From the field

My Smart Teen Is Getting Terrible Grades

Are They Lazy or Is Something Else Going On?

Jake was fourteen when his mum first brought him to see me. Guitar since he was six. His teacher said he had perfect pitch. At school, he hadn't handed in a single assignment that term. She thought he was lazy. He wasn't.

Why Has My Teenager Lost All Motivation?

What Schools Don't Teach About Drive

I was at the beach the other day watching a surf school wrap up. A boy, maybe 10 years old, was buzzing. He'd done so well that the instructor told him next term he could help teach the other kids. Then his mum said four words that changed everything.

Why Can't My Smart Child Focus in Class?

The Developmental Gap Schools Miss

I had an eight-year-old referred to me with an ADHD label. He couldn't sit still - constantly squirming, getting up, fiddling with things. His parents and teachers assumed focus was the problem. What I noticed was something different.

Why Behaviour Charts, Rewards and Consequences Stop Working

The Development Missing From Every Parenting Book

A mum had been incredibly consistent with a sticker chart for four months. Her son's behaviour had visibly improved. Then they went on a camping trip and she forgot the chart. He was worse than he'd ever been. That's not a child failing.

They Seemed to Be Doing OK, And Then…

There's a particular kind of child I recognise immediately. They work the classroom, their reports say "working to expected level," and nobody worries about them. I was that child. It works, right up until it doesn't.

Why Motivation Fails

What Creates Momentum

A nine-year-old his teacher called unmotivated spent hours at home building complex LEGO machines with gears and counterbalance. He had focus, patience, a vocabulary for it. So what was really going on at school?

Your Child Doesn't Need More

They Need Better Roots

A mother brought me a list: reading support, occupational therapy, a tutor, an app, a reward chart. Her daughter was exhausted. So was she. I asked one question: if you took everything away, what would be left?

The Moment You Stop Looping

And Start Living

A woman described it as walking on a treadmill she couldn't turn off. A good life, but every few months the same patterns came back. "I keep thinking I've dealt with it. And then it just comes back." I've heard that so many times.

The Rhythm You're Ignoring

How It's Running Your Life

A father nearly fell off his chair when I told him his relationship with his thirteen-year-old was a rhythm problem. He'd tried everything. "It's not him," I said. "And it's not you. You're both out of sync." He thought I was being metaphorical.

Why You Feel Disconnected From Your Son

A Simple Next Step

He's at the kitchen table when you come home. Headphones on. You ask about his day. "Fine." You run out of runway and leave the room. A lot of fathers go through this. Most of them don't say it out loud.

Why Are Kids So Unmotivated?

A few years ago a coach stopped me mid-sentence and said: "You've turned this into a job." She was right. And I thought: this is exactly what we do to children. Motivation doesn't disappear. It gets managed out.

Structure, Model, Formula

Why Most Educational Approaches Eventually Fail

I've watched a lot of great ideas fall down. Not because they were bad ideas. Because they were turned into formulas. A formula works until conditions change. A structure holds.

I'd Love To But…

I hear these words a lot. "I'd love to do things differently, but…" The "but" is doing a lot of work. And when I slow down and ask what specifically they're afraid of, it's almost always one of two things.

The Education You Were Looking For

He ran a successful company and chose the schools carefully. His eldest was doing fine. "Fine" was the word he used. But she'd been something else at seven. "What happened?" he asked. I said: nothing happened, and that's the problem.

Focus Must Be Learned But Can't Be Taught

So What Can You Do?

A ten-year-old couldn't focus in class. But she could spend three hours on her own with Lego and not look up. I said: that's not a focus problem. That's a mismatch problem.

How to Raise Amazing Humans

With Ease

My mother was an electronics engineer. She told me once that the clean solution was almost always to throw out the code that wasn't working and start again. "Patches breed patches," she said. I've thought about that a lot in relation to parenting.

The Law of Rhythm

What Nature Already Knows About Learning

There's a slide I've shown in workshops that makes parents go quiet. It charts the trajectory of a child pushed academically early. Strong performance, then Year 3. A wobble. Then Year 7. A bigger one. Nothing went wrong. The pendulum swung.

Schooling or Education?

They're Not the Same Thing

I was excellent at school. I want to be clear about what that means. I was excellent at reading what the system wanted and delivering it. For a long time I confused that with being educated. It took me most of my twenties to discover the difference.

Why? The Most Important Question You'll Ever Ask

A teacher marked a student's work wrong. The student asked why. The teacher said: "You were supposed to choose a technology that exists." The student, thirteen years old, said: "AI does exist." Both of them were in the wrong conversation.

Education from Scratch

You land on Earth. You're new here. In the middle of a weekday you notice something: there are very few children. You ask someone why this is how it works. They say: that's just how education works. You ask: is it working? There's a pause.

The Amazing Science of Toddlerhood

Why We Shouldn't Underestimate Early Learning

A toddler learning to walk is running more experiments per hour than most adults run in a month. No instruction. No schedule. No fear of failure. If we recognised what they were actually doing, we'd interfere considerably less.