Elaine Seager, the editor of Pakmag, will delve into things that make you think, get your creative juices flowing and keep you informed with what is happening with Pakmag.

Hurrah! Our June edition has just gone to print. This one is a big milestone for us because it’s our Cairns editions 5 birthday so watch out for a few surprises. Our awesome graphic designer, Trina, has been working flat out over the last few weeks to give the magazine a little freshen up. We hope you like it – make sure you leave some comments on our facebook page.

In our June edition we’ve been thinking about those families in our communities who have to cope with deployment.

In Townsville another battalion are on their way to Afghanistan leaving behind a number of families in the community who are going through many emotions as they adjust to life with one parent at home while the other is “in the zone”. Deployment is hard on the whole family and our resident psychologist in Townsville, Jutta Dempsey, explains how it affects children and how the communities understanding can help.   

In Cairns, naval officer Mat May also give an emotional account of what life is really like when he spends so much of the year away from his family. It’s an interesting insight and maybe not quite what you’d expect.

A few months ago I was lent an old copy of Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree that had been salvaged from a car boot sale. As I read a chapter each night with my daughter there were two things that struck me:

1. How funny is it that the kids were called Dick and Fanny in the original prints?! and,
2. Kids had to do a lot more chores in those days. Seriously…there were sometimes days where they couldn’t visit the Tree because they were so busy helping ‘mother’ and ‘father’ around the house.

Which raises the question – are chores good for our children and should modern day kids do more?

Family therapist Jesper Juul (author of international best seller Raising Competent Children) says that in his experience “the fewer responsibilities children have, the more helpful they become…and…too many chores often lead to too many conflicts.”

Apparently conflicts are common because parents forget that children don’t have a well developed future perspective. When they agree to doing the dishes they are only thinking about right now, not the rest of the year.

So, if you’re going to give your children chores don’t be surprised that you will have to remind them frequently.

Last night I was watching a discussion on TV about how modern parents over-protect their children and don't let them learn about assessing risks. I think its true that in modern society we tend to be over-protective of our kids and yet when I was on holiday in Thailand recently I was gobsmacked at the amount of Western families I saw driving their families around on motorbikes without helmets on. I even saw one couple riding (well…it was actually more like wobbling) down a road with the mum on the back holding a sleeping baby!

What gets in to these peoples heads? Not surprisingly, there are huge amounts of road injuries and fatalities in countries like Thailand because they don't have such strict laws around road safety. If you have young children it really doesn't take much to do a rudimentary risk assessment. Here we are with all these car seat rules and regulations, we know why they're important, yet as soon as some people set foot in a different country they throw caution to the wind and put their families at huge risk just to save a few dollars (it only costs about $30 a day to keep your family safe in a rental car).

I had the pleasure of talking to Trisha Telford, an etiquette coach in Townsville recently. Amongst other things we were talking about teaching your kids about table manners. She reckons that by the age of six most children should know how to behave properly at the table including not fidgeting, keeping your elbows off the table and complimenting the cook. Complimenting the cook?! How many family households is that happening in? It seems as though the standard reaction of looking sullen, turning away, pushing the plate to one side and saying "I'm not eating that" counts as awfully bad table etiquette. I have some work to do.

Not surprisingly I get a lot of people asking how they can get their child on the front cover of PakMag. Our February cover star was actually my daughter – yep, it really is all about who you know! However, when your daughter keeps asking how come so many of her friends have been on the front cover and she hasn't, there comes a time when you've just gotta do what you got to do. And, I knew I had to work quickly before she was too old or lost her teeth!! 

Getting a great cover shot is actually quite a hard process, particularly when you're using amateur models under the age of 7. The old saying about working with children and animals is true.

Obviously a cute face helps sell the magazine but the child also needs to be a bit of an actor. They need to be outgoing, capable of playing up to the camera and possess lots of different facial expressions (hence the need to be a bit of an actor). Importantly, they need to be able to do all this in front of a bunch of strangers. That's often the crunch – a bubbly and outgoing child may not feel like being cheeky with people they don't know. 

Some love being the centre of attention and take to it like a duck to water but others find it too overwhelming and burst in to tears! 

So, if you think your child has what it takes, send me a photo of them (elaine@pakmag.com.au). Bear in mind that it could take a while – as much as possible we try to vary girl/boy, blonde, dark, red each month as well as ethnicity. We get a lot of photos of blonde blue-eyed children and yes, they are angelic, but we do need to mix it up a bit!

Otherwise, if you're having family portrait shots done with our photographers (Insight Creative in Townsville or Zen Photography in Cairns) let them know you're interested in your child being on our front cover. They know what we're looking for and may be able to take a shot for our cover at the same time.

As if we parents haven't got enough to worry about - it seems as though some foods can cause behaviour problems in kids and it's not necessarily lollies and cordial!  

This month I asked our dietitians from Health Management to write about food allergies and intolerances since it seems such a prevalent topic. The idea was sparked by an email I received from Carola at Queensland Yogurt who sent me an email about the difficulties she'd experienced with her daughter who she described as "gorgeous, outgoing, entertaining, highly intelligent, unpredictable, volatile, irritable and oooooh so cranky". Evidently this behaviour was worrying enough that she went searching for answers, but because she has always fed her kids a healthy well balanced diet she dismissed any suggestion that it could be diet related. After endless internet searches, sleepless nights and teary trips to the Paediatrician her daughter was put on a Low Amine and Salicylate diet that "changed their lives forever". 

Amines and Salicylates are naturally occurring preservatives in many fresh foods that some kids have a reaction to. Carola worked with a dietitian and discovered which individual foods her daughter had an adverse reaction to. They included ham, bacon, fruit, prawns, mass produced breads, cakes and biscuits and some yoghurts. These foods would send her moods and behaviour "spinning out of control", sometimes for days at a time. 

Unfortunately, Australia’s food labeling laws don't help in situations like this. There is a 5% rule that means commercially produced foods can contain any type of additive/preservative without having to be declared on the label as long as the additive makes up less than 5% of the end product. So unless you’re dealing with companies who commit to producing additive/preservative free foods, you really don’t know what your consuming as anything may have been added under the 5% rule.  
 
Carola recommends going to www.fedup.com.au for anyone else who is going through similar problems. Sue Dengate's books on this topic are also useful and available at local libraries.

I was blown away the other day by the story of a lady who stopped one of my colleagues in the school car park and asked about a story we ran once about the risks of young girls wearing make-up. When I checked my files to find it I realized it had run in our november 2009 edition – over 2 years ago!! It was a good story but I couldn't believe she still remembered it and it was being discussed amongst other mums. Evidently this lady keeps all of her copies of PakMag. Wow! I sit here at my desk all day writing and editing and hoping that someone out there finds what we do interesting and then feedback like this makes it all worthwhile. I now know at least one person finds it useful!!

This week we've successfully completed our second adventure as part of a new segment we're doing called Adventure Mum's.