Stalking is a crime. Regardless of your reasons, it is wrong to repeatedly do something that harasses someone, invades their privacy, invades their space, repeatedly intrudes on their life or continually degrades them to the point where they are fearful.
The concept of stalking as we know it is a very new concept. Often seen as just infatuation or unrequited love, stalking was in the past seen as almost something flattering. Before the late 1980s it was unusual to hear or people stalking others, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the word, stalker, started to hit the press and usually in relation to those that obsessively followed certain celebrities.
I remember learning about intelligence during my under-grad psychology course at uni back in the 80s. The definition of intelligence in my text book was something like “intelligence is the thing that intelligence tests measure”. And, well, despite having used or looked at an IQ test most weeks of my working life, that is still pretty much my understanding of them.
Intelligence is one of those things that you can’t really hold or visualise. We all kind of have a sense of what it means, but is it really even a thing?
It’s clear. Children who “lose” a parent can suffer from a range of social disadvantages including poverty. Children who lose contact with one parent can have fewer resources (financial or otherwise) available to them and this is one of many reasons why the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child speaks to the right of a child to have meaningful access to both parents and why it is important that the best interest of the child are considered when a family separates.
Thankfully, most parents who separate in Australia have their children’s best interests at heart. They are able to maintain a “civil enough” relationship so that both parents can maintain an ongoing relationship with the child and be sure that the children, or other family members, are not put at risk. This is no mean feat if you are struggling with issues about hurt and trust arsing from the end of an intimate relationship, but most parents can achieve this emotional work by themselves or perhaps with the help of supportive family, friends and advisors.
Homelessness is a problem that we normally associate with far away people in far away countries. Sadly, though, homelessness is a significant issue in Australia and if we let ourselves imagine homeless people in Australia, we probably visualise a dirty and unwell looking man asleep on a park bench.
Unfortunately, it’s even sadder than that.
From time to time, we all fancy ourselves at being expert in how other people think, feel and behave. Human behaviour has fascinated people for years and the quest to know more about what makes people tick leads many to consider studying psychology. Undergraduate psychology courses are amongst the most popular university courses chosen by high school graduates as well as mature age students every year.
The pathway to becoming a registered psychologist in Australia is long and windy. There are a number of challenges or obstacles and there are various key players or gate keepers that are involved.
Gone are the days when a child’s access to pornographic material was about finding Dad’s Playboy magazine in his bottom drawer or even stumbling across a National Geographic in the library.
Gone, too, are the video cassettes delivered to a mate’s dad’s friend’s places from our Nation’s capital city in a brown paper bag.
There are many different reasons why a child or teen might not want to go to school. For some, the desire to avoid going to school can become so troubling that it can become associated with family conflict and significant mental health issues.
There are lots of words in the psychological research that are used to describe the problems faced by students who should be, but aren’t, going to school. When you take a close look at the child that is not going to school, you can usually see factors in the child, factors in the family, and factors in the school that are not quite aligned so that the child is getting the most of their schooling years. In fact, the words that are used to describe the different types of school non-attendance give some insight into which factors might be in play the children, the parents/carers and the school.
Over the years, my practice has had an increasing number of parents calling with concerns about their child refusing to where the clothes traditionally associated with a certain gender – little boys demanding pretty skirts, little girls refusing to wear dresses. Notably, most of these parents are not concerned about the sexual or gender diversity choices of their child. More, they are concerned about trying to bully proof them for fear that they may be harassed or maltreated by others because others cannot accept their preferences.
Identity formation is an important milestone in adolescence and sexual orientation is just one part of many things that an adolescent sort out about themselves in the lead up to the adult years…and sometimes even beyond that. An adolescent may take some time before they decide their sexual orientation. The average age of coming out is about 16, but that does not mean that young people have all of their gender identity issues sorted out by 16.
One of the most common concerns raised by parents, teachers and carers of teens is alcohol and substance use. The concerns are solid. Given that an adolescent brain is still growing and at a very rapid pace, any damage caused while it is still developing could have a big impact on future brain health.
Generally speaking, with the growth in teenage body and brain comes a growth in the desire to experience new things. Those new things need to be exciting and not the usual day to day hum of the family household. Changes to the pleasure centre of the brain during the teen years mean that the young person can become more dissatisfied with home and want to push boundaries, meet others, fit in with others, and spend more time with people outside of their family. This lure of a wider world can bring more exposure to things not experienced in the home and things for which young people have some information, but not necessarily wisdom.
Some children are picky eaters. They limit the amounts they will eat – some reject foods and some are unwilling to try new foods. Contrary to what many may think, picky eating is not linked to eating disorders late in life. However, picky eating and meal time behaviour problems are linked to other behavioural problems in children.
Picky eating usually has its basis in three areas: developmental stages, personal preferences and family practices.
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