I write the books I would have liked to read. My earlier books Changing Our Minds and A Different Way to Learn reflect the years I spent home educating my children, when I felt that there was little which reflected our educational experience. I saw how differently they learnt through not going to school, and how little there was available which looked at the process of learning outside school from a developmental psychology perspective.
I then took a side step into academia and mental health for my next book Psychology of Mental Health. This is an undergraduate text book and encourages students to take a step back from the dominant paradigms of mental health and think critically.
Most recently, When the Naughty Step Makes Things Worse (with Eliza Fricker) addresses something which had bothered me for a while – what happens when conventional parenting strategies result in parent and child being locked into battles? Often parents are told to just keep trying, and this book offers something different.
Parents would often ask me whether there was anything for their teenagers when they had stopped going to school which didn’t assume that going back to school was the only answer. I couldn’t find anything, and so Eliza Fricker and I wrote one. The Teenager’s Guide to Burnout is an illustrated guide for teens on finding their way back to the life they want to lead.
A down-to-earth illustrated guide for parents of children who just haven't read the parenting books.
Some children just haven't read the parenting books. The harder you try, the worse it gets. There's a hidden contract at the heart of parenting. It's the idea that if parents just get it right, their children can be made to do what they want. Manuals explain how to make it very clear to your children what you want them to do - and how to respond when they don't cooperate.
A clear and engaging introduction to the psychology of mental health, which takes account of a range of perspectives and illustrates how psychologists work in the field today. Psychology of Mental Health will place our current understanding of mental health in context, both historically and culturally. It will discuss various models for understanding mental health, research on causes of mental health problems, and will introduce recent psychology-led alternatives to diagnosis.
If you are a parent worrying whether self-directed education will work for your child, because you have been told that they have special needs which can only be met in the school system - think again. Neurodivergent children experience and interact with the world differently to many of their peers. Standard educational systems often fail to adapt to their unique strengths and ways of learning. School, and even the act of learning, can become a source of great anxiety and trauma. Self-directed education offers an alternative to traditional schools that can help neurodivergent children develop at their own pace and thrive.
Children are born full of curiosity, eager to participate in the world. They learn as they live, with enthusiasm and joy. Then we send them to school. We stop them from playing and actively exploring their interests, telling them it's more important to sit still and listen. The result is that for many children, their motivation to learn drops dramatically. The joy of the early years is replaced with apathy and anxiety.