Does restricting teens somehow give them freedom?

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| Sally O'Reilly
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If you’re from Ireland, you may have heard of Knockadoon Summer Camps. They’re an Irish language summer camp, very popular, and just around the corner from me – well, practically, perhaps not quite literally…

Anyway, a friend of mine had her 2 kids there for the 2nd or 3rd consecutive year and I decided to pop over and meet them all, see how they were getting on. Maybe try and get some scandal re potential romances etc – y’know, the usual old-person-embarrassment rituals (they’re so tolerant of me these two!)

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Well I never thought I’d see the day!

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I just saw on Sexual Violence Centre Cork‘s page that the term “gaslighting” is the word chosen by Merriam-Webster as the word of the year 2022 with searches on its website for the word spiking by 1,740% in 2022.

A still from the 1940 film which made the word, well, a word!

What a thing to witness! What a cultural shift! In awareness at least – the behaviour certainly hasn’t disappeared. If anything, its ‘territory’ has expanded. But it’s always good to have the language for a phenomenon. It literally makes it easier to talk about it.

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A terrible Beauty

| Sally O'Reilly
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I was sitting with my husband outside a coffee shop in my hometown of Youghal the day before the much anticipated Ironman 22 last week. It was a glorious hot sunny day and we were basking in the excitement and pre-event buzz that was taking over the town. I felt a gorgeous huge pride and affection bursting out through my chest and I was loving every moment of it… This really was the perfect day. Just perfect. And everyone was happy, smiling and being lovely.

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Parenting an exam student?

| Sally O'Reilly
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It’s that time of year when the exams are suddenly here and the stress levels are on the rise

Every June my subconscious does this fabulous fun thing – the annual Leaving Cert dream.  If I’m really lucky it’ll be really specific – like Irish paper 1 – or an accountancy paper full of Question 1s – either way it morphs pretty smartly into a nightmare.

Thanks, Brain.

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I wish we had no International Women’s Day

| Sally O'Reilly
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You’ll see a lot of posts today giving you the grim figures about the gender pay gap (it’s real), physical assault in intimate relationships (it’s real, and it happens more to women), judgement on image (yes, real, and still happening more to women, and yes, even by women, I know, but please look at the “why” before using it as an excuse for poor behaviour), sexualisation (just look at almost every ad, ever), normalisation of violence against women in porn (please don’t tell me women enjoy it),the low representation of women in positions of power, authority, management, STEM jobs and so on, and so on… ad nauseum.

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Getting your child to talk (a little) more

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| Sally O'Reilly
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If you’re a parent I’m sure you’ve had the “grunt experience”  – a free entertainment package provided mostly – but not exclusively – by the teen, to the delight of all adults involved with said teen.

The “grunt experience” involves short chats where you are treated to words like fine, alright, sort of, whatever, OMG, sigh, groan and of course -“The Grunt”.  #rollseyes

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And you probably feel the same…

I read a blog post written by a fellow psychologist over the weekend. It spoke to parents about asking the right questions of their kids to get conversations started.

via GIPHY

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Why is Wordle so Wonderful?

| Sally O'Reilly
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Well…

This may or may not surprise you but this has come up quite a lot in therapy in recent days. This does seem odd at the face of it, doesn’t it? I mean, surely there are more pressing things to explore in sessions…but as with everything that arises in a session, there is meaning attached.

We’ve attached that meaning. Part of that meaning is attachment.

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