Dr. Saoirse Mac Cárthaigh, Educational & Child Psychologist

Dr. Saoirse Mac Cárthaigh, Educational & Child Psychologist Educational and child psychologist specialising in autism diagnostic assessments.

There's real research behind where anxiety lives in the body.In a study of 701 people, researchers asked participants to...
23/08/2026

There's real research behind where anxiety lives in the body.

In a study of 701 people, researchers asked participants to colour where they felt each emotion increase or decrease. Anxiety had a genuine, repeatable map: the chest was the strongest hotspot, tightness, pressure, a racing heart. The throat can carry a real tight, hard-to-swallow sensation (globus sensation, a properly documented symptom), and the stomach's "butterflies" are an actual gut-brain response, not just a figure of speech. None of it is random, the fight-or-flight response pulls blood toward muscles and away from digestion, which is exactly why these are the areas that react.

One genuinely surprising finding from the same research: anxiety's bodily map clustered most closely with shame's, not fear's. Two very different feelings, a similar physical signature.

Worth knowing for parents: children are far more likely to say "my tummy hurts" than "I feel anxious." Repeated, unexplained physical complaints are often how anxiety actually shows up. Rule out a medical cause first, then gently ask what's on their mind too.

The body often says it before the words do.

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"On time" doesn't mean what most milestone charts imply.Sitting alone: 3.8 to 9.2 months. Crawling: 5.2 to 13.5 months, ...
22/08/2026

"On time" doesn't mean what most milestone charts imply.

Sitting alone: 3.8 to 9.2 months. Crawling: 5.2 to 13.5 months, one of the widest windows of all, and some babies skip it entirely without it meaning anything. Walking alone: 8.2 to 17.6 months, more than double, not a few weeks either side.

Every single one of these ranges covers the full healthy spread, not a narrow target date. The range only gets wider as the skill gets harder, not narrower.

"On time" was never a single date. It was always a window.

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"Hurry up" doesn't work the way we think it does.A young child's sense of time takes years to develop — "ten minutes" do...
21/08/2026

"Hurry up" doesn't work the way we think it does.

A young child's sense of time takes years to develop — "ten minutes" doesn't mean much yet, so the phrase is really asking for a skill they don't have. Swapping the vague pressure for something concrete tends to work better: "what's the next thing?" instead of a general command, a timer they can watch instead of a number, a genuine choice ("shoes or coat first?") instead of an instruction, and a warning before the transition rather than in the middle of it.

None of this is about being softer. It's about giving a young brain something it can actually use.

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Most people have heard of "attachment styles" without knowing what the actual research behind them looks like.The four c...
20/08/2026

Most people have heard of "attachment styles" without knowing what the actual research behind them looks like.

The four categories come from a specific 20-minute lab procedure: a caregiver and infant are observed through a scripted sequence of separations and reunions. Secure children get upset when the caregiver leaves but settle quickly on return, around two in three fall into this group. Avoidant children show little visible reaction either way, though heart-rate studies suggest the stress is there, just hidden. Anxious children can't easily be soothed, seeming to seek contact and resist it at once. Disorganised children show contradictory behaviour, sometimes looking afraid of the very person meant to be their safe base, this category was only added years after the original three.

Two things worth knowing that rarely make it into the popular version: attachment describes a relationship, not a fixed trait, a child can be securely attached to one parent and less securely to another. And a major cross-cultural review found more variation within countries than between them, what looks "avoidant" in one culture can reflect valued independence in another.

This can also change. Researchers call it earned security, a starting point, not a fixed outcome.

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19/08/2026

The first year of talking looks nothing like the second.

At 12 months, most children have just a handful of words, and each one can carry a whole sentence's worth of meaning. What they understand runs well ahead of what they can say, so a quiet toddler isn't necessarily a toddler who doesn't know. By 18 to 24 months, words start pairing up ("more juice," "mummy go"), and children can begin picking up a brand new word from a single hearing, a skill researchers call fast mapping.

The range in how fast this happens is genuinely wide. Some toddlers have 50 words by 18 months, others closer to 200, and both can be completely typical.

What actually helps isn't complicated: narrating what you're doing out loud, following what they're already looking at, and expanding on what they say instead of just correcting it.

A slow start at one is no sign of what's coming by two and a half.

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Skydivers have a lot to teach us about how fear actually works.Ask an experienced jumper how scared they feel, and the a...
18/08/2026

Skydivers have a lot to teach us about how fear actually works.

Ask an experienced jumper how scared they feel, and the answer drops sharply, often within just a handful of jumps. Interestingly, the body doesn't always keep pace with the mind. And the shift with experience isn't really about feeling less: fear and excitement share the same physical signature, racing heart, quick breath. What tends to change is the label attached to them.

It's not adrenaline they're chasing, either. A 2025 study found thrill-seeking and overcoming fear matter most to beginners, and fade the longer someone stays in the sport. What replaces it is skill, flow, and belonging to people who respect the same risk.

Strip it back, and what skydivers are doing is exposure therapy: facing a manageable version of a fear, again and again, until the system stops treating it as an emergency. The same principle sits behind stress inoculation training, used clinically for anxiety and PTSD. It won't cure a fear of public speaking on its own, but the confidence it builds usually carries over.

Children learn this exact same way. Not by feeling less afraid first, but through small, repeated doses of a manageable fear, and discovering that a racing heart doesn't always mean something's wrong.

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16/08/2026

Homework battles are near-universal — but the fight you're having might not be the one that actually matters.

For younger children, more homework time barely correlates with achievement at all (Cooper et al., 2006). Hovering and correcting every answer is linked to more anxiety and perfectionism, not better grades — while letting them choose the order, location, or format tends to help more than any amount of control (Grolnick & Pomerantz, 2009). Your tone during homework help predicts outcomes more reliably than the quality of the help itself. And no strategy works if a child is dysregulated — calm the state before you start the work, not after.

One more thing worth knowing: severe, near-daily struggle that doesn't track with effort or motivation can point to an underlying learning difficulty rather than a behaviour problem — worth a proper assessment, not indefinite strategy.

This isn't about winning the nightly fight. It's about picking better ones.

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Everyone's seen this pyramid. Maslow never drew it.The iconic image appeared in 1960, in a business journal, drawn by a ...
13/08/2026

Everyone's seen this pyramid. Maslow never drew it.

The iconic image appeared in 1960, in a business journal, drawn by a management consultant — 17 years after Maslow's original 1943 paper. He lived another decade and never corrected it. Two more things got lost along the way: Maslow never meant the levels as an all-or-nothing staircase — his own example was someone being 80% satisfied on physiological needs, 60% on love, and 10% on self-actualisation, all at once. And late in his life, he added a sixth level above self-actualisation — self-transcendence — that never made it into the popular version at all.

What this actually means in a classroom: a hungry or tired child can't concentrate, whatever the lesson plan says. Kids take academic risks only once they feel they belong and are basically good at it. And curiosity shows up once the rest is in place — it isn't something you can push a child into.

A theory, not a staircase. Meet the whole child, not just the lesson.

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