Empowering Children to Find the Answers to their Problems

The most important job a person can have is to teach another. Educators have a great responsibility toward those they teach, because everything they do and say has a lifelong impact upon their students. For this reason, it is very important that the children and youth be empowered by allowing them to make their own decisions...

As COVID-19 lockdown measures are lifted, some children may experience social anxiety about the prospect of returning to school.

During the coronavirus pandemic, have your kids been using headphones more than usual? Maybe for remote schooling, video chats with relatives, or for their favourite music and Netflix shows?

There are many parents who would never imagine that their child doesn't have the nerve to talk with them. When I first created my school programs more than twenty years ago, I was amazed at how many thousands of children told me they felt this way and hadn't let their parents know. How close do you think your child feels to you?

Bonding gives an intuitive, extrasensory kind of relationship between mother and child. Bonding is a felt process, not available to discursive thought, language, or intellect. It is a communion that bypasses our ordinary reasoning mind. The mother senses the infant's need to evacuate the same way she recognizes her own bodily needs, but the communion of bonding goes beyond just physical processes.

As we start to think about rebuilding our lives in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, we need to be clearer than ever about what kind of Australia we want to live in, what counts as progress, and how we measure how well we’re succeeding.

Some people are lucky enough to look back at their childhood with affection for a time in life without much stress and anxiety.

In many countries schools remain closed and the dinner table now serves as the school desk.

There is much uncertainty bubbling up around the Québec government’s decision to re-open elementary schools May 11 in most regions and in greater Montréal on May 19.

Has anyone ever told you: “Don’t baby talk to your baby?” Parents of young infants often tell us that they have heard this advice from friends, family and even health care professionals.

Parenting musically is the way I describe what happens when moms and dads use music for many nonmusical tasks and goals.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, children are just as concerned as their parents about what is happening. The closure of schools is a huge upset in children’s lives.

COVID-19 has taken the world by storm and profoundly changed the lives of children and families. Children aren’t going to school and many businesses have temporarily shut down.

With governments around the world asking their citizens to avoid places, activities and gatherings to save lives, this just might be the largest ever international effort to self-regulate our actions against competing desires and impulses.

At childcare and preschool, children experience belonging to a community and engage actively with their learning.

With many college students forced to return home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, tensions and arguments are bound to flare up.

Most children are stuck at home due to the outbreak of COVID-19. They need to find ways to socialise, do their school work, exercise and entertain themselves.

About 55 million U.S. schoolchildren attend schools that have been closed or are being directly affected by the new coronavirus social distancing rules.

Effective learning is a two-way process between the teacher and students, meaning both need to engage.

It’s hard enough juggling a job with parenthood when you’ve got young kids. But what do you do when social-distancing policies mean you’ve all been sent home?

Parents have always helped with homework and made sure their children fulfill responsibilities like chores, but the extended and often unstructured time families are spending together during the current crisis creates new challenges.

Earlier that day her swimming and basketball lessons were cancelled, a birthday party postponed, and she had to race with me between several meetings before the university campus shut down. “Stupid coronavirus indeed!”

Some schools in Australia have moved online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools in which students and staff have tested positive have temporarily shut over the past three weeks.

When stress is heightened — which it is for all of us right now because of the COVID-19 pandemic — children become aware of it and they try to locate the source of the stress.

During this pandemic, it is fair to say that pre-COVID-19 family routines may shift, or even completely fall apart!

Stories can be mirrors that help young people express feelings about a given situation. They give children a vocabulary for what is happening.

As families everywhere adjust to social distancing measures like closed schools and child care centers, workplaces and more, parents are grappling with questions regarding their kids’ use of technology.

For years, psychologists, educators and church leaders have warned about subversive and decadent influences on children in our society -- the internet, pornographic literature and films, violent video games, raunchy TV, and so on. It's an old story: the more sexually perverted the entertainment, the more teenagers watch it, and the higher the ratings and the profits.

It’s important for parents to be there for their children to ease any concerns they may have about the virus and how it could affect them.

Many parents believe teaching their child to read is the best way to get them ready to start school, but teachers often disagree.

It is understood that childrens’ emotions in school are connected to their learning and academic achievement.

During the last couple of decades, new types of parents have emerged. From the anxiously involved helicopter parents to the pushy tiger mums

Emotional competence is an important life skill. Children with a high level of emotional competence, tend to have more friends, do better at school, and are more likely to help others. 

How do you help your child achieve a positive sense of worth? By teaching him how to appreciate himself. Do this by: 1. First, no matter how your child is behaving, find something within him to value and be grateful for. 2. Then, point out to your child the specific quality or action you are appreciating about him.

Unlike traditional face-to-face bullying, a bully can conceal their identity online and target their victims constantly without the limits of location or time.

Many parents complain of difficulties in managing clingy children – whether it’s a baby who cries every time the parent is out of sight, a toddler who clings to their parent’s legs at social events, or a primary school kid who doesn’t want their parents to go out for dinner without them.

Learning outside the classroom through adventurous activities is known to have significant educational benefits.

Drowning is the third leading cause of unintentional death from injury worldwide. From July 2018 to June 2019, 276 people drowned across Australia – a 10% increase on the previous year.

The first almighty toddler tantrum is a milestone in every child’s development that will never make the baby book.

Research has shown that youth who participate in sports leagues are eight times as likely to be active in their early 20s than those who don’t participate.

You always thought he was quiet or shy. But is there something more happening? Is his behaviour normal? How concerned should you be?

Student achievement has been found to be most influenced by parents’ aspirations and expectations for their children’s development along with active involvement in their learning.

Having a baby can be expensive. So it’s maybe not surprising that many retailers around the world have cottoned on to the success of Finland’s baby boxes – a package aimed to set up new parents and their bundle of joy.

Parent involvement in their child’s learning can help improve how well they do in school. However, when it comes to helping kids with homework, it’s not so simple.

About one-third of women using contraception use the pill. But how effective is it?

We are literacy professionals, former reading teachers who now prepare college and graduate students to teach kids how to read.

Major depression among teen girls in the U.S. increased even more – from 12% in 2011 to 20% in 2017.

With art, you have all the colours in the world to share your thoughts,” wrote one youth in the Holistic Arts-based Program at Laurentian University.

A common childhood fear is fear of the dark. Many children become terrified of the dark and can't go to sleep in a darkened room alone, convinced the "bogeyman" or some other night creature is waiting in the shadows to get them. I had a client whose son was terrified...

The human brain goes through dramatic developmental changes in the first years of life. During this period it is particularly sensitive to environmental influences. 

The school year is over and holidays are upon us. But that doesn’t mean your children’s learning experiences can’t continue.

Disturbing events related to cyberbullying in recent months and years have raised great concern among parents, youths and educators regarding the everyday lives of children in online spaces

Disappointment is a natural human emotion that occurs after a perceived failure.

Imagination and play encourage children to think through hypothetical situations and create new worlds

New research from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Health Measures Survey reaffirmed the dramatic decline in Canadian children’s fitness seen over the past 35 years

Constructivism is an educational philosophy that deems experience as the best way to acquire knowledge.

December is considered the most fertile month, a time when there’s the greatest likelihood that children will be conceived. Some experts even pinpoint Dec. 11 as the most fertile day.

Sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg has made headlines not just for her passionate climate activism, but because she is outspoken about having autism.

For some school children, PE is the best lesson of the week – a chance to leave the desk behind, get outside, and enjoy a run around with friends.

Schools began to introduce fluorescent lighting in the mid 1950s and rows of these low cost, long life, high efficacy lamps tend to be the lighting of choice in many schools around the world.

Parents are often their children’s first literacy teachers. They oversee children signing their names on artwork and read storybooks with their kids.

If you have kids, chances are you’ve worried about their presence on social media.

We use anger in disciplining our children because we become upset by what they do, and we then become angry. But when we mix the 'lesson' with our anger, we end up teaching our child that it's okay to respond with anger to things that upset us. When we respond with anger, the child learns anger.

Kids seem to learn about the idea of hypocrisy early in elementary school, new research suggests.

Children seem able to find wonder in the simplest of things -- an unusual bug on the sidewalk, a puddle that is particularly deep, a small paper airplane. As we age, somehow our capacity for awe and wonder is diminished, just as our skin loses its elasticity. So how do we recapture the experience of wonder?

Only children get a bad rap. They are often perceived as selfish, spoiled, anxious, socially inept and lonely. And my profession, psychology, may be partly to blame for these negative stereotypes.

When we are born, our brains have a lot to learn. For the newborn baby, everything they learn about the world around them comes from their senses.

Perhaps evolution’s most wondrous manifestation is visible in the unparalleled elegance and versatility in the design of the human hand.

Nearly half of parents in a new national poll say they’ve declined a playdate because they didn’t feel comfortable leaving their child in the other parent’s care.

The host of Sunrise breakfast television show, David Koch, aka Kochie, has stirred controversy by saying mothers should breastfeed “discreetly”...

Children develop at varying rates in all sorts of ways, from when they take their first steps to when they understand that their own perspective might be different to someone else’s.

From an early age, children can make decisions about what kinds of information to teach other kids, according to new research.

Public health agencies are warning parents about using cannabis in the presence of their children. However, parents who use cannabis say that it makes them more empathetic, more patient and more caring towards their young ones

Instead of being the coolest kid in the room, how about being the kindest? Once a child understands the im­portance of their actions, good deeds, and the joy of helping others, kindness becomes fun and is highly contagious. What’s wonderful about kindness is that it is a skill that can be learned.

It’s a problem many teachers are familiar with, a student apparently struggling in class, but in fact just suffering from something that’s easily fixed – vision problems – with an inexpensive pair of glasses.

Depression is a leading cause of disability and disease for people around the world. It often begins during adolescence, especially for females, may continue or recur in adulthood and tends to become a lifetime chronic health condition.

Homework. Whether you’re a fifth-grader or a freshman in college, the mere thought of homework can be overwhelming. And actually doing homework can be quite difficult. But homework doesn’t have to be something a student dreads.

The UK has seen a sharp increase in teenage drug use in the last few years: the NHS reports that 37% of 15-year-olds have used drugs, and that deaths resulting from drug use are at their highest since records began in 1993

Google recently agreed to pay a US$170 million fine for illegally gathering children’s personal data on YouTube without parental consent, which is a violation under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

What is it about saying, flat out, 'I love you' to our children that has been shunned by many and may still constitute a taboo among middle-aged parents today? Novels, movies, indeed most cultures invest 'I love you' with strong erotic content. The deep, romantic, feeling-tone of the phrase reinforces the taboo...

Another school year is upon us, and both parents and children have a lot to remember as people are coming and going on new schedules: make and take lunches, bring an item for show-and-tell, carry cups to the table for dinner when asked.

Parents are often concerned when they observe their child telling lies. However, lie-telling can give us a window into understanding children’s social and cognitive development.

Parents and caregivers often wait until their children are older to talk about sexual consent. And many parents often leave “the sex talk” altogether – hoping that schools will do it instead.

The book ignited a revolution, breaking free from conventional wisdom that said children required schedules, discipline and little affection.

“Jamal” is a 16-year-old boy who sustained a concussion in a skateboarding accident in July.

With decisions to make every day, small and big, of momentary and far-reaching consequence, people who become parents put themselves on a fast track towards adulthood. They are responsible for the life of a little one now and so they move up in the ranks of generations.

Teenagers who spend more than three hours a day on social media are more likely to report high levels of behaviors that may indicate mental health problems compared to adolescents who do not use social media at all, according to a new study.

Fidgeting is usually considered as a sign of boredom or lack of attention which can be distracting to others.

Though it’s not easy, it is possible to change the poor sleep habits of children in preschool and elementary school, experts say.

Around 1% of the population has an autism spectrum disorder, with estimates ranging from one in 150 to one in 70.

If you’re a parent of a preschooler, you might be wondering how you can help set your child up for success once they enter kindergarten.

When parents separate or get divorced, it inevitably disrupts the lives of children, and can take a toll on their mental wellbeing.

Diagnoses of mental disorders and drug prescriptions among school-age children have skyrocketed over the last two decades.

Kids are less likely to have concentration problems and behavioral issues if their parents make a greater effort to engage with their schooling earlier in the year, according to new research.

The numbers of women undergoing elective egg freezing across the Western world has increased rapidly over the past few years.

There’s been a surge in measles cases across Europe, putting people’s lives at risk according to new findings from the World Health Organization.

Inquiry-based learning emphasises a student’s role in the learning process and asks them to engage with an idea or topic in an active way, rather than by sitting and listening to a teacher.

Because I conduct research about reading, parents often ask me the same question: “What can I do to help my child become a better reader?”

Schools across the country encourage parents to help their children with homework.

It is well established that drinking alcohol during pregnancy can have detrimental effects on the developing foetus.