I would like to start this blog on a slight tangent… Take a look at the picture below. I’m sure many of you are already familiar with this wretched story. To those of you who are not it revolves around a 12-year-old girl and her father, a gun toting, NRA loving, … Continued
Watching my kids this Easter weekend made me think about the bonds siblings share (thankfully they play well). Such connections are among the most profound we can have with another human being. These bonds should be nurtured,but they should also be respected for they may be driven by the desire to tear down as much … Continued
I have spoken a lot about the necessity of secure attachments in the development of a socially and emotionally healthy children. Anyone with a modicum of common sense understands that good interaction and quality parenting behaviour lie at the heart of this. Achieving this however is not always easy. Kids are not blank slates that … Continued
I’ve spent a lot of talking about attachment theory, but have not really focused explicitly on the role of the father. General speaking infants develop attachments with regular interaction. This interaction is relational and not simply a matter of sheer proximity. A child is adept at discerning the nature of such attachments and deciding whether … Continued
Hey readers, Happy New Year. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas! Phew, thank God the buying frenzy is over. Of course I’m kidding, but there is an element of this, a tightrope we traverse between drowning our little ones in toys and incalculating in them the value of family. If you’re lucky you … Continued
In 2013 a 17.5 million pounds initiative was announced by the government which aimed to support 16,000 young mothers by 2015. The move was inspired by similar programmes in the USA which claimed to reduce the incidents of domestic violence and child abuse in these households. It’s an interesting experiment, but it also highlights a … Continued
I was chatting to a friend the other day about an article they had read in some broadsheet. It concerned the idea of ‘affluent neglect’. She seemed to find the notion rather provocative and controversial. My only response was to ask, ‘why?’ The proposition that wealthy parents are often physically and emotionally unavailable for their … Continued
Professor Richard Layard and his colleagues at the Wellbeing research programme at the London’s School of Economics’ centre for Economic performance, have reached a perhaps obvious but nonetheless important conclusion that…. having an emotionally healthy childhood is the key to happiness in later life. And furthermore, that being a happy child begets a happy satisfied … Continued
We hear an awful lot about the problems with young people today. The headlines tend to favour the negative stories such as the ASBOs, underage pregnancies, the increasing frequency of teenage on adult violence and so on, but I have some real sympathy for what children face today. Consider what we now know about the … Continued
As knowledge of science and the human animal move forward it becomes ever more apparent of the interrelational nature of things. Our species has a propensity to compartmentalise the world and to some degree this makes sense. To deal with everything in its entirety is overwhelming, impractical and impossible. However, there are circumstances in which … Continued