Dr. Saoirse Mac Cárthaigh, Educational & Child Psychologist

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

Empathy doesn't arrive all at once. It builds in stages, and it starts earlier than most people expect.Newborns cry more...
27/08/2026

Empathy doesn't arrive all at once. It builds in stages, and it starts earlier than most people expect.

Newborns cry more at the sound of another baby crying than at other loud noises, but that's a reflex, not empathy yet. Around a year old, a baby can be genuinely distressed by someone else's distress without being able to separate it from their own (Hoffman called this egocentric empathic distress). The real shift starts at 14 months: in a classic study, infants that age spontaneously handed back a dropped object or opened a cabinet an adult couldn't reach, unprompted and for no reward. By around 18 months, that kind of helping shows up across all kinds of situations, and starts targeting someone's actual distress directly, not just finishing a task.

Genuine perspective-taking, understanding that someone else can believe something false, is a separate skill that arrives later, typically around age four.

The practical takeaway: under two, model and narrate feelings rather than expecting perspective-taking, and know that "put yourself in their shoes" asks for a skill that genuinely isn't there yet.

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Sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. Most people stop there, but occupational therapy has recognised three more senses for...
26/08/2026

Sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. Most people stop there, but occupational therapy has recognised three more senses for decades.

The vestibular sense, based in the inner ear, tracks movement and which way is up, constantly, without being asked. Swinging, spinning, and rolling down a hill all feed it directly, and avoiding movement or constantly seeking it out can both be signs it's processed differently. The proprioceptive sense, from receptors in muscles and joints, tracks where your body is in space without needing to look, it's how you walk without watching your feet. Carrying, pushing, and squeezing (what OTs call "heavy work") feeds this one, and a child who crashes into things or grips too hard may be seeking more of it. The interoceptive sense reads the body's internal state, hunger, thirst, a full bladder, a racing heart, and it's the one most tied to naming emotions. Missing hunger or toilet cues often isn't defiance, it can be a weaker signal.

A simple way to build that last one: "where do you feel that in your body?"

These three senses rarely get named, but they're active in almost everything a child does. Worth knowing, even when nothing's wrong.

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Discomfort while learning isn't always a problem to fix.Vygotsky's model splits ability into three zones: what a child c...
24/08/2026

Discomfort while learning isn't always a problem to fix.

Vygotsky's model splits ability into three zones: what a child can do alone, what they can do with help, and what's out of reach even with help. Real growth happens in that middle zone, the one that involves some friction. A child wobbling or unsure there usually isn't a sign something's wrong. It's often exactly what learning looks like.

The same pattern shows up in very different research. In academic learning, conditions that feel harder in the moment, like being quizzed instead of re-reading, often produce far better long-term learning (Bjork, 1994). In motor skills, the same rule applies: ability improves fastest at the edge of what a child can already do (Guadagnoli & Lee, 2004). Too easy, nothing changes. Too hard, it falls apart. Whether it's a book slightly too hard or a hill slightly too steep, the version that makes them work a little is doing the most.

The practical part is what you do with that middle zone. Wait a beat before stepping in. Offer a hint, not the answer. Name the difficulty out loud. And pull your support back as they improve, that's scaffolding, and it's meant to shrink over time (Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976).

Discomfort is data, not danger.

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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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