A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Clare can now talk with calm reflection about the moment she decided to end her life. She remembers feeling as if she were living in a sort of twilight zone where nothing made sense: she was being shunned by colleagues and faced losing her job as a teacher. Things had spiralled out of control after [...]
Most parents would never question that they love their children wholeheartedly — even when their little darling has done a lipstick drawing on the wall, won’t eat their vegies or sleep in their own bed, or thumps their brother. Even though we might get annoyed, we still love them absolutely. However, children don’t always feel [...]
You know how you have bridezillas who want everything because their best friend had it? We now get people calling and asking what their friends had for their kids party, and then asking for the next level up. - Tim Elliott via Kids parties go all out.
Girls as young as seven are learning to dislike their own bodies because they have seen their mothers standing in front of the mirror describing themselves as fat or old, new research shows. The OnePoll survey found that seven out of 10 women said that their child had seen them engaging in “negative body language [...]
"If you can get through year 8 and year 9, you can get through anything." That's a saying I share with students, teachers, and parents alike. These are tough years for many students, and if school is not a positive experience for them, they can feel hopeless. Hopelessness - believing things are bad and are [...]
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve written about the concept and benefits of getting into a Growth Mindset. The language of Growth Mindset is filtering into schools and there is a wealth of material, literature and resources that you might like to look at if you’re interested in developing Growth Mindsets in your learning [...]
Last week I wrote about the dangers of finding ourselves in what Carol Dweck terms a Fixed Mindset. This week I want to explore the concept of a Growth Mindset a little more. Much of the work I do in schools is around enhancing engagement. Often I’m asked what should ensure all kids and teachers [...]
It is that time of the year again…the impending departure of year 12 students from school and the associated ‘rights of passage’ that accompany this departure. In Australia, one ‘right of passage’ is referred to as ‘schoolies’ and the term itself elicits numerous discussion and debates. One of the most controversial issues centres on the [...]
Exposure to verbal and physical aggression between parents may hurt a child's ability to identify and control emotions, according to a longitudinal study led by NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. The findings, which appear in the journal Development and Psychopathology, also suggest that household chaos and prolonged periods of poverty during [...]
Generation after generation, one thing parents can count on is being baffled or confused by their children’s behavior. While new generations of teenagers have access to things their parents did not--Google Glass and Apple’s newly announced iWatch could be the smartphones of tomorrow--this does not explain why teenagers, regardless of generation, continue to behave in [...]
