Psychologist and disaster mental health expert Sarb Johal discusses the likely lasting impacts of the Christchurch terror attacks on children and adolescents. How do children and young people who may have viewed the video of the attack process that? What might parents see and why do children sometimes keep their reactions hidden?

Psychologist and disaster mental health expert Sarb Johal discusses the likely lasting impacts of the Christchurch terror attacks on children and adolescents. How do children and young people who may have viewed the video of the attack process that? What might parents see and why do children sometimes keep their reactions hidden?

Sarb Johal speaks with Lynn Freeman.

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Nathan Wallis talks with Kathryn about how parents and caregivers can help children cope with the horror of the Christchurch mosque shootings. He says there are simple things to help children move from victimisation feelings linked to trauma, to positive action mode.

Nathan Wallis talks with Kathryn about how parents and caregivers can help children cope with the horror of the Christchurch mosque shootings.

He says there are simple things to help children move from victimisation feelings linked to trauma, to positive action mode.

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Children do best with at least three hours active play every day, according to occupational therapist Angela Hanscom, and the many of today's kids who don't get that are weaker and less able to concentrate than previous generations.

Children do best with at least three hours of active play every day, according to occupational therapist Angela Hanscom, and the many who get less than that are weaker and less able to concentrate than previous, more active generations.

Listen to Angela Hanscom in conversation with Kathryn Ryan

Hanscom says she first made a connection between active play, sensory awareness and ability to focus when she noticed that her own children and many others were extremely fidgety and "bouncing off the walls" of their classrooms.

She ran a dance-based pilot study in her local schools assessing the children's core strength and balance and what she found was alarming: Today's kids are noticeably weaker and less able to balance than those of previous generations, she says.

Hanscom then interviewed veteran teachers who confirmed that they'd seen a dramatic increase in the number of kids struggling to pay attention.

"One teacher said in the past she was able to teach the classroom as a whole and maybe one or two kids would have difficulty paying attention. Now on a good day at least eight of those 26 kids are having difficulty."

In addition, kids are falling out of their chairs, running into each and into walls, and having trouble regulating their emotions and their level of physical aggression in games like tag.

This underdevelopment has a physiological cause, she says.

"Inside the inner ear are little hair cells and they need to move in rapid ways in all different directions for the fluid to move back and forth to stimulate those hair cells. And that develops our vestibular system ."

Hanscom's solution to the problem was a sensory education programme called TimberNook, which runs at mixed-age forest schools in New Zealand, Australia, US, UK and Canada.

The TimberNook programme provides outdoor play experiences that inspire creativity, engage kids' senses and advance their social play skills.

https://youtu.be/B_6nh901LdI

In the woods, kids create their own societies and hierarchies and leaders, which is both important for development and very therapeutic, Hanscom says.

Children playing in nature learn to organise their senses, and birdsound helps them develop spatial awareness.

Plus, kids simply have the time and space in which they need to feel free.

Three hours is a great minimum amount of active play time per day for parents to strive for, Hanscom says. …

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Opening up children's minds to the philosophical questions we usually put aside in everyday life can help them learn better, concentrate longer, develop social skills and even minimise bullying, says "community philosopher" Dr Vanya Kovach.

Opening up children's minds to the philosophical questions we usually put aside in everyday life can help them learn better, concentrate longer, develop social skills and even minimise bullying, says "community philosopher" Dr Vanya Kovach.

Kovach co-ordinates P4CNZ - the local branch of an international educational programme which helps train teachers how to teach kids to think creatively about philosophy

New Zealand is one of more than 50 countries participating in the P4C programme, which trains 60 to 100 Kiwi teachers every year.

Kovach tells Kathryn Ryan that philosophy gives kids the opportunity to ask fundamental and penetrating questions about "the things we put aside while we rush around" such as fairness, beauty, freedom and reality.

Vanya Kovach: 'It's so wonderful to offer children space to explore these ideas that are really, really central'

Recently, Kovach showed a Year 1 and 2 class in Auckland a picture of a colourful flower and asked them if it was beautiful - they said yes because it was colourful.

She followed that up with a black-and-white picture of a kitten, then a picture of a very elderly lady to which they said 'No, she's old. She can't be beautiful'.

When Kovach asked the kids if they could think of something that was both old AND beautiful, one little boy shot up his hand: "Treasure is old and beautiful!"

Just one philosophy session per week for one year (for a duration appropriate to their age) can significantly improve a child's oral and mathematics skills, she says.

It can also help teach important life lessons such as persistence in enquiry and living with uncertainty, as well as improving confidence, listening, curiosity, relationships with peers and emotional intelligence.

" is a process of reasoning and thinking, making claims, being precise about the claim that your making and then coming up with a counterexample to the claim they've made.

"Both teachers and parents are really delighted by what comes out when they create this free but structured space for children to explore their own questions.

"Philosophy is kind of like the 'too hard basket'. It's the things we put aside while we rush around. That's why I think it's so wonderful to offer children space to explore these ideas that are really, really central."

https://youtu.be/7DLzXAjscXk

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CEO of Spectrum Education Karen Tui Boyes on how best to develop your child as a thinker by modelling your own behaviour.

CEO of Spectrum Education Karen Tui Boyes on how best to develop your child as a thinker by modelling your own behaviour.

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The struggles of children who haven't yet developed 'executive skills' - and therefore are prone to being impulsive, chaotic, forgetful and inattentive - can exasperate parents and lead to dysfunction in a family. People need to identify this lack for what it is - a kind of developmental disability that needs some special attention, according to a parenting consultant.

The struggles of children who haven't yet developed executive skills - and therefore are prone to being impulsive, chaotic, forgetful and inattentive - can exhaust and exasperate parents and lead to dysfunction in a family.

But parenting consultant Joseph Driessen tells Kathryn Ryan that people need to identify this lack for what it is - a kind of developmental disability that needs some special attention.

Research shows that about 3 to 5 percent of children - possibly more - are quite delayed in the development of neurological circuits involved in the control of impulse, awareness and time and self-management, Driessen says.

"Some parents ... are really quite surprised at their children who seem to be immature, chaotic, disorganised, forgetful and a little bit hyperactive. They miss deadlines, they can't do their schoolwork, they procrastinate everything and it just drives everybody a little bit mad with their impulsivity and you really think 'why haven't they grown up?"

"The immature response of the average parent is to become frustrated and exasperated and put pressure on the child and don't seem to understand why the child may get worse."

"Most children can control their impulse for the now. You know, 'I'll stop, I'll wait, I won't do it'.

"But some children want to do it because the impulse control isn't working very well. They just feel overwhelmed - 'I gotta do this now'.

"The second thing which they lack is an awareness of time. They lose themselves in the moment. They forget what they were thinking or planning to do 10 minutes ago. And actually, the future recedes as well and they forget that actually if they don't do this now, the future isn't going to be good. They become completely overwhelmed with 'now' and lose a sense of time. And that is a very debilitating delay of an executive skill.

"The third thing that these children lack is the ability to self-talk and self-manage ... babies don't, but toddlers start talking to themselves, saying 'I gotta be good for mum,' I gotta do this, I gotta be on time, I gotta get my shoes ready'…

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What goes on in the anxious mind ? There's been a lot of talk lately about young people feeling overwhelmed, anxious and confused. So what's the best way of getting these feelings under control? Gwendoline Smith, a clinical psychologist and mental health expert, is especially well versed on dealing with youth anxiety. Her latest book on the topic is called The Book of Knowing. She also works closely with the University of Auckland's Faculty of Education to provide guidance to school counsellors and speaks regularly to schools, teachers and counsellors about youth anxiety.

What goes on in the anxious mind? There's been a lot of talk lately about young people feeling overwhelmed, anxious and confused.

So, what's the best way of getting these feelings under control? Gwendoline Smith, a clinical psychologist and mental health expert, is especially well versed on dealing with youth anxiety. Her latest book on the topic is called The Book of Knowing.

She also works closely with the University of Auckland's Faculty of Education to provide guidance to school counsellors and speaks regularly to schools, teachers and counsellors about youth anxiety.

She chatted with Kathryn Ryan about how to recognise the signs and address anxiety before it takes over.

Smith says that cognitive theory is, on the surface, very simple but has a depth that is "quite phenomenal" and is still applicable in the modern era after being developed by Aaron Beck in the 1960s.

Social media and the internet have their role to play in youth anxiety, but she says it's reductionist to try to pin it on one thing.

"There's so many cultural phenomena that contribute to this and obviously people are talking about it more, more people are presenting, so the figures go up," she says.

However, social phobia - which is now recognised as the third largest mental health problem in the first world - is certainly exacerbated by things like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

Smith says social phobia kicks in during late puberty around the mid-teenage years "when the importance of the peer group is paramount."…

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UK psychotherapist Bob Withers has been in practice for more than 30 years.Late last year an opinion piece he wrote for a British newspaper attracted considerable attention. The headline was - In 20 years we'll look back on the rush to change our children's sex as one of the darkest chapters in medicine. The reaction was swift, support from many quarters, hostility from others. Bob Withers tells Kathryn why he wrote the article.

UK psychotherapist Bob Withers has been in practice for more than 30 years. Late last year an opinion piece he wrote for a British newspaper attracted considerable attention.

The headline was - In 20 years we'll look back on the rush to change our children's sex as one of the darkest chapters in medicine.

The reaction was swift, support from many quarters, hostility from others. Bob Withers tells Kathryn Ryan why he wrote the article.

Withers says he began treating patients in the 1980s. It was in the 90s when he first had a trans patient.

"I saw a person who'd been living as a woman for nine years. He'd been born a male - so biologically male - and he discovered that he wasn't really happy in his female identity. He'd had surgery and hormones. He came to see me because he wanted to de-transition, to go back to being his original gender. By which time of course he'd lost his genitals and was dependent on oestrogen so he couldn't fully go back - biologically - to being a man.

"He realised that the reason he'd wanted to transition were really psychological reasons and he wished he'd had psycho-therapy before he'd had surgical and medical treatment. As a result of seeing him, I began to wonder how many other people might be in his position."

The patient, Withers says, went on to write a blog about what had happened to him but was vilified by the trans community for it.

"made is life so unpleasant and unbearable that he had to close down his blog and pretend he'd made the whole thing up in order to stop himself from being harassed."

Withers says that was when he became aware that people were being closed down and silenced by others in the trans community, who he says felt insecure hearing stories that didn't confirm their experiences.

He readily admits that the proportion of non-binary or gender non-conforming patients he sees is quite small and that he's not a specialist in the area, but says that living in Brighton - a city with a large LGBT scene - has meant he's seen and supervised a several people who've been in various stages of transition. …

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Want to be a happier parent? KJ Dell'Antonia is the former lead editor of the New York Times Motherlode blog, who over the years has asked and answered plenty of questions about parenting. She says the one she was most intrigued by was 'why isn't it any fun?' She has advice for looking after kids as they grow into their tweens and teens.

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The summer heat has impacting sleep patterns recently, and with parents trying to get their children back into regular bedtimes compatible with the school year, we're looking at some solutions. Sleep researcher and child psychologist Sarah Blunden says sleep is one of the most challenging issues parents face - from unsettled babies, toddlers changing sleep patterns - and then there are the teenage years and young lives dominated by screen use. Dr Blunden is the founder of the Australian Centre for Education in Sleep, and also directs the Paediatric Sleep Clinic based in Adelaide.

The summer heat has impacting sleep patterns recently, and with parents trying to get their children back into regular bedtimes compatible with the school year, we're looking at some solutions.

Sleep researcher and child psychologist Sarah Blunden says sleep is one of the most challenging issues parents face - from unsettled babies, toddlers changing sleep patterns - and then there are the teenage years and young lives dominated by screen use.

Dr Blunden is the founder of the Australian Centre for Education in Sleep, and also directs the Paediatric Sleep Clinic based in Adelaide.

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