A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Natalie Day, University of Wollongong Throughout our lives, we need to be able to manage our thoughts and behaviour. We need to do this to reach various goals and to get along with others – even if other distractions and impulses get in the way. This is our ability to self-regulate, and it starts [...]
Chris Speldewinde, The University of Melbourne In Australia we have a long history of taking children outdoors to learn about the natural environment. But thanks to computer games, tablets and busy lifestyles, children aren’t getting as much exposure to nature as they used to. “Bush kinders” are one way to counter this. In a bush [...]
Trevor Mazzucchelli, Curtin University Parents may be familiar with this scenario: a child is well behaved at school and polite to their teachers but has a meltdown at home in the afternoon. Or they say please and thank you at a friend’s house but are rude with their family. They follow the rules if they [...]
Rebecca J. Collie, UNSW Sydney and Andrew J. Martin, UNSW Sydney Research shows that students who are confident about their ability to succeed at school tend to be more academically successful. Researchers call the thoughts, actions and emotions behind this confidence “academic agency”. Essentially, it is about students’ sense they are able to do particular [...]
Join Andrew Fuller as he chats with guest Dr Rachael Sharman on virtual autism and the effects of technology on the human brain in the developing minds of young people. Adolescents and young children in a technology dependent world Is there a link between mental illness and technology? Effects of over-exposure to screen time in [...]
Cher McGillivray, Bond University The program Parental Guidance has been showing on Channel 9 this month. This is the second season of the show that pits 12 sets of parents with very different parenting styles against each other to work out which is “best”. This year, for example, there is a couple who use “American-style” [...]
Dr Ketki Bhandari, Teaching Associate, Faculty of Education In Australia, the end of January signals the start of a new school year. I believe this is a good time to reflect on our teaching and learning at schools and homes with the intention of a fresh start. As a primary school teacher [...]
Dr Olivia Metcalf and Professor David Forbes It has now been twenty years since anger was first called the forgotten emotion, and today, little has changed. While we know a lot about sadness and fear, anger still has an uncomfortable place in society. Most of us don’t know what anger is for, or the [...]
Helen Demetriou, University of Cambridge Most people think that empathy – the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes – is fixed, but it’s not. Empathy can be taught. Research has shown that reading can help children develop empathy. Through reading, children can experience the situations of others that are very different to their [...]
The most recent research on brains & learning shows that we all have different patterns of processing information. This confers upon the human race a great advantage, in that collectively we are smart in different ways. Some people are more ‘neurotypical’ while others think in vastly different ways. This means that we need to focus [...]
