Avoiding the Trap: A Guide for Parents of Children with Learning Difficulties to Spot and Avoid Scams
When your child struggles with learning, it's natural to want answers — and fast. As parents, you can be pushed into the unfamiliar world of educational support, assessments, and interventions. It's...
why strong, positive relationships matter
A wonderful blog today from Alisha Bliss, educational psychologist. As educators, we (I used to be a teacher) are taught appropriate strategies, curriculum design and implementation, and behaviour...
Parenting teens part 2: Some ideas about what works when you are parenting teens.
Teens and preteens are challenging, changing, fascinating and tremendously fun to parent. Their views on the world are often very different from their parents and they often see situations differently...
Teenagers, what’s with them? Part 1
You are all the proud parents of either pre-teens or teenagers and as you will all be aware this is a time of tremendous developmental change. As a psychologist I’m fascinated by this period of change...
What to do if your child says they don’t want to go to school. Part 3
Last post I talked about defining the problem, setting family/whanau expectations about school attendance and began to think about solutions. This month we can look more closely at how to put a plan...
What to do if your child says they don’t want to go to school. Part 2
First step is to clarify what’s going on. Sometimes children are simply over tired or beginning to feel unwell. Think back to the past few days or weeks, has it been very busy or are there any signs...
What to do if your child says they don’t want to go to school. Part 1
This is a multi-part series, in this first article I’ll talk about putting the problem into context and getting some more perspective on it. Next post I’ll talk about how to put together a clear plan...
Helping young people to deal effectively with difficult social situations
At times we will all be confronted with difficult social situations where someone is saying something we find challenging. This may be saying unkind or inappropriate things about a friend or acquaintance...
Encouraging kids to stick with sports
Wayne Goldsmith is a well known coach and in this Radio NZ podcast he talks about how to encourage kids to continue playing sports and to keep them from dropping out of playing sports after age 13. Wayne...
Device use and wellbeing
The evidence is slim that time spent by teens on a device is linked to lower wellbeing. My advice to parents is to ensure that your children have a mix of activities which may include time spent on devices....