Blog

What does a television program about building homes have in common with raising happy, resilient, confident children? Scaffolding!! I like to use the scaffolding analogy to explain our role as parents in raising confident, resilient children and was delighted when I...

I can already imagine the eye rolling, and your irritation with the oxygen mask analogy - so I promise not to go there. All I ask is you bear with me and read on, you'll be glad you did. I have been banging the self-care drum for the past decade and during this time...

I have an addictive personality. There I've said it. I am an all or nothing person who struggles to operate in the grey space in between. I am either 'on' or I am 'off' and finding the balanced middle ground is super hard for me and never more so than during the past...

"How can I help my child be more confident? They are constantly putting themselves down and I just don't know what to do". This is the question I get asked more than any other - the second most common is "how can I help my child manage their emotions, which in a lot...

I love New Years Eve; it is quite genuinely my most favourite day of the year. For me it's all about reflecting on the year which has been and looking optimistically forward to the year ahead. It really doesn't get any better than that!! You see I am a planner, a...

Guilt is a strange beast.  I see it frequently in my counselling room, and recognise it in my own personal makeup but parental guilt is capable of escalating to another level.   We all recognise that guilty feeling, we have all shared that sense that we should have...

I've been running online children's workshops for the first time this past week on key topics parents often tell me their children struggle with; confidence building, coping tools for anxiety, and managing emotions.  Whilst I had no doubts I would be able to give the...

I am an eternal optimist; ask my children, they find it really quite irritating. I am always telling them to focus on what the difficulty or challenge is teaching them, and what can be learnt from it. This is not to say I diminish their feelings in any way; absolutely...

It starts off innocently enough. There’s a small disagreement, voices become raised, there’s shouting, then screaming, and one of your children races to find you in floods of tears sobbing so much so that you can’t make out what they’re saying. You ask what happened...