May 9, 2025 • 30 mins
ADHD is now the most diagnosed condition among Australian children under 14, and anxiety tops the list for teens. In this important episode, Dr Justin Coulson speaks with clinical psychologist Dr Jaimie Northam about the rise in childhood mental health challenges, the role of early intervention, and how parents can meaningfully support their kids. From understanding the signs to cutting through the online overwhelm, this conversation provides practical tools, gentle encouragement, and hope for families navigating tough seasons.
KEY POINTS:
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ADHD and anxiety are rising dramatically among Australian children and teens.
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Family stress and digital distractions impact parent-child connection more than screen time itself.
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The three D’s to watch for: Distress, Dysfunction, and Deviation from typical development.
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A simple 10-minute connection with your child can dramatically improve behaviour and emotional resilience.
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Early mental health challenges often persist if left unaddressed — but early intervention can prevent long-term impact.
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Overexposure to conflicting parenting advice online can add to parental stress and confusion.
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Evidence-based strategies should fit both the child and the family — even among credible experts, one size does not fit all.
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The Growing Minds Check-In is a free, research-backed tool to assess your child’s wellbeing and get tailored support.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
“Half of all child mental health problems emerge before age twelve — and many become lifelong if we don’t act early.” — Dr Jaimie Northam
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
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Growing Minds Check-In Study — growingmindscheckin.au
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Dr Jaimie Northam (University of Sydney) – Clinical psychologist and researcher
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happyfamilies.com.au – Parenting resources and support
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
In Australia right now, ADHD is the most diagnosed mental
health or neurodevelopmental challenge in our young people under fourteen.
Recent Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that anxiety is
the number one for over fourteens and since COVID. That
data indicates that as many as forty one percent of
our girls and twenty one percent of our boys are
(00:27):
experiencing clinical levels of anxiety. In short, mental health challenges
are rising, resilience is on the way down. Today on
the podcast, my guest is going to help us to
work out how we can improve both access to support
and processes at home to help our kids do better.
(00:48):
Hello and welcome to the Happy Families podcast, Real parenting
solutions every day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. My
name is doctor Justin Coulson and I'm absolutely delighted thrilled
to be joined the University of Sydney by doctor Jamie Northam.
Doctor Jamie Northam is a clinical psychologist at sid DODR.
Northam's clinical and research work focuses on children and adolescents
(01:11):
and parenting. She has a particular interest in what are
known as externalizing disorders. We'll talk about those in a
sec that things like oppositional defiance disorder, conduct disorder, and
youth substance use. Currently, Jamie's working on ways to help
parents and young people notice the early signs of mental
health problems and get access to research based resources. She's
(01:35):
passionate about upskilling the community, better support well being and
helping parents to build new skills and Jamies and mum
to Hazel, a typically rambunctious and busy and delightful two
year old Dr Northam, thank you so much for being
with me on the Happy Families podcast. Really glad to
have you along.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Thank you so much for having me to say, justin so.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I want to start with a hypothesis. I'm going to
get you to tell me, from your data and your
clinically experience, how close I am At the moment. Kids
aren't active, kids are on screens. Tech CEOs have developed
algorithms to addict our kids to those screens. Parents are
busy and stressed and distracted, sometimes in healthy ways, other
times just in their own algorithmic miasma and school pressure
(02:17):
is increasing at a society level. My hypothesis is that
we're just doing it wrong right now. And these are
the things that I see as being central contributors to
our mental health challenges. Where am I right? Where am
I wrong?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It is harder than ever to be a parent of
kids at the moment, and I think the screens, and
I think the environment in which young people are in
at the moment makes that doubly hard. We don't really
know how to manage screens, and we don't know the
long term effects of big time use of screens as well.
And we can kind of make some guesses about ADHD
(02:51):
and the effect that attention and screens is having on
that diagnosis. But it is really difficult. So what did
you get right? It's definitely more difficult than ever to
be a parent and to be a young person. What
did you get wrong? Screens aren't all bad, and screen
time and use doesn't necessarily relate to anxiety and attentional problems.
(03:17):
Later on, what we do know is correlated with those
things sears relationship with parents and relationship with the children
and young people, and what we do to support conversations
around how they're using screens and what they see, and
what we can do to help increase that resilience within
the home.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So Jamie to the point that I made about parents
being busy and stressed and distracted sometimes with their own
screens as well as well as the kids being on theirs.
Let's talk about this issue of building that relationship with parents.
You've been working in this area at the University of
Sydney for some time. What do you see as the
biggest challenges outside of the world of screens to positive
(03:57):
parent child relationships stress?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Absolutely, family stress, we've seen it in the news, the
cost of living crisis, families and parents in particular doing
everything they can to try and support their family in
the best way that they can. So there's absolutely no
shame for parents from us for using screens and relying
on these things at times. But where we would come
from with this is that there's a right way to
(04:23):
use them and there's a way that we can use
them that's more effective. Because at the end of the
day as well, if you need to sit down and
you need to get dinner cooked, or you need to
do your own thing, you've got work to do. That's
a reality for the life that we're facing at the
moment and the times that we're living in. But there's
ways that we can do that I think that help
to increase connection and help to really help with children's
(04:45):
mental health and protect them a little bit.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Okay, let's take screens out of it for just a
sick If you were to give parents maybe one or
two of the best pieces of advice that you've come
across to help them to build a relationship better with
their children, whether the child's two or twelve or twelve
or anywhere in between, what would be the best things
for parents to really connect with their kids.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
The best thing for connection is absolutely scheduled time with
your child doing an activity that's really fun. So when
and the work that I do with kids who are
particularly naughty, one of the first things we do before
we even get to consequences is finding some really sort
of nice ways that we can work in some time
with Now I'm talking like ten minutes here, ten minutes
(05:27):
of sitting down and having a little play, going with
what your child wants to do, whether that's playing lego,
whether that's doing a quick picture. Just quick ten minutes
top up is often enough to save us from having
a family battle when it comes to dinner time or
around other family events.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I love what you've said there. I have a confession.
Sometimes I'm distracted. Sometimes I have really important things to do,
and I forget that the most important things are my kids
and the things that they're interested in. Last night, my wife,
Kylie was away. She wasn't able to be at home
last night, and so I had the kids and look
after dinner. I actually paid one of the kids to
cook dinner because I had too much going on that
(06:03):
while we were waiting for dinner, I finally had a
break about fifteen minutes before it was to be served up.
And what I really, what I really wanted to do,
was lay down on the bed and zone out. I
was happy to read a book, or listen to a podcast,
or maybe watch a fraction of an episode of a
serious that I'm currently binging, sorry, trying to binge in
fifteen minute increments. And my eleven year old daughter walked
(06:25):
into the room and wanted to show me her dragon lair.
She's collecting all of these three D printed dragons. I
got to be honest, Jamie, I thought to myself, of
all the things that I could engage in right now,
checking out eleven year old's cardboard box dragon lair beside
her bed in her bedroom is near the bottom of
(06:45):
the list, and because I'm a parenting expert, I pushed
all that down, got out of bed, or got off
the bed, and walked into the room with her, and
I sat down on the carpet, and do you know what,
for that next ten minutes, as she described to me
how she's she's got the clothes hanging for the dragons.
I didn't know the dragons walk clothes, incidentally, And she's
got all of these different things that she's set up,
(07:06):
the creativity, the time, the effort, the hours she's put in.
It was actually, it was just delightful to see the
joy that she was finding. When you say to invest
that time, even if it's ten minutes, it makes it
just makes a world of difference for them because they
want us to be in their world.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Absolutely it does. I love that example so much because
you were able to find a place within yourself even
though you're busy and stressed and you've had a huge day,
to then reconnect with your daughter. But I also just
want to highlight the fact that not everybody is able
to do that, and that's okay, that's really okay. If
you're not able to do that. There are times when
(07:45):
I'm exhausted as well, and I know that even if
I try to do it, I'm going to be snappy
and I'm not going to be engaged, and that's not
going to be a good use of anyone's time. So
I guess if you're looking for practical, implementable things, if
my daughter comes up to do that and I'm in
a space but I'm not able to do that, I
will say, Wow, thank you so much for coming to
(08:06):
show me this. I'm so excited to see this, but
mummy needs ten minutes and then I'm going to come
and I want you to show me everything about this
dragon's lair, because then you're also modeling that it's okay
to have time to yourself and that there are times
when you need a moment, And so you're modeling to
kids how to manage emotions, how to set expectations, but
(08:27):
that that connection and that relationship is still very important
to you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I just wanted to share that story so I could
virtue signal a little bit and show how awesome I.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Amazon's dad's well nailing it. That's right.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Let's get back to the serious conversation about mental health.
This concept of connecting belonging, feeling like you're mad at
your parents, getting time and attention in spite of the business,
the stress, the distraction, the screens, the school pressures, and
so on. What are the long term mental health implications
when kids can't get that connection.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
It's really tricky to monitor exactly what causes mental health
problems and what makes them line. But we do know
that at least half of all child mental health problems
emerge before twelve, and that they become life course persistent,
which means that they.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
When I hear that, yeah, that's right, like they keep
for a long time, I'm cutting you off because because
that mental health challenges sort of present or show up
before the age of twelve and they become life long
That's one of those statements that we hear a lot.
Can you really unpack that and describe precisely what we're
supposed to take from that? What does it mean specifically?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, I raised this also in just in terms of connection,
because we need to be able to notice when things
have gone off with our kids. So what does it
mean specifically? It means that when we think about mental
health problems, we think about difficulties in a specific area
for kids, the things that I'm most interested in and
worried about with kids' mental health. Are they making friends,
(09:54):
Are they feeling confident and happy to engage in school?
Are they following most the direction so that there's not
lots of stress at home with parents as well. And
if they're able to do that, that means that we
know they can engage in school well, and they can learn,
they can make new friends, and they can learn all
the social things they need to do at different levels.
But if there are fears and worries that are getting
(10:16):
in the way of making friends, of being at school,
or learning with their peers, or listening to their parents
and following those instructions, then we know that they're not
going to meet a lot of the needs that they
need to meet and the milestones. If they don't meet
those milestones, then it's a constant catching up process that
starts and that happens. So what we and so that
(10:38):
what that looks like is ow you have a child
who might be in kindergarten and really struggles following directions
with their teacher. They don't know how to share with
their peers very well, so they don't have very many
friends and their self confidence goes down and that has
these big knock on effects, and so then as clinicians
(11:00):
and as a psychologist, it's about getting in as early
as we can so that those long term knock on
effects don't keep building up and that kids then don't
become disadvantaged in different ways.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Early intervention would also help to avoid the need for
a diagnosis. Would that be a fair statement.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Absolutely so. When we're thinking about early intervention, I like
to think about what is it that's currently getting in
the way for kids. So is it that there's a
big emotional meltdown that it's happening all the time that's
stopping them from learning in school, In which case we
might do some early intervention in emotion regulation skills, which
can be done with parents and with teachers. If there's
(11:41):
something to do with being friendly and social with others,
we might help them to learn sharing skills and really
model that, and we can do these things first before
things continue to escalate and become mental health disorders.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Jamie, there's so much advice out there at the moment.
Instagram and TikTok are just full of information that frankly,
I think is freaking everyone out. Parents are more on edge,
more nervous, more worried, more anxious about their children and
their mental health than perhaps at any other time. To
what extent is that impacting the current state of mental
(12:23):
health or mental illness in children? And I guess, by extension,
how much do you see parental anxiety about children having
emotions and being anxious contributing to the fact that the
children are having emotions and being anxious.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Oh, such an interesting question and interesting phenomenon. And as
a parent of a two year old, I find myself,
even though I'm an expert, questioning myself every day about
the impact of things or if I'm doing things right.
So it's a bit of a big question to answer.
So I'll just start with the first thing that popped
into my mind, which was around the advice and around
(12:58):
the amount of content that currently exists from a parenting perspective.
I know, even when my daughter was a baby, I
felt like I was learning parenting from Instagram, and a
lot of the stuff that I would get fed up
would be conflicting information. I would hear something from one
specialist something from a different specialist, And I feel like
(13:18):
that's a really common experience before social media really took
off just from different nurses and things when you're learning
for breastfeed and all that kind of thing. Beau's not
one way works perfectly for everybody. But in the current
day and age, we get this messaging constantly about how
to best parent your child, how to best protect them
from anxiety, how to best protect from social media influences,
(13:40):
and different different things that are coming up on those platforms,
and it's really really difficult to actually know what to
do and to question that. So if I could offer
any practical advice about that, it's really about asking yourself
what is happening for my child at the moment, and
of the signs that things might not be going well,
(14:02):
and taking it back to really basic principles. So in
psychology we always speak about the three d's when we're
thinking about needing to intervene with kids, and those are distress, dysfunction,
and devians. So distress some behavior is worrying you or
(14:22):
worrying your child, that's a perfect time to get help
because that's one thing that's really important. Dysfunction, that's the
things that I like to think about, is impacting learning
or impacting a really happy life. So if you can't
make friends. If you can't form those relationships, that's having
a bit of dysfunction, So that's probably worth looking at.
And then debans is the last one, which sounds a
(14:44):
little bit scary when you say, like like that, But
what devians refers to is really, is my child within
the realms of what's considered normal at this age and
are they sort of meeting those milestones that would be
expected of them, And if they're not, again, that's probably
another tick that you know that it's time to seek
out a little bit of extra support.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Devins does sound a little alarming. I tend to use
the word deviation instead. Deviation just softens it that little
bit for a parent who's already so anxious. But I
think that's going to be so valuable and so useful
for parents who are listening. Let's extend that then and
highlight how do you know that you're accessing support that's
(15:24):
evidence based, Because I mean, the reality is that there
are really well credentialed, really well intentioned, really smart experts.
I'm not talking about and I don't say this in
a disparaging way. It's just the easiest descriptor instamums or
TikTok influencers, well intentioned and often sharing really great information.
(15:45):
As somebody with a doctorate in psychology myself, sometimes I
look at these social media people and go, Dan, that's good.
I'm stealing that, Like the evidence is right there for it.
That's brilliant. I think it's amazing. And other times they
say such rubbish. But I want to I want to
ignore that for a minute. I want to talk about
There's me, and I'm saying, well, let me pick one
that you know, Professor Mark Dads. You work with Mark,
(16:09):
and you obviously know me and the work that I do.
And he and I disagree profoundly on one particular thing,
which is the use of time out. I mean, he's
all for it because he's from the Triple P Matthew
Sanders University of Queensland School, and I'm from a self
determination theory perspective, which says, we want to minimize controlling techniques,
and there are much better ways that we can do
(16:30):
this without crippling relationships or without making kids experience these
punitive outcomes. We can actually do it better. So Mark
is highly credible. He's a really smart guy. He's done,
he's made an enormous contribution with the world in his
parenting research, as has someone like Matt Sanders. And yet
somebody like me who's relying on incredible experts who have
(16:51):
written books like voluminousts the most published scientific research is
on the planet. Their research is deep and meaningful and
useful as well. So when a parent comes across someone
like me saying don't use time out and then the
next thing in their algorithm serves up Mark or Matt
or somebody like that saying no, no, no, timeout is really
(17:13):
really valuable and you need it, what are they supposed
to do? Because both of us are coming from an
evidence based situation. How do you guide parents in that situation?
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, so this is one that comes up all the time,
As I imagine you would know when you've got a
child who's behaving poorly and you want to help them
to learn the new skill to behave, Well, how do
we do that best? And how do we figure out
the evidence behind what's going to work? So you did
(17:46):
a beautiful job that I'm explaining that there is a
huge amount of evidence behind time out and behind time
out not being harmful and being really helpful at times.
But what I like to think of it too, as
I love metaphors when I'm working with families in particular,
is that you can have a child who have you
had the dandelion orchard metaphor before I have?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
But please share it.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah, So the or good metaphor is that you've got
different types of kids, and you can think of kids
as different types of flowers. The dandelion flower or a
child is the sort of child who'll grow anywhere. They're
really resilient, they're robust, they need really minimal conditions to
grow into a healthy, functioning human being who's pretty happy.
(18:28):
Then we get these children sometimes who refer to as orchids,
and they're very sensitive to environment, and they need very
particular parenting input and very particular environments to grow. And
when they grow, my goodness, they are spectacular. And I
like to think about the parenting choices we make about
discipline and learning skills and all those things as really
(18:53):
individual to families and really individual to kids. What will
work well for one kid might not necessarily work well
for the other kid, even if both things are evidence based.
So what we need to do when considering which treatment
to go with or which fills to implement if you're
thinking about advice that you receive on Instagram or TikTok,
it's one, are there studies behind this that show that
(19:16):
it works and that it doesn't do harm. Two, what
I think is really important are there clear guidelines and
how to actually do it? Because a lot of the
time instrums will tell a nice thing and you go,
that sounds cool, but I don't actually know how to
do that. Then, so you want to see the actual
steps involved so you don't screw it up to put
it really bluntly. And then lastly you're going to go
(19:37):
is this right for me? And is this the right
fit for my child? So, as you've mentioned, I work
with Mark Dads who is very big on time out,
and it does work very well for a lot of kids,
but it doesn't work very well for all kids. And
so even when I'm working in the clinic, it's very
much a conversation about what are your needs, what can
(19:57):
we do to meet those needs, and what's going to
work for your family? And if you're assessing evidence based care,
our evidence based skills, it's that lens of has there
been worked onne to show this is true? How do
I do it? And does this fit my philosophy and
does it fit how my child is Jamie?
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Parenting is complex, and it also highlights, I think the
challenge that we have with psychology. Generally, we know what
works well on average, but very few people are actually average.
If anybody right, we're all, we're all that a little
bit different. Let's bring it back to a mental health
discussion again, because that's really the central area that we
need to focus on for our conversation. So far, you've
(20:37):
highlighted that if we see a child who is distressed, dysfunctional,
or deviating from what we see happening on average for
their age group, for their developmental stage, we should start
to say, Okay, there is cause for some concern here.
I have a couple of tricky questions to follow that up.
First off, how do they get help? And secondly, what
(21:01):
do they do when help is really hard to find
because of the current challenges in our medical and psychological system.
If they're dealing with really big challenges that need help
sooner than the appointments will allow.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yeah, it's one of those impossible problems that we're trying
really hard to fix. At the moment. You raise several issues.
So the first one through the around barriers to getting
access to care. So in order to get children the
care that they need, you need parents to recognize that
there are issues that are going on that need more support,
and then you need for them to be able to
know where to go to actually access that support. And
(21:40):
then you need to have the money usually to see
a specialist or to see a psychologist, and you need
to have that reduced waging time to get in. So
it's a really tricky context at the moment, especially with
parental anxiety really high at the moment about looking after
their kids the best they can. There's a lot of
people trying to access services and there are really long
wait lists at the moment. So what we're really trying
(22:01):
to do at the moment is find ways that we
can help families to recognize when there are signs that
things aren't going quite right, and then to give them
some guidance on typical milestones like when the kids are
meeting them are not and also how their children are
going on a range of different areas in terms of wellbeing.
And then we're providing links to services that are available
(22:25):
online and that are free, so these things might be
self directed programs that they can do themselves, which can
be a bit of a holdover until getting in to
see somebody face to face. And our hope is that
a lot of the time that doing these free, instantly
accessible programs is actually going to decrease the amount of
need that is put on the mental health service and system,
(22:48):
so that those kids who do need to get that
support really fast can get it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
So now I'm on the edge of my seat because
I'm thinking myself, I don't want to wait two years
to get a diagnosis sort of find out what's really
going on, but some people or literally waiting one to
even two and a half years was one that I
heard the other day from somebody who just had to
get some help. You're suggesting that you're working on some
things to potentially provide the early intervention which may, if
not alleviate the problem entirely, at least reduce the challenges
(23:16):
that parents are facing. Can you tell me a bit
about that. What are you doing specifically to alleviate the concern,
the anxiety, the stress that parents are facing when it
comes to the they're worries about their kids and their
mental health challenges.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah, so, at the moment, we've developed a talk called
the Growing Minds check In, and the Growing Minds check
In is a website that you can log onto. It's
for parents of children zero to seventeen years of age,
so a very broad range of age groups for parents,
and it takes on average six minutes to do. And
this check in what it does is we combine subjective concerns,
(23:51):
so just general issues that parents have, and we have
what we call an objective measure. And an objective measure
is a population based score that can tell you how
your child is functioning overall in terms of mental health
and wellbeing and also in terms of anxiety, conduct issues,
and attention. And that compares your child's score to other
(24:13):
kids their age, so you can get a bit of
an idea whether what areas they might be struggling in
and then we give recommended resources based on those outcomes
for what's available online at the moment. So the goal
is to really upskill parents that you know what's happening
with their child a little bit more, but they also
know where they can go to online to get that
(24:35):
really early intervention.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
I love it. I'm going to summarize that because there
were several things that you said that I think are
really important in case somebody was listening while they're dealing
with a child or I don't know, doing other stuff.
Six minutes, you do this questionnaire based on what your
experience is, and then your results are compared with population
level data so that you can see whether your child
(24:58):
is or is not deviating, or the levels of distress
or whatever. A different it's for anyone with kids between
zero and seventeen. So we're talking about if you're a
parent and you're worried about your child, there's information here
that's going to be useful. And once the information has
been collected through the questionnaire, your system provides directions for
(25:22):
where to go for the appropriate level of help and
how to get that.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
That's exactly right. And the other thing that we do,
which I think is really fantastic, is we give the
feedback summary reform. And this feedback summary reform can be
used to take to your GP, it can be used
to take to other psychologists or pediatricians, and it gives
a snapshot of how things were at that moment. And
in the study that we're currently running, where it's a
study because what we're trying to do is get as
(25:48):
input as we possibly can before we just put the
tool out into the world and we're partnered with Raising
Children's Network to put this tool out nationally into the
world once it's done. So we're really really seeking parents
to help us to test this at the moment and
to give us feedback on what works and how we
can make it better, because this tool is really for parents,
(26:10):
and it's to encourage people to think about wellbeing and
what we can do every day to look after our kids.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
I'm hearing you say it, and part of me is thinking,
why is it only just happening in twenty twenty five,
Like this seems like it's so obvious that somebody should
have done this already. All right, So if parents want
to check up on their kids and I want to
be able to access this six minute questionnaire and obviously
it sounds like this is for science, so it will
support the work that you're doing as well. Where do
they go and how do they do this? How do
(26:37):
they find out how their kids are going?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, so you can sign up to be part of
the study, which is the Growing Minds check In Study
and the website all one word Growing Minds check In
AU and I'll spell it out to it's g rwng
MNDS ch e ck I N dot AU.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
So growing minds check in dot au. We'll link to
that in the show notes six minute questionnaire, and then
a comparison of your child against what's going on for
the rest of the population and.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Links to available resources that are online and freely available.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah, probably should have mentioned that as well.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
That was my fault.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
That's really important for anyone who wants help, Jamie. I
think this has been a really important conversation. I reckon
so many parents will have taken so much from it.
Is there anything that you would like to share that
we haven't discussed just in the last sort of twenty
five thirty minutes or so.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
I just really want to reiterate how difficult it is
to parent kids at the moment, and how many stresses
there are out there and competing ideas and demands, and
how hard it is to know what the right thing
to do is. But that if you can really go
back down to basics and think about those three d is,
think about how your child is, what you're doing to
(28:02):
support that relationship with that special time every now and
then that nine times out of ten, you'll be doing
a fantastic job and that your gut will tell you
when it's time to do the next thing. But there's
always extra things that we can be doing to support
our kids, just like there's always extra things we can
be doing to be better in all different areas of
our life, and so sometimes do it can be good
(28:23):
to use something like the check in just to check
if there is anything extra that you can be doing,
Or if you have no worries about your kids and
you just want a bit of a baseline touchstone, then
that's great too. That's the great use of the check.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
In directly making it too hard on ourselves. Do you
think we're thinking about it too much?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Oh? It's hard, isn't it? Because we're in an age
where we know more than ever before what works.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
And I'm not convinced that's helping us, right, I know that's.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
The thing, isn't it? And so like, how do you
actually use that? It's impossible to know sometimes, but I
do think if we can try to simplify what we
get into some sort of filter and go, how am
I showing my child I love them? How am I
enjoying being in this relationship? And that's your basis, because
then when things slightly go off, you can go ooof,
(29:11):
something's not quite sitting right there, and then that's when
you can go into the next step of going what
do we know about this issue? How can I approach
this in a way that I know is going to work.
Let's be shown to be effective and will be effective
for my particular kid.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Really enjoyed the conversation, so great for your time. Thanks Jamie,
Thanks so much for having me. Doctor Jamie Northam is
a clinical psychologist and lecturer at the University of Sydney.
We will link to doctor Northam's profile in the show notes,
as well as everything that you need to know about
the check in so that you can find out how
your kiddo is going. The Happy Families podcast is produced
(29:47):
by Justin Rouland from Bridge Media. More information and resources
to make your family happier can be found at happy
families dot com dot a u
In Australia right now, ADHD is the most diagnosed mental
health or neurodevelopmental challenge in our young people under fourteen.
Recent Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that anxiety is
the number one for over fourteens and since COVID. That
data indicates that as many as forty one percent of
our girls and twenty one percent of our boys are
(00:27):
experiencing clinical levels of anxiety. In short, mental health challenges
are rising, resilience is on the way down. Today on
the podcast, my guest is going to help us to
work out how we can improve both access to support
and processes at home to help our kids do better.
(00:48):
Hello and welcome to the Happy Families podcast, Real parenting
solutions every day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. My
name is doctor Justin Coulson and I'm absolutely delighted thrilled
to be joined the University of Sydney by doctor Jamie Northam.
Doctor Jamie Northam is a clinical psychologist at sid DODR.
Northam's clinical and research work focuses on children and adolescents
(01:11):
and parenting. She has a particular interest in what are
known as externalizing disorders. We'll talk about those in a
sec that things like oppositional defiance disorder, conduct disorder, and
youth substance use. Currently, Jamie's working on ways to help
parents and young people notice the early signs of mental
health problems and get access to research based resources. She's
(01:35):
passionate about upskilling the community, better support well being and
helping parents to build new skills and Jamies and mum
to Hazel, a typically rambunctious and busy and delightful two
year old Dr Northam, thank you so much for being
with me on the Happy Families podcast. Really glad to
have you along.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Thank you so much for having me to say, justin so.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I want to start with a hypothesis. I'm going to
get you to tell me, from your data and your
clinically experience, how close I am At the moment. Kids
aren't active, kids are on screens. Tech CEOs have developed
algorithms to addict our kids to those screens. Parents are
busy and stressed and distracted, sometimes in healthy ways, other
times just in their own algorithmic miasma and school pressure
(02:17):
is increasing at a society level. My hypothesis is that
we're just doing it wrong right now. And these are
the things that I see as being central contributors to
our mental health challenges. Where am I right? Where am
I wrong?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It is harder than ever to be a parent of
kids at the moment, and I think the screens, and
I think the environment in which young people are in
at the moment makes that doubly hard. We don't really
know how to manage screens, and we don't know the
long term effects of big time use of screens as well.
And we can kind of make some guesses about ADHD
(02:51):
and the effect that attention and screens is having on
that diagnosis. But it is really difficult. So what did
you get right? It's definitely more difficult than ever to
be a parent and to be a young person. What
did you get wrong? Screens aren't all bad, and screen
time and use doesn't necessarily relate to anxiety and attentional problems.
(03:17):
Later on, what we do know is correlated with those
things sears relationship with parents and relationship with the children
and young people, and what we do to support conversations
around how they're using screens and what they see, and
what we can do to help increase that resilience within
the home.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So Jamie to the point that I made about parents
being busy and stressed and distracted sometimes with their own
screens as well as well as the kids being on theirs.
Let's talk about this issue of building that relationship with parents.
You've been working in this area at the University of
Sydney for some time. What do you see as the
biggest challenges outside of the world of screens to positive
(03:57):
parent child relationships stress?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Absolutely, family stress, we've seen it in the news, the
cost of living crisis, families and parents in particular doing
everything they can to try and support their family in
the best way that they can. So there's absolutely no
shame for parents from us for using screens and relying
on these things at times. But where we would come
from with this is that there's a right way to
(04:23):
use them and there's a way that we can use
them that's more effective. Because at the end of the
day as well, if you need to sit down and
you need to get dinner cooked, or you need to
do your own thing, you've got work to do. That's
a reality for the life that we're facing at the
moment and the times that we're living in. But there's
ways that we can do that I think that help
to increase connection and help to really help with children's
(04:45):
mental health and protect them a little bit.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Okay, let's take screens out of it for just a
sick If you were to give parents maybe one or
two of the best pieces of advice that you've come
across to help them to build a relationship better with
their children, whether the child's two or twelve or twelve
or anywhere in between, what would be the best things
for parents to really connect with their kids.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
The best thing for connection is absolutely scheduled time with
your child doing an activity that's really fun. So when
and the work that I do with kids who are
particularly naughty, one of the first things we do before
we even get to consequences is finding some really sort
of nice ways that we can work in some time
with Now I'm talking like ten minutes here, ten minutes
(05:27):
of sitting down and having a little play, going with
what your child wants to do, whether that's playing lego,
whether that's doing a quick picture. Just quick ten minutes
top up is often enough to save us from having
a family battle when it comes to dinner time or
around other family events.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I love what you've said there. I have a confession.
Sometimes I'm distracted. Sometimes I have really important things to do,
and I forget that the most important things are my kids
and the things that they're interested in. Last night, my wife,
Kylie was away. She wasn't able to be at home
last night, and so I had the kids and look
after dinner. I actually paid one of the kids to
cook dinner because I had too much going on that
(06:03):
while we were waiting for dinner, I finally had a
break about fifteen minutes before it was to be served up.
And what I really, what I really wanted to do,
was lay down on the bed and zone out. I
was happy to read a book, or listen to a podcast,
or maybe watch a fraction of an episode of a
serious that I'm currently binging, sorry, trying to binge in
fifteen minute increments. And my eleven year old daughter walked
(06:25):
into the room and wanted to show me her dragon lair.
She's collecting all of these three D printed dragons. I
got to be honest, Jamie, I thought to myself, of
all the things that I could engage in right now,
checking out eleven year old's cardboard box dragon lair beside
her bed in her bedroom is near the bottom of
(06:45):
the list, and because I'm a parenting expert, I pushed
all that down, got out of bed, or got off
the bed, and walked into the room with her, and
I sat down on the carpet, and do you know what,
for that next ten minutes, as she described to me
how she's she's got the clothes hanging for the dragons.
I didn't know the dragons walk clothes, incidentally, And she's
got all of these different things that she's set up,
(07:06):
the creativity, the time, the effort, the hours she's put in.
It was actually, it was just delightful to see the
joy that she was finding. When you say to invest
that time, even if it's ten minutes, it makes it
just makes a world of difference for them because they
want us to be in their world.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Absolutely it does. I love that example so much because
you were able to find a place within yourself even
though you're busy and stressed and you've had a huge day,
to then reconnect with your daughter. But I also just
want to highlight the fact that not everybody is able
to do that, and that's okay, that's really okay. If
you're not able to do that. There are times when
(07:45):
I'm exhausted as well, and I know that even if
I try to do it, I'm going to be snappy
and I'm not going to be engaged, and that's not
going to be a good use of anyone's time. So
I guess if you're looking for practical, implementable things, if
my daughter comes up to do that and I'm in
a space but I'm not able to do that, I
will say, Wow, thank you so much for coming to
(08:06):
show me this. I'm so excited to see this, but
mummy needs ten minutes and then I'm going to come
and I want you to show me everything about this
dragon's lair, because then you're also modeling that it's okay
to have time to yourself and that there are times
when you need a moment, And so you're modeling to
kids how to manage emotions, how to set expectations, but
(08:27):
that that connection and that relationship is still very important
to you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I just wanted to share that story so I could
virtue signal a little bit and show how awesome I.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Amazon's dad's well nailing it. That's right.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Let's get back to the serious conversation about mental health.
This concept of connecting belonging, feeling like you're mad at
your parents, getting time and attention in spite of the business,
the stress, the distraction, the screens, the school pressures, and
so on. What are the long term mental health implications
when kids can't get that connection.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
It's really tricky to monitor exactly what causes mental health
problems and what makes them line. But we do know
that at least half of all child mental health problems
emerge before twelve, and that they become life course persistent,
which means that they.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
When I hear that, yeah, that's right, like they keep
for a long time, I'm cutting you off because because
that mental health challenges sort of present or show up
before the age of twelve and they become life long
That's one of those statements that we hear a lot.
Can you really unpack that and describe precisely what we're
supposed to take from that? What does it mean specifically?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, I raised this also in just in terms of connection,
because we need to be able to notice when things
have gone off with our kids. So what does it
mean specifically? It means that when we think about mental
health problems, we think about difficulties in a specific area
for kids, the things that I'm most interested in and
worried about with kids' mental health. Are they making friends,
(09:54):
Are they feeling confident and happy to engage in school?
Are they following most the direction so that there's not
lots of stress at home with parents as well. And
if they're able to do that, that means that we
know they can engage in school well, and they can learn,
they can make new friends, and they can learn all
the social things they need to do at different levels.
But if there are fears and worries that are getting
(10:16):
in the way of making friends, of being at school,
or learning with their peers, or listening to their parents
and following those instructions, then we know that they're not
going to meet a lot of the needs that they
need to meet and the milestones. If they don't meet
those milestones, then it's a constant catching up process that
starts and that happens. So what we and so that
(10:38):
what that looks like is ow you have a child
who might be in kindergarten and really struggles following directions
with their teacher. They don't know how to share with
their peers very well, so they don't have very many
friends and their self confidence goes down and that has
these big knock on effects, and so then as clinicians
(11:00):
and as a psychologist, it's about getting in as early
as we can so that those long term knock on
effects don't keep building up and that kids then don't
become disadvantaged in different ways.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Early intervention would also help to avoid the need for
a diagnosis. Would that be a fair statement.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Absolutely so. When we're thinking about early intervention, I like
to think about what is it that's currently getting in
the way for kids. So is it that there's a
big emotional meltdown that it's happening all the time that's
stopping them from learning in school, In which case we
might do some early intervention in emotion regulation skills, which
can be done with parents and with teachers. If there's
(11:41):
something to do with being friendly and social with others,
we might help them to learn sharing skills and really
model that, and we can do these things first before
things continue to escalate and become mental health disorders.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Jamie, there's so much advice out there at the moment.
Instagram and TikTok are just full of information that frankly,
I think is freaking everyone out. Parents are more on edge,
more nervous, more worried, more anxious about their children and
their mental health than perhaps at any other time. To
what extent is that impacting the current state of mental
(12:23):
health or mental illness in children? And I guess, by extension,
how much do you see parental anxiety about children having
emotions and being anxious contributing to the fact that the
children are having emotions and being anxious.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Oh, such an interesting question and interesting phenomenon. And as
a parent of a two year old, I find myself,
even though I'm an expert, questioning myself every day about
the impact of things or if I'm doing things right.
So it's a bit of a big question to answer.
So I'll just start with the first thing that popped
into my mind, which was around the advice and around
(12:58):
the amount of content that currently exists from a parenting perspective.
I know, even when my daughter was a baby, I
felt like I was learning parenting from Instagram, and a
lot of the stuff that I would get fed up
would be conflicting information. I would hear something from one
specialist something from a different specialist, And I feel like
(13:18):
that's a really common experience before social media really took
off just from different nurses and things when you're learning
for breastfeed and all that kind of thing. Beau's not
one way works perfectly for everybody. But in the current
day and age, we get this messaging constantly about how
to best parent your child, how to best protect them
from anxiety, how to best protect from social media influences,
(13:40):
and different different things that are coming up on those platforms,
and it's really really difficult to actually know what to
do and to question that. So if I could offer
any practical advice about that, it's really about asking yourself
what is happening for my child at the moment, and
of the signs that things might not be going well,
(14:02):
and taking it back to really basic principles. So in
psychology we always speak about the three d's when we're
thinking about needing to intervene with kids, and those are distress, dysfunction,
and devians. So distress some behavior is worrying you or
(14:22):
worrying your child, that's a perfect time to get help
because that's one thing that's really important. Dysfunction, that's the
things that I like to think about, is impacting learning
or impacting a really happy life. So if you can't
make friends. If you can't form those relationships, that's having
a bit of dysfunction, So that's probably worth looking at.
And then debans is the last one, which sounds a
(14:44):
little bit scary when you say, like like that, But
what devians refers to is really, is my child within
the realms of what's considered normal at this age and
are they sort of meeting those milestones that would be
expected of them, And if they're not, again, that's probably
another tick that you know that it's time to seek
out a little bit of extra support.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Devins does sound a little alarming. I tend to use
the word deviation instead. Deviation just softens it that little
bit for a parent who's already so anxious. But I
think that's going to be so valuable and so useful
for parents who are listening. Let's extend that then and
highlight how do you know that you're accessing support that's
(15:24):
evidence based, Because I mean, the reality is that there
are really well credentialed, really well intentioned, really smart experts.
I'm not talking about and I don't say this in
a disparaging way. It's just the easiest descriptor instamums or
TikTok influencers, well intentioned and often sharing really great information.
(15:45):
As somebody with a doctorate in psychology myself, sometimes I
look at these social media people and go, Dan, that's good.
I'm stealing that, Like the evidence is right there for it.
That's brilliant. I think it's amazing. And other times they
say such rubbish. But I want to I want to
ignore that for a minute. I want to talk about
There's me, and I'm saying, well, let me pick one
that you know, Professor Mark Dads. You work with Mark,
(16:09):
and you obviously know me and the work that I do.
And he and I disagree profoundly on one particular thing,
which is the use of time out. I mean, he's
all for it because he's from the Triple P Matthew
Sanders University of Queensland School, and I'm from a self
determination theory perspective, which says, we want to minimize controlling techniques,
and there are much better ways that we can do
(16:30):
this without crippling relationships or without making kids experience these
punitive outcomes. We can actually do it better. So Mark
is highly credible. He's a really smart guy. He's done,
he's made an enormous contribution with the world in his
parenting research, as has someone like Matt Sanders. And yet
somebody like me who's relying on incredible experts who have
(16:51):
written books like voluminousts the most published scientific research is
on the planet. Their research is deep and meaningful and
useful as well. So when a parent comes across someone
like me saying don't use time out and then the
next thing in their algorithm serves up Mark or Matt
or somebody like that saying no, no, no, timeout is really
(17:13):
really valuable and you need it, what are they supposed
to do? Because both of us are coming from an
evidence based situation. How do you guide parents in that situation?
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, so this is one that comes up all the time,
As I imagine you would know when you've got a
child who's behaving poorly and you want to help them
to learn the new skill to behave, Well, how do
we do that best? And how do we figure out
the evidence behind what's going to work? So you did
(17:46):
a beautiful job that I'm explaining that there is a
huge amount of evidence behind time out and behind time
out not being harmful and being really helpful at times.
But what I like to think of it too, as
I love metaphors when I'm working with families in particular,
is that you can have a child who have you
had the dandelion orchard metaphor before I have?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
But please share it.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah, So the or good metaphor is that you've got
different types of kids, and you can think of kids
as different types of flowers. The dandelion flower or a
child is the sort of child who'll grow anywhere. They're
really resilient, they're robust, they need really minimal conditions to
grow into a healthy, functioning human being who's pretty happy.
(18:28):
Then we get these children sometimes who refer to as orchids,
and they're very sensitive to environment, and they need very
particular parenting input and very particular environments to grow. And
when they grow, my goodness, they are spectacular. And I
like to think about the parenting choices we make about
discipline and learning skills and all those things as really
(18:53):
individual to families and really individual to kids. What will
work well for one kid might not necessarily work well
for the other kid, even if both things are evidence based.
So what we need to do when considering which treatment
to go with or which fills to implement if you're
thinking about advice that you receive on Instagram or TikTok,
it's one, are there studies behind this that show that
(19:16):
it works and that it doesn't do harm. Two, what
I think is really important are there clear guidelines and
how to actually do it? Because a lot of the
time instrums will tell a nice thing and you go,
that sounds cool, but I don't actually know how to
do that. Then, so you want to see the actual
steps involved so you don't screw it up to put
it really bluntly. And then lastly you're going to go
(19:37):
is this right for me? And is this the right
fit for my child? So, as you've mentioned, I work
with Mark Dads who is very big on time out,
and it does work very well for a lot of kids,
but it doesn't work very well for all kids. And
so even when I'm working in the clinic, it's very
much a conversation about what are your needs, what can
(19:57):
we do to meet those needs, and what's going to
work for your family? And if you're assessing evidence based care,
our evidence based skills, it's that lens of has there
been worked onne to show this is true? How do
I do it? And does this fit my philosophy and
does it fit how my child is Jamie?
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Parenting is complex, and it also highlights, I think the
challenge that we have with psychology. Generally, we know what
works well on average, but very few people are actually average.
If anybody right, we're all, we're all that a little
bit different. Let's bring it back to a mental health
discussion again, because that's really the central area that we
need to focus on for our conversation. So far, you've
(20:37):
highlighted that if we see a child who is distressed, dysfunctional,
or deviating from what we see happening on average for
their age group, for their developmental stage, we should start
to say, Okay, there is cause for some concern here.
I have a couple of tricky questions to follow that up.
First off, how do they get help? And secondly, what
(21:01):
do they do when help is really hard to find
because of the current challenges in our medical and psychological system.
If they're dealing with really big challenges that need help
sooner than the appointments will allow.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yeah, it's one of those impossible problems that we're trying
really hard to fix. At the moment. You raise several issues.
So the first one through the around barriers to getting
access to care. So in order to get children the
care that they need, you need parents to recognize that
there are issues that are going on that need more support,
and then you need for them to be able to
know where to go to actually access that support. And
(21:40):
then you need to have the money usually to see
a specialist or to see a psychologist, and you need
to have that reduced waging time to get in. So
it's a really tricky context at the moment, especially with
parental anxiety really high at the moment about looking after
their kids the best they can. There's a lot of
people trying to access services and there are really long
wait lists at the moment. So what we're really trying
(22:01):
to do at the moment is find ways that we
can help families to recognize when there are signs that
things aren't going quite right, and then to give them
some guidance on typical milestones like when the kids are
meeting them are not and also how their children are
going on a range of different areas in terms of wellbeing.
And then we're providing links to services that are available
(22:25):
online and that are free, so these things might be
self directed programs that they can do themselves, which can
be a bit of a holdover until getting in to
see somebody face to face. And our hope is that
a lot of the time that doing these free, instantly
accessible programs is actually going to decrease the amount of
need that is put on the mental health service and system,
(22:48):
so that those kids who do need to get that
support really fast can get it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
So now I'm on the edge of my seat because
I'm thinking myself, I don't want to wait two years
to get a diagnosis sort of find out what's really
going on, but some people or literally waiting one to
even two and a half years was one that I
heard the other day from somebody who just had to
get some help. You're suggesting that you're working on some
things to potentially provide the early intervention which may, if
not alleviate the problem entirely, at least reduce the challenges
(23:16):
that parents are facing. Can you tell me a bit
about that. What are you doing specifically to alleviate the concern,
the anxiety, the stress that parents are facing when it
comes to the they're worries about their kids and their
mental health challenges.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah, so, at the moment, we've developed a talk called
the Growing Minds check In, and the Growing Minds check
In is a website that you can log onto. It's
for parents of children zero to seventeen years of age,
so a very broad range of age groups for parents,
and it takes on average six minutes to do. And
this check in what it does is we combine subjective concerns,
(23:51):
so just general issues that parents have, and we have
what we call an objective measure. And an objective measure
is a population based score that can tell you how
your child is functioning overall in terms of mental health
and wellbeing and also in terms of anxiety, conduct issues,
and attention. And that compares your child's score to other
(24:13):
kids their age, so you can get a bit of
an idea whether what areas they might be struggling in
and then we give recommended resources based on those outcomes
for what's available online at the moment. So the goal
is to really upskill parents that you know what's happening
with their child a little bit more, but they also
know where they can go to online to get that
(24:35):
really early intervention.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
I love it. I'm going to summarize that because there
were several things that you said that I think are
really important in case somebody was listening while they're dealing
with a child or I don't know, doing other stuff.
Six minutes, you do this questionnaire based on what your
experience is, and then your results are compared with population
level data so that you can see whether your child
(24:58):
is or is not deviating, or the levels of distress
or whatever. A different it's for anyone with kids between
zero and seventeen. So we're talking about if you're a
parent and you're worried about your child, there's information here
that's going to be useful. And once the information has
been collected through the questionnaire, your system provides directions for
(25:22):
where to go for the appropriate level of help and
how to get that.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
That's exactly right. And the other thing that we do,
which I think is really fantastic, is we give the
feedback summary reform. And this feedback summary reform can be
used to take to your GP, it can be used
to take to other psychologists or pediatricians, and it gives
a snapshot of how things were at that moment. And
in the study that we're currently running, where it's a
study because what we're trying to do is get as
(25:48):
input as we possibly can before we just put the
tool out into the world and we're partnered with Raising
Children's Network to put this tool out nationally into the
world once it's done. So we're really really seeking parents
to help us to test this at the moment and
to give us feedback on what works and how we
can make it better, because this tool is really for parents,
(26:10):
and it's to encourage people to think about wellbeing and
what we can do every day to look after our kids.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
I'm hearing you say it, and part of me is thinking,
why is it only just happening in twenty twenty five,
Like this seems like it's so obvious that somebody should
have done this already. All right, So if parents want
to check up on their kids and I want to
be able to access this six minute questionnaire and obviously
it sounds like this is for science, so it will
support the work that you're doing as well. Where do
they go and how do they do this? How do
(26:37):
they find out how their kids are going?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, so you can sign up to be part of
the study, which is the Growing Minds check In Study
and the website all one word Growing Minds check In
AU and I'll spell it out to it's g rwng
MNDS ch e ck I N dot AU.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
So growing minds check in dot au. We'll link to
that in the show notes six minute questionnaire, and then
a comparison of your child against what's going on for
the rest of the population and.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Links to available resources that are online and freely available.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah, probably should have mentioned that as well.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
That was my fault.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
That's really important for anyone who wants help, Jamie. I
think this has been a really important conversation. I reckon
so many parents will have taken so much from it.
Is there anything that you would like to share that
we haven't discussed just in the last sort of twenty
five thirty minutes or so.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
I just really want to reiterate how difficult it is
to parent kids at the moment, and how many stresses
there are out there and competing ideas and demands, and
how hard it is to know what the right thing
to do is. But that if you can really go
back down to basics and think about those three d is,
think about how your child is, what you're doing to
(28:02):
support that relationship with that special time every now and
then that nine times out of ten, you'll be doing
a fantastic job and that your gut will tell you
when it's time to do the next thing. But there's
always extra things that we can be doing to support
our kids, just like there's always extra things we can
be doing to be better in all different areas of
our life, and so sometimes do it can be good
(28:23):
to use something like the check in just to check
if there is anything extra that you can be doing,
Or if you have no worries about your kids and
you just want a bit of a baseline touchstone, then
that's great too. That's the great use of the check.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
In directly making it too hard on ourselves. Do you
think we're thinking about it too much?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Oh? It's hard, isn't it? Because we're in an age
where we know more than ever before what works.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
And I'm not convinced that's helping us, right, I know that's.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
The thing, isn't it? And so like, how do you
actually use that? It's impossible to know sometimes, but I
do think if we can try to simplify what we
get into some sort of filter and go, how am
I showing my child I love them? How am I
enjoying being in this relationship? And that's your basis, because
then when things slightly go off, you can go ooof,
(29:11):
something's not quite sitting right there, and then that's when
you can go into the next step of going what
do we know about this issue? How can I approach
this in a way that I know is going to work.
Let's be shown to be effective and will be effective
for my particular kid.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Really enjoyed the conversation, so great for your time. Thanks Jamie,
Thanks so much for having me. Doctor Jamie Northam is
a clinical psychologist and lecturer at the University of Sydney.
We will link to doctor Northam's profile in the show notes,
as well as everything that you need to know about
the check in so that you can find out how
your kiddo is going. The Happy Families podcast is produced
(29:47):
by Justin Rouland from Bridge Media. More information and resources
to make your family happier can be found at happy
families dot com dot a u
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