A colleague related the following story: while running errands with her 11- and 7-year-old daughters, a back seat battle began to rage. My colleague’s attempts to diffuse the situation only led to a shouting match about who was to blame for the skirmish. Finally the 11-year-old proclaimed to her sister, “You started it the day you were born and took away Mom’s love!”

At first glance, Victoria Police’s suggestion this week that health professionals report domestic violence to authorities, as they do for child abuse, sounds like a great idea. The suggestion was made in its submission to the state’s Royal Commission into Family Violence.

I never remember being held when I would cry. I was always sent to my room. It was incredibly lonely to be crying alone. I felt as if no one understood me and I had the horrible feeling that there must be something very wrong with me.

It’s really important to be able to name your control patterns and fear buttons and accept them as part of the human condition. Each item in the list below describes a behavior. Identifying the behaviors that you exhibit will help you notice when you are using a control pattern. Then you can choose your response rather than reacting automatically.

People who are attracted to others of the same sex develop their orientation before they are born. This is not a choice. And scientific evidence shows their parents cannot be blamed.

A couple of years ago, I taught an afterschool class at a Seattle nonprofit, the Technology Access Foundation (TAF), which provides STEM education (science, technology, engineering, math) to children from less-privileged backgrounds. My students were 8-11 years old, and it was the first time that I had taught elementary school students.

A new study is the first in more than 20 years to look at long-term outcomes after early intensive autism intervention. Therapy began when children were 18 to 30 months old and involved therapists and parents working with children at home for more than 15 hours each week for two years.

Some parents think it’s their job to make their children happy and to think for them – but this is not true. It’s not the parents’ job to think for their children or to make them happy. It’s impossible for one human being to think for another human being or to make another human being happy.

A website or any new profession, relationship, or step ahead in life is an excellent projective test for where your consciousness lives at the moment. Since life is more about what’s going on inside you rather than what’s going on outside, the best use of outside is to shine light on the inside, so you can progress in your soul’s journey.

In March 2015, San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland shocked football fans when he announced his decision to retire after just one season in the NFL. He explained that he was concerned over the long-term health hazards of football-related head trauma, and journalists and media personalities covered the story extensively.

On asking six-year-olds why water flows down a mountain, one of the responses I received was, “because then we don’t have to walk up the mountain to get it”. Children of this age often conceptualise the world’s physical attributes as being divined for the service of humans, or even just for them.

My family and my community are just as much “me” as the organs of my body. My body and mind, my family and my community, are interacting and interpenetrating—variously prevalent elements in the network of relations that encompasses all things in nature and the human world.

At the end of the school year, districts often send stacks of books home with their students in the hopes of combating the “summer slide” in reading skills. This type of literacy loss hits low-income students particularly hard.

We have been hearing stories about academic cheating: from students caught cheating on homework assignments as well as college entrance exams to teachers being caught in cheating scandals, such as the ones in Atlanta, Georgia, and Columbus, Ohio.

It is often believed that hierarchical and sometimes oppressive social structures like the patriarchy are somehow natural – a reflection of the law of the jungle. But the social structure of today’s hunter gatherers suggests that our ancestors were in fact highly egalitarian, even when it came to gender. Their secret? Not living with many relatives.

Let’s face it breakups hurt. Why? Well, for the most part it’s painful because it represents a loss. And, I’m not just talking about the loss of a loved one, but of the dream that you thought you once shared. Often this sense of a letdown is followed by stress and grief.

For a good marriage, who is the most important person with whom you should be communicating well? If you think it’s your spouse, think again. The most important person to converse with constructively is yourself! You need not try to resolve every situation by talking it over with your partner.

Research has shown that children of poorer parents display substantially worse math and reading skills by the time they start grade school. Other studies have revealed that these wide gaps in pre-school skills persist into adulthood and help explain low educational attainment and lifetime earnings.

All good communication boils down to following four simple rules. Abiding by them, anyone can communicate about any topic effectively and lovingly. There are also four opposing violations that create the misunderstandings and ensuing hurt, alienation and confusion that we experience when communicating with others.

How much more meaningful would our moments with loved ones be if we treated them as if this might be our last time together? We would not squabble over petty issues. We would remember what’s important. A Course in Miracles tells us that the world we see is inside out and upside down.

Long before the invention of Facebook and Match.com, our ancestors grappled with how to improve their social lives, forge beneficial connections, and strengthen their reputations. Their insights will help us enhance our social lives, extend our online social networks, and lead to greater opportunities for success.

A new exhibition at the British Museum promises to lift the lid on what beauty meant for the ancient Greeks. But while we gaze at the serene marble statues on display – straining male torsos and soft female flesh – are we seeing what the ancients saw?

When we think of reading for our children, we are often misled into thinking that we need to focus on one type of book, such as picture books or novels in order to practise specific, reading-related skills. However, this narrowly-focused approach to reading instruction can often have undesirable benefits, such as turning kids off reading altogether.