Kids who are secure, confident, caring and kind – children who grow to believe that life is about being happy with yourself, not needing to be better or have more than others.
After a lifetime of working as a teacher, mother, educational psychologist, academic and author I am now a grandmother – with an ever-changing and developing granddaughter and grandson. I have decided to write about how they are growing up, what is going well, what is tricky and what they need at different ages and stages. I am also planning to put this into a wider context of the world in which they will be living. I am hoping that this might be helpful for other families. The first of these underpins everything:
2: Why We Need to Talk with Babies
4: Watching, Listening, Copying – how our kids learn from us
Some other relevant articles on this site:
- Growing great kids: what it means to be a ‘great kid’, why this is important and what children need from home, school and the community to be the best they can be and feel comfortable with who they are.
- Wholeness before Happiness: the building blocks of resilience and what parents can do at home to help build resilience.
- What about ME? – a warning for parents: parents who really love their children will want them to have warm and supportive partnerships in the future – real love is a two-way street: the sooner our children learn this the happier their lives will be.
- Reasons not to travel on the pathway to perfection: in education and in families we need to be helping our children discover their strengths and unique qualities, to value and develop these and decide for themselves who they want to be, how they want to live their lives and what goals matter to them – for our children to stay motivated to learn, change and grow they need to know we are all in the fascinating process of becoming – and none of us are there yet.
For a full list of relevant articles on this site, click here.
Useful resources we have seen:
- Good at heart? 10 psychology findings that reveal the better side of humanity, by Matthew Warren in BPS Research Digest, Dec 2019: “even very young children are more prosocial than we give them credit for”
- Research shows it’s harmful to smack your child, so what should parents do instead? – useful article from The Conversation, 25 July 2022
- Circles for Learning: Mother and baby observations within the classroom, by Alison Waterhouse
- This TED talk is by Clare Erasmus and her daughter Rosie, talking about ways to strengthen family relationships: youtube.com/watch?v=c5tuaUFyQrE
- How parents can help teenagers navigate romantic relationships: parentinfo.org/article/supporting-teenagers-through-relationships
- Australian resource for parents of anxious young children: Cool Little Kids: coollittlekids.org.au
- KidsMatter: How to foster resilience in everyday life: kidsmatter.edu.au/families/enewsletter/how-foster-resilience-everyday-life
- The Sleep Help Institute: a site devoted to spreading awareness of sleep health and wellness. Guides to help parents understand their kids’ sleep needs, available here:
Healthy Sleep for New and Expecting Parents, Children’s Sleep Guide, How To Manage Screen Time and Bedtime