How can you help your child make friends? Gretchen Geng and Phillip Slee have some ideas that may help. One of the things children (and parents) may worry about at the start of the new school year is, will I have friends? This could be true for...
Judith Kirkwood has mixed feelings about her 18-year-old son becoming a father. I didn’t know what to say when my teenage son, Robin, told me one winter afternoon that he was going to be a father. That didn’t stop me from mumbling something like, “I hope...
How to help kids open up and say more than ‘fine’, Madeleine Fraser has some great 'chat' tips for parents One of the first things parents want to ask their children after school is “how was your day?” We simply want to know how they are...
Emma Bateman highlights the differences in parenting styles between mums and dads. At the playground, my arms are folded tightly around my waist and I’m scowling. Not at my two-year-old son, who is smiling crazily, but at my husband, John, who is dangling William precariously about...
‘They’re meant to help and did the complete opposite’. Georgina Dimopoulos looks at what kids really think. When parental separation ends up in the family courts, serious risks such as family violence, child abuse, drug, alcohol or substance misuse, and mental health issues are often involved. But...
Research shows that anti-bullying efforts are more effective when students are involved. It also shows we need to involve the whole school to stop it. write Fiona MacDonald and Nina Van Dyke About one in four students report being regularly bullied in Australian schools. Children who are...
It takes some time before Amelia Sommer adjusts to, and appreciates, the role that her mother is prepared to play in her children’s lives. Once, when my 10-month-old daughter would not stop crying, and I was trying to placate her as well as cope with her...
Martha Wegner discovers that when it comes to gardening, two’s competent but three’s a clown. It was the kind of day we dream about when we think of autumn: perfectly cool, the kind of cool that requires a long-sleeved shirt and maybe a hat to keep...
Elise Waghorn, asks if it's a good idea. It’s almost the end of the school year. And that means it’s “awards season” for school students. Before the holidays, students, teachers and families will gather for speech days where awards will be handed out for academic performance, citizenship,...
This can leave separated parents ‘completely out of it’, report researchers Renee Desmarchelier, India Bryce and Kate Cantrell In 1987, UK researchers lamented how schools were organised “around the assumption that the nuclear family is the norm”. Families who did not fit this model were “either...
