Everything was going smoothly with toilet-training – until Nicola Wells’s daughter was diagnosed with leukaemia. I deal with my three-and-a-half-year-old son’s wet pants. I know he won’t be toilet-trained in a week, but he will get there. Some kids seem to be toilet-trained in a few days:...
Finding a vacation-care program for a child with special needs is a hard job, writes Heather Golding. It is because of my son’s autism that I have had to continually search for alternative vacation-care programs. “I would like to book my child into a vacation care program...
A little-known form of child abuse - parental alienation - is tearing up Australian families and denying children the love of both their parents. Melbourne dad Stan Korosi hasn’t seen his 18-year-old daughter for 10 years. He went through a difficult divorce and was horrified when his...
For very young children, their first understanding of how the world works and how people interact come from the stories they hear. Nan Williamson looks at how resilience can be developed through reading to children. A songline is a map of Country and helps one feel...
A dark gnawing secret replayed on Anne-Maree Brown's mind until motherhood made her call ‘scene’ on her past. For most of my young adult life, I kept a secret. A dark, gnawing secret that loomed large as the adult world approached. I was raped – a...
Melbourne father Dr Matthew Roberts found a magazine article about climate change helped him think through his own climate panic. On climate change it seems the world of the adults is split in two, between those of us in various degrees of denial and those of...
A recent Australian study found that physical activity and screen time practices in Out of School Hours Care (OHSC) services are currently very variable and differ widely between services. Physical activity and screen time in OHSC In Australia, approximately 1 in 10 school-aged children attend formal before-...
Since Linda Wyrill’s son doesn’t conform to standard developmental milestones, she seeks out others willing to help him bravely go where no child seems to have gone before. Yes, my son is wonderfully creative. But to think outside the square, he would first have to be...
Sexual abuse of a child is the last taboo. People don’t want to know about it, and they most certainly don’t want to believe it could ever happen to their child. I will never forget the moment I found out my little girl had been...
Meaningful moments, early and often, build young brains. The message may sound simple but it’s a strong and important one, central to a new early childhood awareness campaign from the world leading researchers at Telethon Kids Institute and the philanthropic Minderoo Foundation. Bright Tomorrows Start Today shows how...
