Top five columns of 2019: Beck Vass

Beck Vass. Photo / File

As we say goodbye to 2019 and welcome in 2020, it's a good time to catch up on the very best of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to sport, from business to entertainment and lifestyle, these are the voices and views our audience loved the most. Today it's the top five from parenting writer Beck Vass.

Why NZ's summer school holidays need to be shorter

You know how sometimes you can just have too much of a good thing? For Beck Vass, that "good thing" was the school holidays. After her first big one with three children, she found herself climbing up the walls. Perhaps it's time to make them a bit shorter?

When Kiwi mums get caught in the nude

When you're at home during the day time, with kids, sometimes crazy things happen. Like a stranger seeing your privates. Front on. And it turned out other mums had similar stories to share - sometimes, there's just no point in covering what can't be unseen.

'It smelled like Satan': Nappy change nightmare on NZ flight

Coming back from her sister's wedding, Beck Vass was on the second of two flights from Nelson to Tauranga when she felt a familar abdominal clenching from her four-month-old son. The resulting in-flight nappy change certainly wasn't a pleasant experience.

My disgraceful doctor's visit at Tauranga Hospital

When you're a mum, life has a way of throwing the things you'd least expect at you. Sitting in an anaesthetist's office at Tauranga Hospital as her three-year-old groped her boobs, Beck Vass pondered this, while explaining why she and her husband had chosen to have another child.

Tauranga playground closed by 'cotton-wool parents'

After a new playground was closed down in Tauranga, Beck Vass called out "over-protective parents" as the cause of the shut down. The city's newest mall, Tauranga Crossing, had reportedly closed its playground due to complaints over the steps and sloping astro turf beside them. While she doesn't like judging other people's parenting, Vass wonders why some even bother getting the kids out of bed in the first place.