Babies to 'teach' pupils empathy in Cardiff classrooms

The programme substantially raises the likelihood of children helping each other and sharing, according to research

Babies are set to be brought into primary schools in Cardiff to help improve pupils' empathy levels and help reduce any bullying and aggression.

The scheme, pioneered in Canada, encourages children to interact in a nurturing manner after observing a parent and baby in the classroom.

Reports suggest children who have taken part are more likely to help others, share, and accept peers as they are.

The programme is being run by the charity Action for Children (AfC).

Around 2,000 school children will take part in Roots of Empathy, as the scheme is known, which will see a local parent and young baby visit their school nine times over the course of a school year.

The sessions will be led by AfC staff trained in the techniques of the programme.

Facebook 'may soon allow' under-13s to join the site

Facebook may soon allow children younger than 13 years old to access the site under parental supervision, reports say.

The social networking giant is developing technology to link children's accounts to those of their parents, says the Wall Street Journal.

The publication also claims parents could be allowed to control whom their children add as friends.

At the moment, Facebook bans under-13s from joining the site.

The social network currently has more than 900 million users, and opening it up to under-13s could significantly boost the numbers.

Shock report: cuts to have a 'catastrophic' effect on child poverty

 The UK has a higher percentage of children in poverty than 21 of 35 economically advanced countries surveyed

 

The Government's spending cuts will have a "catastrophic" effect on British children, a UN agency has warned, endangering their future health, education and employment.

 

Labour's success in cutting the number of children growing up in poverty could be reversed, according to Unicef. Britain did better than many other rich countries in protecting children from deprivation after the financial crisis erupted in 2008, Unicef said in its annual "report card" on 35 developed nations. But it warned that the Coalition's cuts to tax credits and freeze on child benefit will reverse this progress.

Age Discrimination Endangers Human Rights for Young and Old Alike

 By Jan Hunt

Here is a riddle: "I don't have much hair, I don't have all my teeth, I have trouble walking, I need help dressing myself, I am often misunderstood, and I sometimes feel unwanted. Who am I?"

If you guessed "a toddler", you are correct. If you guessed "an elderly person", right again. These two groups have much in common, but there is one important difference. The frail elderly - and healthy seniors - have spokespersons to help make their needs known. Toddlers have no such help; when they try in the only ways they can to let us know their human rights are being violated, they are seldom taken seriously; instead they are often ridiculed or even punished.

Children are Born Innocent

by Jan Hunt

 What do you see when you look into the eyes of a newborn?

When I first looked into the eyes of my son, I saw trustfulness, curiosity and joyfulness. I saw no deviousness, meanness or selfishness. In that instant it became clear to me that if he ever acted in a devious, mean, or selfish way, his behavior would have been created by circumstances, not by him. In that instant, I knew what a great responsibility I had to honor and protect his innocence and joy in life.

Children are born innocent. They want only to be loved, to learn, and to contribute. Those parents who are not able to appreciate this truth miss what should be the most precious moment of their life. They cannot trust their child - they instead suspect him of being somehow flawed and requiring constant correction. The emphasis is on fixing something, not on enjoying and learning about this new person. The focus, from that point on, is on the child's behavior, not on the parent-child connection.

10 Insights to Understanding Narcissistic Personality Disorder

By Christine Louis de Canonville 

Narcissistic behaviour is prevalent in our culture to-day, actually it is reaching epidemic proportions (affecting both males and females), yet not many therapists (Psychotherapists, Counsellors, Coaches, and Supervisors) would be quick to recognise it in the therapy room when clients present with what is now termed as Narcissistic Victim Syndrome (NVS).  In order to be able to work effectively with narcissistic victim abuse, it is vital that the therapist first understands what narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is, what causes it, and what the insidious behaviours looks like. Failing to understand the highly complex narcissistic behaviour is to also fail to understand the psychological hell that your client has been through. Once understood, however, you will have the clarity of vision to be able to shine a light on the dysfunctional narcissistic behaviour that has baffled and confounded your client for so long. Narcissistic behaviour is so insidious that it keeps the victim living in a nightmarish hell where they are always walking on eggshells to the point that it impairs their ability to be able to function. In order to avoid clumsy repetition of “he/she” and “his/her” in this article, I will use the pronoun “he” when describing NPD.
  
The following insights are useful for beginning to understand narcissistic behaviour:-

Children in care 'risk new abuse on return home'

NSPCC calls for much stricter assessment of children's needs and parents' problems

 Children’s trust in adults can be broken for ever if they are removed from care and suffer more abuse, claims the NSPCC.

 Almost half of abused or neglected children who return home from care suffer further harm, the NSPCC is warning.

The charity claims that many returned children are finding their trust in adults shattered by their experiences, as documented in its report Returning Home From Care, published on Monday. Last year, more than 90,000 children were in care in England, the majority as a result of abuse or neglect. But some 10,000 returned home, compared with just 3,050 who were adopted.

Jeremy Deller's inflatable Stonehenge gives Glasgow's Children a bounce

2012 Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art
By  Jeremy Deller 'Sacrilege'

The Turner prize winner's bouncy new interactive artwork, Sacrilege, kicks off the Glasgow international festival of visual art

"It's a bit weird and random," says Michael Mclaughlan, 50, bopping gently up and down in the middle of the giant inflatable Stonehenge that has sprung up on Glasgow Green. "They should get Alex Salmond down here to bounce about."

Around him, children and adults are discarding their shoes and climbing tentatively on to the grandest of bouncy castles, a large-scale interactive work by the Turner prize winner Jeremy Deller. Titled Sacrilege, it's Deller's first major public project in Scotland and a centrepiece of the Glasgow international festival of visual art which launched on Friday.