5 Ways To Recognise Mental Health Issues In Your Child

What do you do if you think your child has a mental illness?...

31 October, 2019

‘Go Away You Can’t Play’

Paula Murphy comes to realise that her daughter is being bullied at school. She would often cry herself to sleep. Do you know what question I ask my daughter every day after school? It is not, ‘Were you the best in class today?’ It is not,...

23 October, 2019

The Highly Sensitive Grown-Up

A highly sensitive person herself, therapist Heidi Gaspar feels that the trait is a delight. Being highly sensitive certainly has its challenges but a glass-half-full approach lets me respond to opportunities. An Orchid-Dandelion metaphor by two psychologists in 2011 suggests two distinct sensitivity patterns, the more...

15 October, 2019

Parental Alienation

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...

30 September, 2019

A parent’s plight to learn strength after sexual abuse

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...

26 September, 2019

Silent crime

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...

19 September, 2019

Is your child’s resilience diminishing?

The way our children handle ‘small knocks’ is crucial, says Michelle Mitchell, as it will be the foundation for much bigger things. It’s during the small knocks that young people develop their response patterns to life’s future pressures. Deteriorating resilience is similar to tears in a...

29 August, 2019

All In The Mind

Kylie Ladd explores the issues that arise for children living with a mentally ill parent. … mental illness does not necessarily reduce one’s capacity to parent well… This morning, my mother didn’t get out of bed. So begins Melina Marchetta’s powerful novel Saving Francesca, in which a 16-year-old...

15 August, 2019

Early Deliveries

Cathy Watson enters the uncertain world of premature babies and their parents. Barbara A* and her partner left the champagne unopened when their daughter Freya was born at 27 weeks’ gestation. Just as their daughter entered a new world, so too did they – as parents...

15 August, 2019

The Importance of Five More Squats

Michelle Mitchell says parents should think of a young person’s life like a big gym session (with lots of squats), and a parent like a personal trainer. Just like a personal trainer, a parent needs to help their child develop a tolerance for ‘the burn’...

08 August, 2019