When will kids in Australia be eligible for the vaccine? Christopher Blyth, Peter Richmond, and Ushma Wadia assess the current situation. Adolescents in North America are beginning to roll up their sleeves for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine after it was approved for 12-15-year-olds this month. The Canadian drug...
There’s more value to pocket money than just the cash, says Mary Pearl. I was having my morning caffeine fix at the local cafe and overheard two young mums discussing pocket money. One wanted her daughter to learn about the real world and how she would...
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again.” This 19th-Century mantra has been drummed into kids for generations, writes Nicki Letts. Now it’s got new life as the biggest buzzword in education: grit. Did you know Bill Gates’s first business failed astronomically? That Stephen King’s...
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again.” The biggest buzzword in education is grit, writes Nicki Letts, who provides these ideas to help your child develop it. Nurture them. Lab experiments show that baby rats whose mothers licked and groomed them to reassure them...
Patricia Lee learns to take nothing for granted as the midwife called for the emergency obstetrician. As I slumped onto the delivery bed, panting and sweating after another contraction, I knew something was wrong. After spending the entire day in labour and pushing for hours, my...
Karen Brooks considers the implications for our children, and for us as parents and carers, of a culture of fear and anxiety. Be afraid, be very afraid,” warns Geena Davis’s character in the 1986 sci-fi horror movie The Fly. Many years later, it seems that as...
Lara Cain Gray recounts a hairy moment involving her son. My 10-month-old son ate a spider. Let’s not sugar-coat it (although I’m sure that it's a delicacy somewhere) – it was frightening and revolting in equal measure. We’d had a typically hectic morning trying to get our...
Pat Thomas relives his sort-of musical past when his son brings home his first recorder. A shrill, piercing sound hits me as soon as I open the front door, and the memories come flooding in – my childhood, warm summer days at school, yelling teachers and...
Kristy Chong talks about how to have ‘the period talk’ with your daughter If you cast your mind back to the day you got your first period, what do you remember? Were you scared of this new experience and did you know what it was? Did...
A UNSW report has raised concerns over how COVID-19 impacted online child sexual exploitation (OCSE) investigations globally. Key findings There were significant changes and disruptions to OCSE professional practice as a result of COVID-19. Major increases in reports and investigations into OCSE were not matched...
