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.

Narcissistic children feel superior to others, believe they are entitled to privileges and crave admiration from others. When they don’t get the admiration they want, they may lash out aggressively. Why do some children become narcissistic, whereas others develop more modest views of themselves?

A lot of previous research has suggested that young people living in single-mother households are at an educational disadvantage. But our new study looking at the lives of 10,000 teenagers suggests that this is not true. A stable family, even if it is a lone-parent one, is the best place to grow up.

What keeps us prisoners of our illusions? Our assumptions—the things we believe are true that really are not. For example, on my way to work during rush hour, a guy in a Lexus speeds by, cuts in front of me, then weaves in and out of traffic at a hundred miles an hour. My first reaction is...

Many parents are moving towards “gentle parenting”, where they choose not to use rewards (sticker charts, lollies, chocolates, TV time as “bribes”) and punishments (taking away “privileges”, time-out, smacking) to encourage good behaviour, but encourage good behaviour for the sake of doing the right thing.

Antipsychotic medications, such as Risperdal, Seroquel and Abilify, were developed to treat adults with major mental illnesses including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. But in recent years, their use has extended to treat conditions such as autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children and adolescents.

As a counselor to couples for many years, I’ve learned to spot the distinctive stages we travel through over the course of an intimate relationship. Although these stages are predictable, even inevitable, we have the power to choose how to travel through them as self-aware actors who are in charge of our lives.

Children learn to lie from about the age of two. The first lies children learn to tell are denials of wrongdoing. From the age of three they also learn to tell “white” lies. But what can we do to encourage children to tell the truth?

It’s often thought that we are hardwired by eons of natural selection to be attracted to particular physical traits; that preference is thought to guide a search for healthy mates to help us produce healthy offspring. But the study by Yang and Leonard Lee of the National University of Singapore challenges the notion that our inborn ideas of physical attractiveness are immutable.

Why does a four-year-old play when a 14-year-old creates? It’s often argued that play is central to the lives of young children. Yet the play of older children and adults is often seen as leisure, escapism or even deviance. But there should not be such a binary division between what is educational and what is frivolous.

Relationships seem to be about partner matching. Therefore the apparent robustness of sex differences in preferences may largely be an artifact of the focus on sex at the expense of other more meaningful variables.

We can probably all relate to the experience of feeling divided within ourselves, occasionally against ourselves, and love will certainly induce this as handily as any of life’s experiences. A little-known fact about Cupid may help explain this. He is said to have carried in his quiver two kinds of arrows, one struck you with love, the other with hate.

Do you take the people you love for granted? Do you just assume they will always be there? Do you tell them often enough that you love and care about them, or do you feel there is no need as they probably already know?

If we want to make the world a better place, we need to work on having healthy boundaries! And by this I mean… we understand that I am me and you are you and that each of us has a right to be here and to choose and experience the consequences of all our thoughts, words and actions.

In the social world, we are constantly gathering information through visual cues that we use to evaluate others’ behavior. Babies do the same thing. Babies as young as 13 months know how people should treat each other—and recognize when nasty replaces nice.

A new study finds quantitative evidence of love—something very few economic studies have ever claimed. The researchers asked married couples two penetrating questions about the quality of their marriage, and combined those responses with the couples’ divorce rates six years later.

As a family therapist, I often have the impulse to tell families to go home and have dinner together rather than spending an hour with me. And 20 years of research in North America, Europe and Australia back up my enthusiasm for family dinners. It turns out that sitting down for a nightly meal is great for the brain, the body and the spirit.

We all carry some degree of self-blame, ways we accuse or condemn ourselves. Often these feelings come from our childhood, where we were blamed for mistakes we made. It’s sad how other people’s blame of us can turn into our blame of ourselves, which then often becomes our secret shame, and can keep us from the happiness we want...

A new study finds a link between a good night’s sleep for school-aged kids and better performance in math and languages specifically—subjects that are powerful predictors of later learning and academic success.

Domestic violence is physically, emotionally, psychologically and socially devastating to women and can have similarly devastating effects on their infants and children. The Home Office highlights that while domestic violence can be directed at men by women and can happen in same-sex relationships, the unequivocal majority of domestic abuse (more than 77%) is committed by men against women.

In pregnancy and in some cases even before, quite a high proportion of mothers believe they have been in contact with their unborn children. Some of the women studied found their bodies picking up their unborn babies' feelings. "Every once in a while, I have a feeling but I don't know where it comes from. And then I realize that I am not the one having the feeling."

There is a reason why some people choose to dress or groom themselves in ways that are not provocative. Certain ways of dressing, as well as certain uses of things such as makeup, scents, and jewelry, often elicit exchanges of sexual energy. If we go through the day projecting our sexual energy onto others...