Transitioning from Nap time.

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Do you need some help with managing nap time? If so please enjoy this interview with Katherine Feeney ABC Radio Brisbane

You'll learn about:

  • When do daytime naps start coming to an end? Is there a hard and fast rule about the right age?

  • What signs should we look out for that our toddlers are ready to stop napping?

  • Just how much sleep DO toddlers and preschool children need?

  • Best ways to “drop” a nap and easing the transition: shorter naps or stop them all together?  The idea of resting as opposed to napping?

  • Does ending daytime naps mean more grumpy time?

  • Earlier to bed at night once daytime naps come to an end?

  • What about parents?  Their daytime nap was also our daytime break ... What can we do for ourselves during the transition to ending the little ones' daytime nap? What is the most important thing for parents struggling to remember?

Hope you enjoy the interview!

Dr Rosina McAlpine

Can parents really have it all? Me time, family time, work time and time for …

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Can parents really have it all? Me time, family time, work time and time for …

Can parents really have it all? Me time, family time, work time and time for …

More and more parents want to pursue a great career and enjoy a loving a fun family life. BUT for many mums and dads this is challenging and they feel like they have to sacrifice something to make it all work. Often it is “me” time that goes first, then the career and time with the kids so that work and day-to-day family activities like cooking, after school activities, homework just gets done!

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Creativity and Learning: How Parents can Help their Pre-schooler thrive Physically, Mentally and Emotionally through Creative Play at Home

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Creativity and Learning: How Parents can Help their Pre-schooler thrive Physically, Mentally and Emotionally through Creative Play at Home

Have you delighted in how eager your pre-schooler is to embrace every aspect of life? Have you experienced their never ending chatter, asking questions, getting messy, tasting, squishing, touching and enjoying everything that crosses their path?

You might be aware that young children can develop their thinking, their language, imagination, speaking and listening skills through creative play. Have you marveled at how skilfully your child’s preschool teachers involve the children in their care in creative play? We know preschool can be a wonderful experience which helps our little ones for communicate and interact with others and of course enhances their learning.

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Talking to Pre-schoolers about Bodies, Boundaries and Baby-Making

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Talking to Pre-schoolers about Bodies, Boundaries and Baby-Making

Has your pre-schooler started asking questions like “Where did I come from”? “How did I get in your tummy?” “How did I get out of your tummy mummy”? Or “Why do girls have a vagina and boys have a penis”?

And perhaps you’ve you found your children touching their private parts or even showing them to their friends and you’ve been unsure of how to handle it.

Each of these situations can cause a great deal of stress for parents who don’t feel confident or even know where to begin to answer their young child’s questions about sex and sexuality. Now you know that saying “that’s a good question, ask your father”, or “I don’t know, ask you mother” is just going to get you into trouble!

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Understanding the Teenage Brain: Why your Teenager seems erratic.

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Understanding the Teenage Brain: Why your Teenager seems erratic.

Why your Teenager seems erratic, emotionally Unstable, Unresponsive, Disrespectful or even Reckless.

Are you raising one or more teenagers, and are they argumentative, volatile and even down right disrespectful? Are you wondering who took your sweet child away and delivered a teenager who’s mood can go from ambivalence to rage in a split second over the simplest of comments or questions?

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Yoga for kids – fun, relaxing and a healthy practice for life

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Yoga for kids – fun, relaxing and a healthy practice for life

In today’s fast-paced busy life everyone needs a break – parents, teachers and even the kids!

  • Stressed-out parents need simple tools to help their kids wind down at the end of the day and relax before bed, and
  • Our wonderful school teachers and pre-school teachers need something to help calm kids in the classroom.
  • Our beautiful children have to navigate all of the ups and downs in life and being able to manage stress, relax and wind down are important tools for life success.
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Your Parenting Style: How it Affects Your Partner and Your Child

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Your Parenting Style: How it Affects Your Partner and Your Child

Calling all “Helicopter Parents,  Tiger Mums,  Bulldozer Parents, Workaholic Dads and Free Range Parents…”

Are you an easy going kind of parent or do you like to run a ‘tight ship’ and keep everyone and everything in order? And what about your partner are they the same or completely different and if they’re different does it drive you crazy sometimes? You say to your child “no snacks until after dinner” and you turn around and your partner is munching on a chocolate bar and sharing it with your child!

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Time Out: a Close Look at the Potential Harms of this Modern-Day Parenting Strategy

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Time Out: a Close Look at the Potential Harms of this Modern-Day Parenting Strategy

Time-out has become a popular approach to parenting, choosing it as a ‘better’ alternative to smacking. However there is evidence that this parenting tool is more complex than many parents think and some experts even consider that time-out can be a harmful practice.

Dr Rosina, entertaining and educational parenting expert and Dr Robyn Mills, psychologist and inspirational speaker, explore the in’s and out’s of time-out.

In this interview you’ll learn:

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Practical advice for parents and teens

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Practical advice for parents and teens

Teenage years can be very volatile. It is a time when parents and teens can feel like they are in opposition and can’t find a connection! There’s so much going on inside a teenager physically, emotionally and psychologically that things can feel out of control and can get out of control in a flash.

Parents can be on the receiving end of emotional outbursts like “I hate you!” “I hate myself!” “My life sucks” “Everyone is always against me” “Can’t you just leave me alone?” These are common feelings for teens who are trying to find their way in the world – where they are torn between breaking away from their parents and becoming independent as well as wanting to be part of a social group.

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Busy Parents: Find More Time at Work, at Home and With the Kids

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Busy Parents: Find More Time at Work, at Home and With the Kids

Are you feeling like you’re always on the go with never enough time to get things done, chasing that elusive work-life balance that we’re all seeking to achieve?

What would work-life balance mean for you?  What are you really looking for when we say you want more work-life balance?  To help you answer all of these questions, join Dr Rosina as she interviews Mitzi Weinman, creator of Time Finder and author of It’s About Time!: Transforming Chaos into Calm A to Z.

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Educating Children to Prevent Child Abuse Using Music and Songs

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Educating Children to Prevent Child Abuse Using Music and Songs

Child abuse is a topic no-one wants to talk about BUT, the reality is – if we are going to do all we can to keep our children safe - we have to. The rate of child-abuse in Australia and world-wide is on the rise. As a parent, teacher or carer it’s important to teach every child what to do if they are confronted with a situation with the potential for child abuse by educating them from a very young age about the potential harms and what they can do if someone tries to abuse them.

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Mindfulness for better parenting and calmer families - Audio

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Mindfulness for better parenting and calmer families - Audio

Do you find that even with the best intentions to stay calm with your children, before you know it you are annoyed or even angry and yelling at something they have done ?

“HURRY UP! Get ready we’re running LATE AGAIN!”

“Don’t you speak to me with that DISRESPECTFUL TONE!”

“How MANY TIMES do I have to say the SAME THING? Will you EVER learn?”

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Strategies to support resilience

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Life is not always easy and we all encounter setbacks, obstacles and difficulties at one time or another. How resilient are your children when it comes to navigating life’s challenges? How do your children handle life’s downs? Are they OK if they lose a race, fail a test, fall over and hurt themselves or have a disappointment? Resilience is the ability to get up and move on when things are tough, some of the most successful people failed the first time but were resilient enough to persevere. Help your children understand that  “you never fail until you give up”. Help your child

1. understand what it means to be resilient

2. learn about some of the strategies to help them cope with adversity and bounce back when times are tough.

Nurturing self esteem and self confidence in kids - Video

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In this short video, Parenting Expert Dr Rosina shares her heart-felt personal story about her own low self esteem as a girl and her research into how to support healthy self esteem and self confidence in children.

Rosina discusses:

What is self esteem (internal validation versus external praise)

Do we really want to raise ‘confident’ children even if they are ‘overconfident’?

Why we want our children to have low self confidence if they are new at a task and high self confidence when they have mastered a task

Discipline that supports good self-esteem: focusing on behaviour rather than the child

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When disciplining, our communication can support our children to develop of a strong sense of self or it can make them doubt themselves. 

For example, if our words focus on the child’s behaviour we can help them learn how to act in the world appropriately without hurting their self-esteem. To explain with an example, let’s say your child refuses to share their toys – a common developmental stage for toddlers. If your communication is along the lines of “oh you’re a naughty boy. Why can’t you be more like your friend Braden he shares his toys? Good boys share with their friends when will you learn to share with your friends?”

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Nurturing young children's creative abilities

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Young children are naturally creative and I see that creativity in their art, music, dance, conversations, questioning and especially in their make-believe imaginative stories.  I have been nurturing our five-year-old son Cameron's creativity by providing lots of opportunities and experiences from which creative ventures can spark and grow into being. Here are a few of the activities I've shared with Cameron which you might like to try in your home.

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Raising Inspired Children – Part 1 Making Inspired Babies

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The Importance of the time before conception - preconception 

Raising Inspired Children begins even before the baby is conceived. Sadly, current statistics indicate that couples are finding it increasingly problematic to conceive and with the number of stressful and difficult pregnancies on the rise, many couples are left in financial and emotional turmoil after simply trying to bring a beautiful being into this world.

While doing research for my book, Inspired Children: How the leading minds of today raised their children, I included the work of Jan Roberts the author of Great Stuff to Know Before you Conceive among many other books. Jan's research into preconception and pregnancy guides future parents through the stages of preconception, conception, birth, pregnancy, and toddlerhood.

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How to communicate with your Inspired Baby from day one - Part 1

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Raising Inspired Children is all about teaching them life skills from the time they are born! Communication and bonding are key elements to establishing a strong relationship with your child for life. Opening the lines of meaningful communication between yourself and your baby isn't something reserved for the realm of science fiction. There is now a way to understand and communicate with your baby- yes, that's right, your baby! Vivien Sabel, has discovered that babies communicate meaningfully with their parents from day one but unfortunately, most parents haven’t been able to understand the subtle signs, signals, and non-verbal cues of their infant's language. Vivien had so much to share that I have summarised it in a two part series, offering helpful advice on how Mums and Dads can learn what to look for and be empowered to actually communicate with their babies. Imagine what it would be like no to have to wonder what your baby needs … but to KNOW. Read on to find out how.

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Communicating and Bonding with your Inspired Baby from day one - Part 2

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Learning to effectively and efficiently communicate with your baby at an early age has huge implications in both the short and long term period. It not only strengthens the bonds between parents and their children, it also helps foster the conditions needed to raise Inspired Children. I recently interviewed Vivien Sabel, author of The Blossom Method: The Revolutionary Way to Communicate With Your Baby From Birth discovered that babies communicate meaningfully with their parents from day one but unfortunately, most parents haven’t been able to understand the subtle signs, signals, and non-verbal cues of their infant's language. Vivien had so much to share that I summarised it in a two part series, offering helpful advice on how Mums and Dads can learn what to look for and be empowered to actually communicate with their babies.  

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New Super Hero Barbie: a good role model for young girls

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New Super Hero Barbie: a good role model for young girls

Did you have a Barbie doll as a child? Like the many girls around the world who have grown up with one or more Barbie dolls, I have many fond memories of changing her clothes, tugging at her mattered hair and smearing lipstick on her face! Many years ago now, but it sticks in my mind, I recall my niece saying “Aunty, can I please have just one more Barbie”, when I took her to select her birthday present at Toys R Us. At that time she already had 12 different Barbie dolls!

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