School
Learning, homework and the long school day.
48 pieces across Thrive
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Journal
Supporting an LGBTQ+ Child at School
School belonging isn't guaranteed by policy alone. It's built through supportive staff, visible community, and a parent willing to advocate clearly when something isn't working.
10 minutes
Journal
Please Don't Out Your Child
Telling grandma, mentioning it to a teacher, sharing it in a parent group — even well-meant disclosure can take something away from your child that's very hard to give back:…
10 minutes
Journal
You Don't Have to Understand Everything Today
You want to support your child fully, but the vocabulary is unfamiliar and you're worried about getting it wrong. Here's what actually matters while you're still learning.
10 minutes
Journal
The Rescue That Costs Them Something
Zipping the coat, finishing the sentence, emailing the teacher before your child even asks — every rescue teaches a lesson, and it isn't always the one you meant.
10 minutes
Journal
The Ones Nobody Worries About: Burnout in High-Achieving Teenagers
The straight-A student, the reliable one, the child every teacher praises. Perfectionism is the only mental health risk factor that gets applauded at parents' evening.
10 minutes
Journal
Climate Anxiety in Children
When a child’s worry about the planet becomes a nightly fear about the future, they need honesty and agency, not reassurance that cannot be kept or dread that cannot be…
10 minutes
Journal
When the Results Are Not What They Hoped
Results day can undo a young person in ten minutes. Here is what to say first, how to keep your own disappointment from leaking into the room, and how to…
10 minutes
Journal
The Tummy Ache With No Cause
When examinations and tests are reassuring, a child’s stomach pain can still be intense. Understanding functional pain helps you respond with compassion, sensible medical care and steady routines.
10 minutes
Journal
When Your Child Calls Themselves Stupid
When a child says “I’m stupid,” the words usually describe a painful moment, not a settled truth. Your response can turn self-criticism into accurate, workable self-understanding.
10 minutes
Journal
Tics in Children
Tics are involuntary, often change over time, and can intensify when a child feels watched. Here is how to respond calmly, understand the diagnoses, and work constructively with school.
10 minutes
Journal
Resetting Sleep Before School Starts
A calm, circadian-science-based plan for moving late summer nights and slow mornings earlier, while protecting connection and avoiding bedtime becoming a nightly contest.
10 minutes
Journal
Back to School Anxiety
The approach to a new school year can unsettle even confident children. Here is how to reduce uncertainty, respond to distress and support steady attendance without feeding the fear.
10 minutes
Journal
How to Teach a Growth Mindset Without Empty Praise
Real growth mindset begins when children feel accurately seen—not when every struggle is covered with a cheerful “good job.”
10 minutes
Journal
The Night Before the Test
Test anxiety is not about revision. It is about a body that has decided tomorrow is dangerous.
10 minutes
Journal
Why They Save It All For You
Angelic at school, feral at home. The most misunderstood compliment in parenting.
10 minutes
Journal
The Special Interest Is Not a Problem
An autistic child's deep, narrow interest is not a phase to be redirected. It is often the most reliable route to regulation, learning and joy they have.
10 minutes
Journal
The First Night Away
Homesickness is not weakness. It is attachment doing its job in the wrong postcode — and it is highly trainable.
10 minutes
Journal
Helping a Child Make Friends
Friendship is a skill, not a gift. Some children need more coaching, more time, or a different kind of social setting.
10 minutes
Journal
The Quiet Worrier Nobody Notices
Not all anxious children ask questions or seek reassurance. Some go very quiet, over-prepare, and hold their breath until they get home.
10 minutes
Journal
The Teacher Who Does Not Warm to Them
When a child feels unliked by an adult in authority, school becomes an exhausting performance. How to protect their dignity without declaring war on the classroom.
10 minutes
Journal
The Good Kid Who Is Burning Out
When straight A's, perfect attendance, and a polite smile hide anxiety, exhaustion, and the fear of letting anyone down.
10 minutes
Journal
I'm Just Not a Maths Person: Maths Anxiety in Children
Maths anxiety is a working-memory problem wearing the costume of a personality trait.
10 minutes
Journal
Mornings Are Executive Function Practice
Getting out the door is not a test of obedience. It is a heavy load of planning, prioritising, shifting, and starting — all before breakfast. Some brains need more scaffolding…
10 minutes
Journal
When Teen Anxiety Looks Like Laziness
The essay is not written. The room is a mess. The alarm is ignored. Before you decide they do not care, consider that anxiety can look a lot like avoidance…
10 minutes
Journal
Pacing the Day for ADHD Brains
ADHD brains do not run out of willpower. They run out of dopamine, executive fuel, and novelty. The right pacing protects the brain from collapse and the family from chaos.
10 minutes
Journal
The Friend Who Stopped Sitting With Them
Friendship groups shift without warning around nine to twelve. It is not always bullying — and it still hurts like something broke.
10 minutes
Journal
The Long Way Round to a Page: Supporting a Child With Dyslexia
Dyslexia is not a reading problem that willpower can solve. It is a difference in how the brain maps sound to symbol — and the emotional cost usually arrives before…
10 minutes
Journal
The Friend Who Decides Everything
Controlling friendships rarely look like bullying. They look like closeness with conditions attached.
10 minutes
Journal
The Rubbed-Out Page: Perfectionism in Children
The homework is torn through from erasing. Perfectionism in children rarely looks like ambition — it looks like paralysis, rage, and a page rubbed thin.
10 minutes
Journal
The Child Who Holds It Together All Day and Falls Apart at 3:30
Teachers describe a model student. You open the car door and get a stranger. This is not bad behaviour — it is the bill arriving for six hours of self-control.
10 minutes
Journal
Choosing the Right Online Parenting Class: A Therapist's Guide
There are thousands of online parenting classes and almost no way to tell, from the sales page, which ones are built on evidence and which are built on confidence.
10 minutes
Journal
The Corridor: What to Do When Your Child Is Being Bullied
The instinct is to fix it in an afternoon. The thing that actually restores a child is slower, quieter and almost entirely about whether they feel believed.
10 minutes
Journal
The Night Before: Helping a Child With Test Anxiety
A child who knows the material and still freezes is not underprepared. They are over-alerted — and that is a different problem with a different solution.
10 minutes
Journal
Separation Anxiety in Children: Why Longer Goodbyes Make It Worse
The instinct to stay one more minute is loving, reasonable, and the single most reliable way to make tomorrow morning harder.
10 minutes
Journal
The Homework Hour: Ending the Nightly Standoff
By four o'clock a child has already spent six hours regulating themselves in a demanding environment. The worksheet is not the problem — the timing, the tank and the referee's…
10 minutes
Journal
How to Build Resilience in Children (It Is Not Toughness)
Resilient children are not the ones who struggle least. They are the ones who have been supported through struggle often enough to believe it ends.
10 minutes
Journal
ADHD Burnout in Children Is Real
Holding it together for six hours a day costs something. When a capable ADHD child suddenly cannot do things they could do last term, this is usually what you are…
10 minutes
Journal
The Cost of Getting It Right: Perfectionism in Children
The child who rips up the page, refuses to start, or cries over a single mark is not being dramatic. They are managing a belief that their worth is recalculated…
10 minutes
Journal
When the Call Is About Your Child
There is a great deal of guidance for parents of children who are hurt at school. There is almost none for the parents on the other end of the phone…
10 minutes
Journal
The Child Who Cannot Speak at School
Selective mutism is not shyness, stubbornness or choice. It is anxiety severe enough to freeze speech.
10 minutes
Journal
The Longest Hour: Rescuing the School Morning
Nobody is difficult in the morning. Everyone is under-resourced at the same time, in a house designed by no one, against a clock that does not negotiate.
10 minutes
Journal
How to Help a Child With Low Self-Esteem (When Compliments Do Not Land)
Telling an unconfident child that they are wonderful rarely works. Self-esteem is built from evidence, not reassurance — and evidence takes a particular kind of parenting.
10 minutes
Journal
What Teachers Wish Parents Knew
They see your child for six hours a day in a room with thirty other people. What they notice is different from what you notice — and the gap between…
10 minutes
Journal
The Morning That Unravels: Why Getting Out of the Door Is So Hard
Shoes, coats, teeth, bags. The school run asks a developing brain to sequence more decisions before nine o'clock than most adults make before lunch — and it is almost never…
10 minutes
Journal
The World Is Too Loud: Understanding Sensory Overwhelm
The supermarket, the school hall, the label in the collar. For some children the volume of ordinary life is turned up in a way nobody around them can hear —…
10 minutes
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The School Communication System
School communication is now a genuine administrative load carried mostly by one adult. Here is a system that catches what matters and lets the rest go.
10 minutes
Grow
The After-School Routine: Helping Kids Transition From School to Home
After school is a transition, not a time slot. Food, quiet, and a delay on questions will do more for the evening than any homework schedule.
10 minutes
Grow
The Shape of a School Holiday
Holidays go wrong in the same three places every year — the first Monday, the middle week, and the two days before term. A shape, not a timetable, is what…
10 minutes