New Year’s Resolutions tend not to last very long…
But maybe that’s because you’re not doing them right.
This year, why not resolve to put practical, productive and achievable plans into action…
To promote mental wellbeing for your children (and yourself).
The combination of each of these small acts will help you to help your children have a prosperous year.
And happy and healthy children make for happy and healthy parents!
New research on teens and the effect of smartphones has been circulating around the internet…
And the findings are both surprising and somewhat disturbing.
They come from psychologist Jean M. Twenge, who has been researching generational differences for 25 years.
For the majority of her career, Twinge noted that these differences changed relatively naturally and modestly.
But in 2012, something changed.
‘I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviours and emotional states’, she explains.
‘In all my analyses of generational data—some reaching back to the 1930s—I had never seen anything like it.’
In part 1 and 2 of our blogs on our learning assessments, we taught you about the WIAT-III and WISC-V assessments.
We have invested in the most update-to-date versions of these assessments so that they can best identify your child’s learning potential and their educational needs.
And now we’d like you to learn about another invaluable assessment tool that we recently acquired — the NEPSY.
It’s a unique and effective test, offered by only a few psychology clinics in Melbourne, and designed to assess the neuropsychological development of children aged 3 to 16.
But before we get into the nitty gritty of the assessment, you’re probably wondering…
What is neuropsychological development?
Learning assessments help to ease the frustrations or concerns parents may have about their child’s academic performance.
And importantly, learning assessments can help your child to achieve their full potential during their school years.
By assessing the major areas that impact learning, our psychologists get a comprehensive insight into your child’s ability, potential, and any barriers stopping them from achieving it.
From there, the best approaches and solutions can be put in place to help a child thrive school.
In our first post of this series, we delved into one of the key tools for assessing learning potential — the WISC-V assessment.
In this post, we’ll give you a run down of one of our other core assessment tools — the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test — and how it can help your child.
We are always looking for new technologies to help our patients be their best selves.
And this is particularly important when it comes to educational intervention.
A learning assessment helps to identify a child’s learning potential, and address any barriers stopping them from achieving it.
The WISC — the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children — is a tool for assessing a child’s academic progress and potential.
We have been using the WISC for years, and recently invested in the updated version, the WISC-V.
It’s been reevaluated, redesigned and retooled to provide a more comprehensive picture of a child’s learning ability.
For most parents these days, there’s no avoiding social media.
You probably have it yourself, as do all your friends, and if you’re among the vast majority of parents in Australia — your kids will have it too.
According to the ACMA, 4 years ago only 45 per cent of 8-11 year olds were using social media….
That proportion has now risen to at least 60 per cent, with many of the platforms in question being age restricted (generally for users aged 13+).
So while trying to eliminate social media from your family’s life would be fighting an increasingly steep up-hill battle, there are some easy, preventative ways to help keep your children safe on these platforms.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is an approach used by many psychologists to help their patients deal with a variety of mental and emotional challenges.
It’s a problem-focused, action-orientated talking therapy that has proven to be extremely beneficial in the treatment of depression and anxiety.
And the principle that underlies the therapy is that if we can change the way we think, we can change the way we feel…
By training ourselves to identify negative, dysfunctional and destructive thoughts (a less intuitive task than you may think), we can then begin to work on replacing them with healthy ones.
And the benefits of CBT have been championed by psychologists for decades.
But now, new research suggests that CBT can not only change our thought patterns, it can literally rewire our brains!
Are you concerned that your child is addicted to technology, or spends too much time looking at screens?
You may want to take a look at your own digital usage…
A recent study in the US found that parents spend on average 9 hours and 22 minutes a day looking at digital screens.
And only an hour and a half of that time was for work!
Social media is a largely unavoidable aspect of modern life.
And the ways parents monitor their children’s social media presence varies greatly…
Some insist on being ‘online friends’, some sneak through their child’s profiles without their knowing (a post for another day), or some ban social media completely.
But with all the focus we put on trying to protect our children from the many implications of a social media presence…
How much time are we taking to look at the impact of our own?
We recently addressed the issue of ‘screen time’ in children’s and adolescents on the blog.
Most of us are guilty of becoming increasingly reliant on our telephones and computers for communicating, working, paying bills and even getting from A to B…
But there is a difference between reliance on technology and addiction to technology.
And if you think your child may be in the latter category, the sooner you address it the better.
So what are the signs of a technology addiction, in children in particular?
Got any questions before you book? Click here to request a phone call and a psychologist will call you at a convenient time (prospective clients only). Please keep in mind we are often busy with clients but we do our best to respond to all enquiries within one business day. :-)
(*As of 24th July, 2019.)