Take a Seat - Make a Friend - Try this in a School?
A beautiful video from Soul Pancake called "Take a Seat - Make a Friend". We think this would be a brilliant exercise for a Primary or Elementary school to help children get to know each other, make friends, and appreciate diversity. This is great. Take 5 minutes and enjoy this. Read full article
Infant and Early Childhood Social and Emotional Wellbeing Conference 2013
Infant and Early Childhood Social and Emotional Wellbeing Conference 2013 - in Canberrra, starting on 30th October 2013. Described as a "call to action", the program promises to be participative, innovative, stimulating, thought-provoking and enriching. Posing the questions: What vision do we want for our future? and Where should we be focussing our attention and efforts?, the conference will focus on what we can do to ensure that children thrive. Read full article
Talking to Children about the Royal Prank
This morning, two things are on my mind: the mental health of the two young radio hosts at the centre of the prank; and how children are digesting and understanding the Royal Prank news story...how have your children reacted to the news? Has it prompted you to talk about suicide with your children? Or have you had conversations about culpability? Or the role of the international media in the Royal Prank? Or ethics? Read full article
Study Finds Children are Learning Persistence from Fathers
Can your children stick with a task? Can they finish a project? Can they set a goal and complete it? Researchers from Brigham Young University in Utah, United States, asked parents about their children’s persistence and found that fathers who use an authoritative parenting style are more likely to raise teenagers with a motivated and persistent approach to achieving their goals. Read full article
Tuning Into Kids - Parent Education Courses
Starts 8 March - online via webinars. Tuning in to Kids is a parent education course that aims to give you helpful ways of teaching your child the skills of emotional intelligence. The program teaches you about how you, as a parent, can help your child develop good emotional skills. Developed by Dr Sophie Havighurst and Anne Harley, auspiced by the University of Melbourne,it is a group parenting program that helps parents teach children to understand and regulate their emotions. Read full article
Benefits of Teaching Positivity to Children
Follow the advice of "fake it 'til you make it" or just "be positive", and you may end up oozing a kind of "toxic insincerity" says Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, Professor of Psychology and specialist investigator of positive emotions and psychophysiology at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Fredrickson was speaking at a workshop that was part of the Young Minds conference held last week at Darling Harbour in Sydney. Teaching the benefits of positivity, Dr. Fredrickson says instead of ‘thinking positive’, we should aim to identify the experiences and contexts that give us a positive emotion, and then repeat them. Research indicates that experiencing positive and negative emotions in about a 3-to-1 ratio, has the potential to enhance your relationships, improve your health, relieve depression, and broaden your mind. Read full article
Best Start
Best Start by Lynn Jenkins, clinical psychologist, is for parents who want to understand their baby's or toddler's emotional needs. This book explains the importance of the quality of your baby's early experiences and interactions and how these influence how your child develops. Read full article
How Supportive Parenting Impacts Your Child's Brain
The importance of parental love and warmth to children’s emotional wellbeing is widely accepted. It makes sense that a loving childhood may protect children from developing mental illnesses later in life. A recent study by experts at Washington University illustrates why good parenting skills and parent wellbeing is so important that it can even affect the size of an important part of our brain – the hippocampus. Read full article
