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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!

| Sally O'Reilly
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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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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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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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What are we teaching our teens?

| Sally O'Reilly
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It was a Friday, and I was sitting on a desk in a school classroom, all excited. Friday had become my favourite day of the week, not because weekend, but because that was the day to deliver my personal development and sex education class to a bunch of sparkly bright teenagers. Fun guaranteed!

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Yes! Let’s talk about hormones (if we’re experts in the field)

| Sally O'Reilly
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I usually avoid writing when I’m on leave but y’know sometimes you see something and you get the rages, and as a colleague said to me yesterday as we raged to each other – sometimes right is just right. And so you respond.

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They used to get help… now they get likes

| Sally O'Reilly
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I saw this post on a friend’s feed. It’s grim stuff. Got me all annoyed and rolling my eyes.

And then I watched it a second time with my husband and it felt even worse.

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Sexting – stuck on how to talk to your kids?

| Sally O'Reilly
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Some of you will have read a piece on sexting a while back. Here’s the ‘how-to’ follow up.

So before we start into it, I want you to know that I do understand that some parents would rather stick a needle in their ear that talk about sex or sexting, even to each other! But the somewhat annoying reality it this – we are the grown ups and it’s our job to do this.

Otherwise porn will do it for you.

‘Nudes’ and ‘three-ways’ are already part of the vernacular for the average thirteen year old.

Can you remember being thirteen?

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Phil Hogan’s Interview and Why It Was Awful

| Sally O'Reilly
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It’s a good thing to resign when one makes an error – it’s part of political life and we all understand that. And we all like an apology – if it rings true. Right?

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