Rose O'Rielly spends time with her grandchildren during the holidays and everyone learns a thing or two! During the summer holidays, Dan taught our grandchildren how to play darts. He showed them games he’d learned at bush pubs as a young man, such as Rings and...
Educational psychologists Herb Marsh and Johnmarshall Reeve, look at how teachers can foster a classroom anti-bullying climate. Your child comes home from school and tells you three classmates are teasing her constantly. One even put chewed gum in her hair as she was listening to the...
Researchers Georgia Middleton, Eloise Litterbach, Fairley Le Moal and Susannah Ayre ask is eating together regularly as a family really a simple solution for improving health and wellbeing? We have been told that to achieve these proposed benefits we must follow an idealistic, age-old formula: all...
Christine Kininmonth wants her kids to enjoy city living – and the country life. My friend used to have a poster on her wall: “If it matters then it matters. If it doesn’t matter then it doesn’t matter.” Sage words to me, a working mother of...
As she helps her daughter pack to go away to university, Alex Field reflects on their close relationship and shared experiences. I am helping my daughter pack for her first year of university. I am sending her off into the world armed with her belongings in...
‘I had it first!’ All children argue, writes Amelia Church, and while this can be tedious for parents and carers, it’s not necessarily a problem. Conflict can help develop social skills, including learning to negotiate, and accommodate the needs of others. But if the conflict is physical, if...
Catherine Wade looks at what parents can do during their child's 'tweenage' years The teenage years can be among the trickiest times for a parent. You have been used to being your child’s voice of reason. Then, all of a sudden, your authority is challenged by...
What do most people mean by “happiness”? asks Dr Caroline West and other philosophers. Is maximising pleasure and enjoyment really our ultimate aim, as some studies argue? Some influential studies show that the decision to have kids leads to greater suffering — at least for parents....
Social Worker, Priscilla Dunk-West gives some practical advice for parents. In Australia, around 21,000 divorces involving children occur annually. Separation and divorce can be an emotionally exhausting and difficult time, something which is recognised by the Family Court of Australia, which provides resources to assist people...
Here’s how to protect the kids’ mental health, writes Rachael Sharman There’s an annual underground phenomena happening right now around Australia: couples who have decided to separate, but are putting on a happy face to perform their final Christmas as an intact family. January is known...
