and everything in between.
These are honest, thoughtful conversations that say the things many parents are thinking, but rarely say out loud. No judgement, no perfect parenting, just real stories, practical insights, and a reminder that none of us are figuring it out alone.
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Why Stay-At-Home Motherhood Can Destroy Your Identity
Season 8 · Episode 15
Monday, August 31, 2026 • Duration 51:35
Faz Gaffa says something most parenting platforms will not: it is okay to sit in a car park and scream before you walk back inside. She is the editor of Honey Kids Asia, a journalist known for opinions that make people uncomfortable, and a mother who has been rewriting what she owes everyone else since her father's cancer diagnosis gave her 89 days to say goodbye.
In this conversation, Faz and Stephanie go somewhere most interviews will not: the phone call that changed everything, the diagnosis nobody prepares you for, and the year she does not talk about publicly. They get into why an entire generation looks fine and feels empty, the parenting rule Faz will not bend on no matter how much her son begs, and the question she asks herself every time someone praises her for handling it all.
There is also a confession about anger neither of them expected to share on camera, and a line about discipline that will change how you think about the next time your child gets in trouble.
This one gets raw and spicy. Click play.
IN THIS EPISODE:
00:00 | Cold Open: Real Conversations for Real Parents
00:38 | Meet Faz Gaffa: Ditching Beige Parenting Advice
01:54 | Beyond the Job Title: Redefining Personal Identity
04:24 | Postpartum Grief: Navigating 89 Days of Heartbreak
09:34 | Sandwich Generation: Surviving the Caregiver Guilt Trap
11:28 | Millennial Identity Crisis: Unpacking the Single-Path Fallacy
16:55 | High-Functioning Depression: Recognizing the Burnout Discipline
21:03 | Spicy Take: Why Moms Should Always Work
26:27 | Silent Struggle: Unpacking Postpartum Rage and Self-Erasure
29:56 | Tech Boundaries: Unsupervised Screen Time Is Neglect
39:39 | Future-Proofing Kids: Building Taste and Soft Skills
42:29 | Rethinking Discipline: Why Humiliation and Pain Fail
49:24 | Finding Hope: Breaking Cycles of Generational Trauma
50:44 | Stephanie’s Top Three Episode Takeaways
About Faz Gaffa
Faz Gaffa is the editor of Honey Kids Asia, a journalist and brand strategist. She built her career on saying what feels real over what feels safe, and now works as a brand storyteller and community builder, with a focus on diversity, inclusion, and raising race-conscious children.
Connect with Faz:
Website: fazabdulgaffa.com
Email: email.faz@gmail.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/fazgaffa
Instagram: @fazgaffa
Facebook: facebook.com/fazabdgaffa
What You'll Take Away
The rule Faz says she will never break, no matter how much her son pushes for more screen time
What happened in the 89 days between her father's diagnosis and his death
The Instagram message Faz keeps getting for talking too honestly about how she is doing
Why she wrote that mothers should never leave the workforce, and the backlash that followed
The postpartum condition neither Faz nor Stephanie had ever heard of before it happened to them
What her son said to a boy holding a stick, and what happened next
The one sentence her mother said about discipline that sent Faz into a rage
Connect with Growing Pains
Growing Pains is HoneyKids Asia's podcast for the conversations you want to have after the kids go to bed.
YouTube: @growingpains.honeykids
Instagram: @honeykidsasia
Website: honeykidsasia.com
Hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. If this one resonated, share it with a parent who needs it.
Growing Pains is produced in partnership with Poddster, Singapore's podcast studio.
Fame, Motherhood, Body Image & The Impossible Standards Women Face
Season 8 · Episode 14
Tuesday, August 25, 2026 • Duration 43:02
She was topping charts across three countries before she could vote. Then the industry that made her famous told her to shrink, and she nearly disappeared trying to do it.
Ming Bridges gained forty kilos, lost herself for five years, and reached a point where she didn't want to be here anymore. What turned it around took her by surprise, and it happened faster than she ever expected.
Now she's a mother of two under two, running three businesses, and living with an ADHD diagnosis that came decades later than it should have. She talks about the moment a viral video turned her body into public property, the pregnancy sickness so bad it launched a business, and the parenting mantra she's trying to live by before her daughters are old enough to repeat her mistakes.
This is a conversation about fame, food, motherhood, and what it actually takes to come back from rock bottom. Click play.
IN THIS EPISODE:
00:00 | The Impossible Standard: Why Are Women Never Enough?
00:35 | Welcome to Growing Pains with Ming Bridges
01:52 | "You Need to Lose Weight": The Dark Side of Teen Stardom
04:34 | 40 Kilos Later: Getting Kicked Out of the Industry
06:58 | 5 Years of Struggling vs. 2 Weeks of Healing
10:51 | Generational Trauma & The Danger of "Good Intentions"
13:40 | Why "You Look Pretty" is the Wrong Compliment for Our Daughters
17:03 | Launching a Business Out of Pure Pregnancy Rage
24:31 | "I Just Rotate What I'm Failing At": The Reality of Two Under Two
27:55 | Missing Brain Tabs: Navigating Motherhood with Adult ADHD
31:10 | The Viral Swimsuit Video & Dismantling the Toxic Male Gaze
37:29 | Quick-Fire: The Single Mantra to Cure Mom Guilt
How to Become a Mother Without Losing Yourself
Season 8 · Episode 13
Monday, August 17, 2026 • Duration 47:13
She had four children, two marriages, and once lived in the same building as her ex-husband while married to her current one. Christine Amour-Levar built a life most people would call impossible: mother of four, social entrepreneur, climate investor, and leader of thirty all-female expeditions to some of the most extreme places on earth. But ask her which comes first, being a woman or being a mother, and her answer might surprise you.
This week, Christine sits down with Steph to talk about the guilt she carried when she chose ambition over staying home, the sea turtle story she used to help her children understand divorce, and the annual ritual she has kept for twenty five years that keeps her whole life on track. She also opens up about a decision so unconventional that even her own mother struggled to understand it.
What happens when you refuse to choose between the woman you are and the mother you became? And what does it actually cost to have it all? Hit play.
IN THIS EPISODE:
00:00 | Why Motherhood Shouldn’t Erase Who You Are
00:31 | Meet Christine Amour-Levar: Mother, Investor and Explorer
02:44 | From Nike Executive to a Life of Purpose and Impact
05:26 | “I’m a Woman First”: Redefining Motherhood and Identity
08:33 | The Mum Guilt Behind a Successful Career
15:20 | How to Divorce Without Breaking the Family
22:44 | Why Self-Love Is the Key to Letting Go of Guilt
27:17 | You Can Have It All — Just Not All at Once
31:28 | Inside Christine’s 180-Page Life-Planning System
36:58 | How to Build a Career Around Everything You Love
41:45 | What Extreme Expeditions Teach You About Leadership
44:10 | Why Your Children Shouldn’t Always Come First
47:40 | The Three Biggest Lessons on Motherhood and Identity
Is Motherhood Quietly Erasing the Real You?
Season 8 · Episode 12
Monday, August 10, 2026 • Duration 53:13
She built one of Singapore's most awarded agencies. She dressed the biggest names in fashion. She raised two boys. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, she stopped recognising the person in the mirror.
Tjin Lee, founder of Mercury and co-founder of Crib Society talks about what actually happens when motherhood and career quietly swallow your sense of self, and what it takes to hold on to it. This is not a story about burnout. It is about the slower, sneakier thing that happens when you spend two decades being everything to everyone else.
There is a label she says every working mother should stop using on herself. There is a red dress that changed the way an entire industry saw her. There is a caterpillar story she tells her sons that has nothing to do with insects and everything to do with why she refuses to make their lives easier.
If you have ever felt like you disappeared somewhere inside your own life, this conversation is for you. Hit play.
IN THIS EPISODE:
00:00 | Losing Yourself to Motherhood
00:38 | Welcome to Growing Pains with Tjin Lee
01:56 | The Unexpected Journey to Motherhood at 40
03:57 | Facing the "Auntie" in the Mirror
06:37 | Why 50 is the Adolescence of Old Age
12:19 | Don't Let "Mom" Override Your Identity
15:23 | Why "Mompreneur" is a Label That Keeps Women Small
23:42 | Coloring Books to Minecraft: The Screen Time Dilemma
28:13 | Shielding Sons From the Toxic Manosphere
30:12 | The Red Dress Moment: Stepping Out of the Shadows
35:51 | Earning Your Battle Armor & Dropping the People Pleaser
41:07 | Stop Taking It Personally: Lessons for the Next Gen
43:00 | The Heartbreak of "Soulmate Parenting"
Can Women Really Have It All? We’re Asking the Wrong Question
Season 8 · Episode 11
Monday, August 3, 2026 • Duration 50:57
Sharon Wong walked away from a high-flying corporate career with zero retail experience and built one of Asia's leading mother and baby brands across four countries. Twenty-eight years, one pandemic after another, and an expansion into China that started with doors slamming in her face. She calls it insanity. She might be right.
Now, at 60, she's not slowing down. She's scaling faster than ever, and she's rewriting what everyone assumes about age, ambition and rest.
In this episode, Sharon talks with Stephanie about the real cost of chasing having it all, the mindset shift that let her treat every crisis as just another season, and the parenting philosophy that shaped three kids who still call her their best friend.
There's a secret recipe behind her success, a rapid fire round that gets brutally honest about the worst parenting advice she's ever received, and one theory about luck that has nothing to do with money.
Can women really have it all? Or are we asking the wrong question? Sharon has an answer. You might not expect it. Click play.
What You'll Take Away
Why the founder of one of Asia's biggest baby brands says she's never actually been stressed
The real formula behind her success, and why one letter in it changed completely
What it took to get a single Chinese mall to finally say yes after every other door slammed shut
The parenting rule she and her husband set before they even had kids
Why she thinks "having it all" is the wrong question entirely
The rapid fire answer that flips conventional parenting advice on its head
What her ten year old son did with his Christmas presents that turned into a decade-long family tradition
IN THIS EPISODE:
00:00 | Can Women Really Have It All?
01:05 | Welcome to Growing Pains
01:22 | Meet Sharon Wong: Building Motherswork From a Personal Mission
How to Raise Indistractable Kids
Season 8 · Episode 10
Monday, July 27, 2026 • Duration 56:38
Your brain takes in 11 million bits of information every second. You consciously process about 50. The rest gets filled in by beliefs, and those same beliefs, the ones you don't even know you have, are quietly shaping your children right now.
Nir Eyal is a former Stanford lecturer, New York Times bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable, and the kind of person who will tell you that your to-do list is making you worse at life. His latest book, Beyond Belief, started with a simple question: why do people not do the things they know they should?
The answer had nothing to do with willpower, screens, or discipline. It had to do with the invisible stories we carry about ourselves, and pass on.
This one will make you think differently about your own brain. Press play.
IN THIS EPISODE:
00:00 | The Limiting Beliefs Quietly Running Our Lives
00:54 | Why Our Beliefs Shape How We Parent
02:30 | How Emotional Eating Shaped Nir’s Life
03:47 | Why Distraction Starts Inside Your Head
09:44 | The Hidden Problem With To-Do Lists
09:52 | How Time Boxing Rebuilds Focus and Control
15:13 | Turning Your Values Into Protected Time
18:40 | Why Knowing Better Does Not Create Change
22:59 | When Beliefs Start Feeling Like Facts
26:11 | A Four-Step Method to Change Limiting Beliefs
33:30 | Pain Is Inevitable, Suffering Is Added
37:10 | How to Raise Self-Regulating, Resilient Kids
42:41 | When Manifestation Helps — and When It Backfires
48:35 | How Labels Quietly Become Personal Limitations
54:54 | The Best and Worst Parenting Advice
The Love Patterns Your Kids Are Copying From You (Whether You Know It or Not)
Season 8 · Episode 9
Monday, July 20, 2026 • Duration 53:32
Every self-help book tells you to love yourself first before you can be loved by anyone else. Yana Fry, founder of the Academy of Love, says that advice is a trap, and she has watched it keep high-achieving women stuck in the same loop for years. Her own work traces back to a single moment at age 8: her parents' divorce, a dog-eared relationship book, and a promise she made herself in a notebook.
In this episode, she unpacks the archetype framework built from that promise, nine patterns that explain why some of us repeat the same relationship over and over, and why kids pick up on all of it long before they have the words for it. Yana gets unusually honest too: a panic attack in the middle of the Namibian desert that decided something for her before she'd consciously decided it herself, a confession about what her own date nights actually look like lately, and a story from her late 20s she doesn't tell often, the moment she says was quietly driving everything before she understood why. Your kids are watching how you love. This episode is about what they're actually learning.
What You'll Take Away
Why "love yourself first" might be the worst advice a high achiever can follow
What decided itself in her body during a panic attack in the middle of the desert, before her mind caught up
What her own date nights actually look like these days, and why she's not hiding it
The moment in her late 20s she rarely talks about, and the wound it revealed
The nine patterns that explain why you keep ending up in the same relationship, romantic or otherwise
What her toddler is already absorbing about love, without a single word being said
The one thing she hopes her daughter never has to unlearn
About Yana Fry
Yana Fry is an internationally recognized speaker, transformational coach, and founder of the Academy of Love. She built a nine-archetype framework for identifying love patterns after her own upheaval: a marriage at 22, a cancer diagnosis three months later, a divorce, and a full rebuild of her life from there. She now lives in Singapore, is 17 years into an intercultural marriage, and works primarily with high-achieving women untangling how they love, parent, and lead.
Chapters
Why People-Pleasing is a Health Risk
Season 8 · Episode 8
Monday, July 13, 2026 • Duration 47:19
Krystal Clavier-Choo is an applied psychologist and two-time TEDx speaker who once built a tech company, then one day, things changed. A brain cyst erased her Type A identity overnight, on top of eight years of clinical depression that began in childhood.
What she found on the other side became a framework she now uses with CEOs, mothers, and teenagers who look fine on the outside and are quietly falling apart.
In this episode, Krystal tells us about a pattern that's been studied since 1992, one that quadruples a person's risk of dying young, and it isn't a habit most people would think to change. She walks us through the three domains that decide whether you burn out or hold steady, why "happy wife, happy life" is a trap, and the millimeter by millimeter method she uses to help people stop silencing themselves before it costs them their health.
If you've never said no when you meant it, press play.
About Krystal Clavier-Choo
Krystal Clavier-Choo spent years building tech platforms before an unexplained illness stripped away her ability to work, walk steadily, or trust her own mind. She holds a Master of Science in Psychology and Neuroscience from King's College London and has since built the Dimensional System, a framework she uses to coach C-suite leaders and parents through burnout, identity collapse, and the mental load nobody names.
The medical risk tied to the good girl complex, and why it isn't just a mindset problem
Chapters
Why Telling Someone to Be Grateful Can Make Things Worse
Season 8 · Episode 7
Monday, July 6, 2026 • Duration 50:22
The Happiness Scientist Who Stopped Pretending to Be Happy
Sha-En Yeo spent her teenage years being bullied in a girls' school, quietly asking herself "is this it?" A teacher left a note on her desk that changed something. Twenty years later, she's Singapore's first happiness scientist, trained under Martin Seligman at UPenn, and the author of an upcoming Penguin book called I Miss Feeling Like Me.But here's what she'll tell you that most happiness experts won't: no strategy creates joy. Gratitude journaling can actually make things worse. And the pressure on parents to stay positive is one of the most harmful things we do to each other.This conversation covers what toxic positivity actually does to the nervous system, why self-compassion has to come before any strategy will land, and the CALM framework she uses with her own kids when emotions run hot.It also goes somewhere more personal: her father's illness, the night she stood on a stage in a red dress at a Chinese New Year dinner on one of the hardest days of her life, and what she learned about authenticity when performing happiness was simply not an option.The conclusion Sha-En arrived at after 15 years in the field: joy is not something you chase. It lives in knowing who you actually are.Press play.About Sha-En
Sha-En Yeo is Singapore's first happiness scientist, a two-time TEDx speaker, and author of the upcoming Penguin book I Miss Feeling Like Me. She holds a master's in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied under Martin Seligman, Angela Duckworth, and Adam Grant, and has reached over 25,000 people across APAC.
Book: I Miss Feeling Like Me (Penguin, forthcoming)
What You'll Take Away
Why "tomorrow will be a better day" is one of the worst things you can say to a struggling parent
The difference between happiness and joy, and why only one of them actually lasts
Why This Content Creator Won't Let Her Daughters Use Social Media
Season 8 · Episode 6
Monday, June 29, 2026 • Duration 41:16
Maggie Dumra films her family for content and after over 78,000 followers later, she still won't let her own daughters near social media. The contradiction sits at the centre of this episode.
She spent twenty years in marketing, watched K-pop idols starve themselves to be on camera, and knows exactly what the algorithm does to a girl's body image before it happens to her own kids. Ange and Maggie go inside Sephora Kids trend, the one that put ten-year-olds on a retinol routine and racked up 331 million views on one hashtag.
Maggie opens up about what happens at the dinner table when the comments turn nasty, shares the strange Sunday-night ritual that keeps her girls from ever needing a credit card, and the one brain-development analogy that finally got her tween to back off the begging.
If you're raising a daughter anywhere near a smartphone, you need to hear what Maggie does differently.
About the Guest
Maggie Dumra is the founder of Jaedals, a Singapore footwear brand that works with underprivileged women to make comfort-driven sandals. Before that she spent twenty years in marketing and advertising, and now in between business and family, she creates family content online with over 78,000 followers. She is a mum of two daughters, 8 and 13, neither of whom has her own social media account.
Why Maggie's daughters aren't allowed on TikTok even though she’s a content creator with over 78,000 followers herself
What actually happens when a someone recognises her daughter in public
The Sephora Kids trend explained, and the uncomfortable question it raises about who's footing the bill
42:52 | Episode Takeaways: Stop Glorifying the Rush
About Ming Bridges
Ming Bridges is a two-time TEDx speaker and body positivity advocate who first became known as a teenage pop star, topping charts in Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia and winning Teenage magazine's Teenage Icon at 13. The pressures of the entertainment industry led to a severe eating disorder, one she has spoken openly about rebuilding her life from. She is now the founder of three businesses: sustainable fashion rental platform Rentadella, footwear line Bridge and Bella, and clean hydration brand Formi Wellness, which she launched during her second pregnancy.
How a modeling agency's four words at 18 sent her into a five year spiral
The moment a viral video turned her body into a headline she never asked for
Why she says her ADHD didn't fully show up until she became a mother
What made her launch a supplement brand while too sick to leave her bed
The question she asks first when her daughter says she hates how she looks
Why recovery took her five years too long, and what changed in two weeks
The mantra she repeats every day that reframes everything going wrong in her life
Connect with Growing Pains
Growing Pains is HoneyKids Asia's podcast for the conversations you want to have after the kids go to bed.
YouTube: @growingpains.honeykids
Instagram: @honeykidsasia
Website: honeykidsasia.com
Hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. If this one resonated, share it with a parent who needs it.
Growing Pains is produced in partnership with Poddster, Singapore's podcast studio.
About the Christine Amour-Levar
Christine Amour-Levar is a French-Swiss-Filipina social entrepreneur, climate investor, and bestselling author who has led thirty all-female expeditions to places like Antarctica, the Arctic, and the Danakil Depression, raising over $3 million for women and climate causes. She co-founded Her Planet Earth and Investors for Climate, is Founder of Women Beyond Limits, and is a mother of four.
Tjin Lee is the founder of Mercury, a Singapore marketing agency she built over 23 years and sold at 49, working with brands including Burberry, Gucci and Cartier along the way. She also launched the Audi Fashion Festival, chaired Singapore Fashion Week, and co-founded Crib Society to support women entrepreneurs. She has over 120,000 followers on Instagram, where she is known for being outspoken about motherhood, identity and midlife reinvention.
02:20 | Why Every Entrepreneurial “Down” Is Really Change
06:55 | Entering China With Courage, Naivety and No Funding
09:07 | How to Keep Moving When Life Feels Overwhelming
15:08 | Raising Children With Kindness, Courage and Clear Values
19:29 | Sharon’s Formula for Success: Passion, Product, People and Luck
27:03 | Stop Asking Whether Women Can Have It All
32:48 | Why Sharon Believes in Seasons, Not Mum Guilt
36:23 | Scaling at 60: Reinventing Yourself at Any Age
41:30 | Writing Whoa, Mom and Choosing Vulnerability
44:00 | The Giving Tree: Teaching Children to Lead With Kindness
48:00 | Legacy, Motherhood and the Advice Sharon Lives By
50:00 | Stephanie’s Top Three Episode Takeaways
About the Guest
Sharon Wong is the Founder and CEO of Motherswork, one of Asia's leading premium mother, baby and kids' retail brands, with stores across Singapore, China, Vietnam and Thailand. She left a career as a Regional Tax and Treasury Director to build the company from scratch with zero retail experience, and 28 years later her team calls her "the CEO who bakes." She's the author of Wo(Mum): Living My Life as a Warrior, Woman and Mum, Chairwoman of MITAS (Maternal and Infant Trade Association of Singapore), and a mother of three.
Nir Eyal is a globally recognised authority on behaviour change and human potential. A former lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, he's the New York Times bestselling author of three books that between them have sold over one million copies in more than 30 languages.
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