Do our genes determine who we are? Does the environment have an independent impact on our development, or are so-called environmental effects actually reflective of the ways particular genes cause us to interact with the environment? Do parents and family ‘matter’ in child...
parenting
Autumn 2018, and American psychologist and geneticist Robert Plomin’s new book Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are exploded onto the scene, to headlines of '...
Many parents will commiserate over the daily struggle to get their children to sit down and focus on homework. With increasing pressure to participate in extracurricular sports and clubs, and with the widespread availability of video, computer and tablet games – each more...
At times throughout my career, I have found it difficult to empathise with addicts. In my current post working with looked after children, many of whom come from homes ravaged by addiction, it can be hard to understand how someone can put a substance before the needs of their...
In January 2014 my ‘New voices’ article was published in The Psychologist. ‘Time to notice; time to intervene’ considered the issue of...
I am writing with regard to the recent article (‘Honey, I shrunk the kids’, October 2016) reflecting conversations with the children of psychologists and how psychologists parent their...
Coincidentally, I heard about this book the very day we published my article with Aidan Horner, ‘Honey, I shrunk the kids’. That piece was framed around the same central question Cohen...
David Farrington has almost 800 published works, and he received the Stockholm Prize in Criminology (criminology’s Nobel Prize) in 2013. He was centrally involved in founding the British Psychological Society’s Division of Forensic Psychology in the 1970s, chaired that...
Most psychologists become wearily resigned to others’ perceptions of them. When we tell people our profession at parties, we’re not surprised if the response is ‘Ah, are you analysing me then?’ And if we tell friends that we are to become a parent, we may face jokey...
1. That first smile and laugh are just around the corner!
Babies start smiling and laughing much earlier than parents expect – smiles arrive in the first month or two, while laughter begins at two to five months. And you don’t need to be a comedian to...