Neuroplasticity educator and parenting expert Nathan Wallis talks with Kathryn about the advantages of children starting school at six years old. He says while it goes against the norm in New Zealand, in most countries across the world, the starting age is six, often seven. He says those children who start school when they are older than five may be doubly advantaged - by having more free play when their brains need it most, and by being older than their peers when they do start school.

Neuroplasticity educator and parenting expert Nathan Wallis supports that idea of children starting school at six years old.

He says those who go through the school system older have greater advantages.

The Education Review Office says starting in cohorts, rather than on the child's fifth birthday, eases the transition from early childhood centres to school for students, teachers and parents.

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One argument for letting children start at six is that it eases the social transition, Wallis tells Kathryn Ryan.

"We only started putting kids into school at five during the war because there was a childcare shortage ... I mean most countries did that to be fair but after the war they put it back to six. New Zealand for some reason stayed at five, so it's never really been based on research that we start kids at five.

"Our whole education system is based on Piaget, a French guy, and his 'stages of cognitive development' and he showed kids are ready to do things like literacy and numeracy, what he called symbolic thinking or the concrete operational stage, between the ages of seven and eight.

"Over the years, we've just made that earlier and earlier. So it's quite challenging for some kids to start doing cognitive learning like reading and literacy and numeracy when they're only five."

Research shows the eldest in a cohort is likely to experience better outcomes in learning than the youngest, Wallis says.

"The kid who is in a free play environment when they're six and is building say 'damming the river' they don't dam the river the very first time, they probably fail 19 times and then dam it on the 20th time, so what he's learnt is a disposition of persevering through failure."

Free play at an early age allows the child to develop cognitive skills such as complexity of thought and creativity, he says…

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Engaging with a baby in their first three years of life can help set them up with communication skills, says speech-language therapist Emma Quigan. Once you trust that very young children are learning from every interaction, you see time spent with them as a significant opportunity, she tells Kathryn Ryan.

Engaging with a baby in their first three years of life can help set them up with communication skills, says speech-language therapist Emma Quigan.

Once you trust that very young children are learning from every interaction, you see time spent with them as a significant opportunity, she tells Kathryn Ryan.

"Every baby is born with mana. It's not something they earn - they have it. And if we trust our babies, we're seeing their humanity. We're seeing them as a person with likes and dislikes... not someone who needs to be built up with knowledge. It's already there and we're walking alongside them to help it unfurl and providing opportunities."

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Emma Quigan

Emma Quigan (Ngāi Tahu) is co-president of the Speech and Language Therapists' Association and co-founder of the education campaign Talking Matters.

When she and literacy advocate Alison Sutton first set up Talking Matters, it felt like news to people just how much a baby learns about communication in their first 1,000 days, she says.

Now we know babies are working hard to make sense of the world and every moment with them is an opportunity to support that discovery.

"A day's work for a baby - playing, looking around at things, singing songs - is probably equivalent to the hardest day's work we as adults will ever have in our lives. When you think about what's happening to them on a minute level, it's actually meaning something for how their brain is growing. Every time they look at a book it's actually growing new brain cells."

With small babies, communication appears in the form of subtle cues, Emma says. A baby's eye gaze tells us what they are and are not interested in.

"If we start to look at the cues babies give us, they'll tell us when they need a break, as well. You know when a baby looks away for a moment that's them saying 'i'm going to take five. That's too much'.

"We can respond to by describing it, by bringing it over them and starting to interact with their interests."

At about 9 months of age, babies may start pointing at things, Emma says.

People often ask what the right thing to say in response is, but simple acknowledgement of their communication is the most important thing,

Pointing is one way a baby invites other people into their world…

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New research from the New Zealand Council for Educational Research looks at what gives Maori and Pasifika students the best chance of success at school. Through four studies, the Conceptualising Maori and Pasifika Aspirations and Striving for Success COMPASS project has identified critical factors that serve as important punga/anchors in the educational journeys of akonga/students. Senior Researcher at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, Mohamed Alansari speaks with Kathryn Ryan.

New research from the New Zealand Council for Educational Research looks at what gives Māori and Pasifika students the best chance of success at school.

Through four studies, the Conceptualising Maori and Pasifika Aspirations and Striving for Success COMPASS project has identified critical factors that serve as important punga/anchors in the educational journeys of ākonga/students.

Senior Researcher at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, Mohamed Alansari speaks with Kathryn Ryan.

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Clinical psychologist Jacqui Maguire first spoke Nine to Noon about highly sensitive children back in March. In part two of the conversation, she tells Kathryn Ryan these children are more prone to feeling guilt and shame - and parents should keep this in mind.

Clinical psychologist Jacqui Maguire first spoke Nine to Noon about highly sensitive children back in March.

In part two of the conversation, she tells Kathryn Ryan these children are more prone to feeling guilt and shame - and parents should keep this in mind.

Listen to the full interview here

Listen - How to help highly sensitive children: part 1

Up to 20 percent of children may be highly sensitive people (HSPs) whose reactions to certain happenings can seem oversized, Maguire says.

"That may be kids that only like certain food or have extreme reactions to certain tastes. There are kids that may hate certain textures of clothing, and children that don't like large or loud or unexpected noises.

"They're children that process information very thoroughly so they're deep thinkers, they're largely often creative, they have a strong intuition from a young age, and actually high sensitivity is seen as one of the key characteristics of gifted children.

"They've got very large empathy for other people ... so they can pick up on people's emotions around them from a young age, and they're children that are easily overstimulated."

Overstimulation may result in a meltdown if there are too many quick transitions between activities or periods of the day, Maguire says.

"Often highly sensitive children may be more prone to sudden tantrums or meltdowns because often they're overloaded with information or with emotional overload.

"I also think it's useful to note that with children often they get to the end of the day and they've spent so much energy, holding it together at school, or holding it together with friends or friends' parents, that you kind of get it all when they come back because their capacity to manage has run out."

It's crucial that parents give highly sensitive children enough time to process all their sensory information, she says.

When it comes to discipline, they should be aware HSP children feel guilt and shame more deeply than other children.

"The neuroscience of that is when we get flooded with big negative emotion, we can't think clearly. Now children don't have well-developed frontal lobes to start with, so we want them to have all the cognitive capacity they've got."…

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Neuroscience educator Deb Rewiri says it has never been so important to get on board with traditional Māori parenting practices. Help is at hand to take whanau back to when a village raised the children. Deb tells Kathryn about a whanau support initiative called Tākai which embraces mātauranga Māori and indigenous parenting approaches.

It has never been so important to get on board with traditional Māori parenting practices, neuroscience educator Deb Rewiri says.

Rewiri tells Kathryn Ryan about a whānau support initiative called Tākai which embraces mātauranga Māori and indigenous parenting approaches.

Tākai is a concept of wrapping around, she says, informed by her research into historical Māori parenting practices

"I'd like to read you something that Samuel Marsden wrote down in his journal in 1814.

'I saw no quarelling while I was there, they are kind to their women and children I never observed either with a mark of violence upon them, nor did I ever see a child struck.'

"So, suddenly, that opened up a doorway of interest or intrigue for me about, actually, we've always heard the deficit side of Māori, what actually were the positive things that helped us to grow and develop."

Traditional understanding of parenting in an iwi, hapū and whānau context is optimal for the brain, she says.

"What I began to see was prior to industrialisation, actually, this is pretty much how we lived, we lived in village settings.

"So taking that information forward into a modern day context, weaving in that neuroscience information, about the first 1000 days, and to make sense of it, what I had to do was actually begin to start contextualising it, within that space of parenting in a broader way within the whānau.

"Knowing that wāhine Māori actually had a key stake within this whole process of uplifting the whānau."

Much European documentation of first contact with Māori records a gentle and loving approach to child rearing, she says.

"People like Edward Shortland observing how parents never seemed to chastise their children. And if they were to do so then an uncle could step in and say, literally, this is not okay. And they'd hold them accountable.

"So this village concept was operating, before we had assimilation and colonisation of our practices and our beliefs."

Her aim now is to bring that kaupapa into a modern context.

"What are the things that we need to build capacity? And how do we do that with these Māori models of practice, around mātauranga Māori, that is premised off tikanga, why Whakataukī were important…

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Kathryn talks with parenting coach and education consultant Joseph Driessen about parenting skills for blended families.

When a marriage or partnership breaks up, many families consist of a recombination of two different families with two sets of children living with parents.

While these families can be happy and thriving, some parents find the situation difficult to navigate with different family cultures, clashing tension between the children and parents, children acting out their grief and anger, and the couple feeling overwhelmed by the stress of children coming and going.

Parenting coach and education consultant Joseph Driessen tells Kathryn Ryan there are strategies parents can employ to help them work towards integration.

Listen to the full interview here

Driessen says there are two major forces at play in second marriages or relationships with children.

On the one hand, parents will have moved on in their life and are happy, which creates a healthy environment to love and nurture children, but on the other hand, children initially will be stressed, he says.

"They've got unresolved grief and sadness and depression and anger about the loss of their family and then they're thrown into a new situation, which is very demanding for them socially and cognitively, when in fact their brains are sort of only operating at half speed and so they can find this whole situation very stressful.

"So, the key to create a blended family is for the couple to realise ... they are the engine of happiness, but their children find it's quite a difficult journey."

Driessen proposes the following strategies for couples to try to be able to eventually integrate as a unit with their children and partner.

First, the parent needs to preserve their relationship with the children and continue doing with them their normal activities.

Secondly, understand the children are hurt and their behaviour is just the tip of the iceberg for all the distress they are experiencing. See it as a journey of healing rather than a fight to get compliance.

Thirdly, parents should try to see themselves as a management team, because the word 'parent' will have a lot of associations that can impede on developing a joint parenting style.

Children can feel uncomfortable and like guests when they're at the stepparent's or partner's place at first, Driessen says.

"The key is to give them space, to just take it easy. Let's not go into blended families at all. Let's just welcome them and say, well, you're very safe here and we want to care for you and give them space, if they want to sit on the couch and blob out with their phones, let them…

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Lynn speaks to Garth Wynne, who's been involved in educating teenage boys for decades and is now executive principal of Christ's College in Christchurch.

Being a teenager is hard enough, even before the problems of the modern era are thrown into the mix.

Lynn speaks to Garth Wynne, who's been involved in educating teenage boys for decades and is now executive principal of Christ's College in Christchurch.

How can we shore up boys' positivity, resilience and confidence, while helping them navigate issues like porn, consent and what Garth calls the "third parent" - social media?

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Primary school teacher-turned writer Aaron Topp talks about his latest Young Adult book and shares tips on how to coax reluctant readers to pick up a book.

Primary school teacher-turned writer Aaron Topp talks about his latest Young Adult novel and shares tips on how to coax reluctant readers to pick up a book.

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How can parents best develop their children to become great learners? Kathryn speaks with father and son educators John and Kyle Hattie, who've co-authored a book setting out ten steps for encouraging curiosity and intellectual ambition. They say it all starts with parents demonstrating to their child an openness to new ideas and thinking - and not to be afraid of failure.

How can parents best develop their children to become great learners?

Kathryn speaks with John Hattie, Emeritus Laureate Professor at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, who has co-authored a book with his son Kyle, setting out ten steps for encouraging curiosity and intellectual ambition.

They say it all starts with parents demonstrating to their child an openness to new ideas and thinking - and not to be afraid of failure.

Their book is 10 Steps to Develop Great Learners: Visible Learning for Parents.

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How often do you hear your mum or dad's words come out of your mouth when you talk to (or shout at) your kids? Words you swore you would never say to your own child. One of Australia's foremost parenting experts, Maggie Dent says no matter how many parenting books you read, the biggest influence on your parenting style will be your own upbringing. Maggie is the mother of four boys, a former teacher and counsellor whose latest book is called Parental As Anything: Toddlers to Tweens. She is also the host of the ABC podcast Parental as Anything.

How often do you hear your mum or dad's words come out of your mouth when you talk to (or shout at) your kids?

Words you swore you would never say to your own child.

One of Australia's foremost parenting experts, Maggie Dent says no matter how many parenting books you read, the biggest influence on your parenting style will be your own upbringing.

Maggie is the mother of four boys, a former teacher and counsellor and the author of multiple books. She is also the host of the ABC podcast Parental as Anything.

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