Conversations with Parents

Dr Suzanne Crowe doesn’t even try to separate being a doctor from being a parent anymore. The president of the Irish medical council is a paediatric intensive care doctor and a busy mother. And she admits that sometimes taking care of extremely sick children has led to her feeling a strong need to check in with her own children. “I have rung home on occasion to just check everyone’s ok. They’re kind of used to that”.“I do sometimes think did medicine shape my parenting, or did parenting shape the brand of medicine that I do”, she says. “They’re inextricable”.On the latest episode of the Conversations with Parents podcast Crowe explains what it’s like to parent four very different people and shares whether being a doctor proved a help or a hindrance in raising her family. “They did get a lot of ‘it’s grand. It’s a scrape’, she says. “Apparently I’m famous for saying “have a glass of water and go to bed”.In her role as a doctor, Crowe cares for children and families going though extremely difficult times. Sadly she’s no stranger to this on a personal level, having lost her baby daughter Beatrice while on holiday in France.“She’d be 15 now”, Crowe explains. “She was born very premature. She was born at 23 weeks on holidays in France – a nightmare holiday. She lived for 19 days and she passed away in France. It’s was an absolutely awful experience”.Crowe shares how she keeps the memory of her daughter alive, and explains how the loss of her daughter while away from home has given her an understanding in her professional life, of parents and families living in Ireland whose first language may not be English.In 2019 Crowe had to deal with the unthinkable again when her husband Barry died. “It certainly changed my parenting. You never get over it,” she says. “I remember the day he died and at one stage I lay down on the floor in the hall sobbing, and just completely lost…at one point I must have stopped and opened my eyes. And I saw the faces of my children and they were terrified. And you know, the one person that was left for them was clearly losing the plot. I just realised I couldn’t do that to them. I would have to actually just sort this out and help them.”She talks about how she coped in the days that followed her husband’s death and how her children helped her get through the days and weeks that followed.Brought to you in association with Avonmore Super Milk.

It’s said when someone in the house is sitting the Leaving Cert, the whole house is sitting the Leaving Cert. And with the State exams almost upon that’s a lot of people feeling the stress.But fear not because Conversations with Parents is bringing you a special episode with an expert panel to help parents and students navigate the whole experience in the least frazzled way possible. Yes, we’ve made our panel publicly relive their own Leaving Cert trauma for the heck of it.Jen talks about LC survival with guidance counsellor and founder of Find My College Course, Donnchadh O’Mahony, psychologist Malie Coyne and former Leaving Cert student Conor Pope, who is now experiencing the fabled exams as a parent for the first time.

Coleen Nolan has always had a very open relationship with her children.When it comes to having conversations with them, nothing is off the table, explains the TV personality and member of The Nolan Sisters.When her son told her he had sex for the first time, it was possibly a more personal sharing of details than many parents are used to when it comes to their teenagers’ lives, but Nolan says her own experiences of growing up, with parents who didn’t like to talk about certain things, made her particularly conscious to be a mother whose children could speak to her about anything.In today's episode, Nolan shares what it was like growing up in the spotlight, navigating being a parent amid marriage separation, and bringing up teenagers under the glare of the British tabloids. Produced by Andrew McNair. The series producer is Declan Conlon.

Dec Pierce has had a tough couple of years. The Today FM presenter and creator of Block Rockin Beats – his dance music and live gigs show - had a brain haemorrhage in 2023 and last year was diagnosed with breast cancer.On the latest episode of the Conversations with Parents podcast he tells host Jen Hogan about the shock of learning he had breast cancer while on holiday with his wife and young daughter.Fatherhood is something Pierce always hoped to experience but he had thought it wasn’t going to happen for him. “Myself and Kate were trying for a while”, he explains. “I always wanted to be a dad. But I never thought I’d be blessed”. He discusses the surprise of finding out he was going to be a dad when he had given up hope.Maintaining a presence on social media means Pierce is well aware of its risks. “I know how toxic social media can be”, he says and he worries about raising a daughter in the social media age. “I think we’ll handle that very carefully as she gets older. We’re so lucky the generation we grew up in where social media wasn’t a thing”.Pierce was bullied in school and he’s conscious of his hypervigilance to this because of his own experience. “I’m very aware of that. I’m very aware that might not be the case for her. And I don’t want to put my worries, my stresses and my hang ups from those days on her shoulders”.Conversations with Parents is presented by Jen Hogan.This episode was produced by Andrew McNair.The executive producer is Declan Conlon.Brought to you in association with Avonmore Super Milk.

Oisin McConville was destined to get involved with Gaelic football from a young age growing up in Crossmaglen, Co Armagh in the 1980s.“The Troubles is something that played a large part in my life, because bombing, shootings, killings were common place day in day out when I was growing up”, he says.His dream was to score the winner for Armagh at Croke Park. And sure enough, he was the star of the county's first Sam Maguire trophy victory in 2002.He’s the father of two boys and a girl and for now he’s just about hanging in there on the coolness scale “but it’s only going one way”, he laughs. Presented by Jen Hogan. Produced by Andrew McNair.

Colman Noctor is a well-known child and adolescent psychotherapist, so you’d be forgiven for presuming with all this expertise at hand that he always gets it right when it comes to parenting his own three children.Not so, the father-of-three says on the latest episode, explaining his children “slam doors” and face the same “trials and tribulations” as the everyone else’s children. He shares the “sobering” moment he realised that you can read all the books and have all the theory, “but in Dundrum Shopping Centre when you’re kid kicks off, it’s a lottery. Parenting is an act of failure. It’s just not failing too much.”

Sarah McInerney is known for her self-assured, cool and calm approach to interviewing politicians, but on the first episode of the brand new season of Conversations with Parents podcast she tells host Jen Hogan, about the anxiety that plagued her second pregnancy.In a revealing and personal interview, McInerney discusses best laid plans and shares how becoming a mother of two children wasn’t as straightforward as she might have hoped.“My first pregnancy was a dream,” she says on the podcast. “I absolutely flew through it and thought, ‘Oh, I’m a natural mother. I’m just made to do this.’ The second pregnancy was the complete opposite.”Sarah talks to Jen about what surprised her about having boys, the guilt she felt over her heavy Drive Time schedule and more.

Conversations with Parents from The Irish Times and parenting journalist Jen Hogan is coming back with a new season. Season three will feature another group of interesting people with new parenting stories to tell. Find us wherever you get your podcasts - or on irishtimes.com.Conversations with Parents from The Irish Times is brought to you in association with Avonmore Super Milk.

Former footballer Richie Sadlier is now better known for his career as a psychotherapist and working with young people in the area of sex education and wellbeing. Knowing what he knows about young people's lives, Andrew Tate and the manosphere, he's well equipped to deal with the thorny issues that many other parents actively avoid discussing. But he admits he might be the last person his young children will want to talk to by the time the teen years roll around. Richie and his wife, Fiona, have had a long and arduous road to parenthood. After eight heart-breaking rounds of IVF followed by a miscarriage, they're now mum and dad to Sam and Molly. In his first appearance on a parenting podcast since their joyous arrival, Richie shares the insights and observations he's made so far about the fatherhood journey so far. And just like he learned to do while in recovery from addiction, he advises anyone couple going through IVF to just take everything one day at a time.Presented by Jen Hogan. Produced by Aideen Finnegan and Niamh Browne.Brought to you in association with Avonmore Super Milk.