Tanya Forster Psychologist

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Tanya Forster Psychologist Tanya is a Psychologist and the CEO of Macquarie Health Collective

13/10/2026

It’s 8:15am.

Your child is crying.

They’re telling you they can’t go to school.

You’ve got another child to get ready, work to get to, and you’re starting to feel overwhelmed yourself.

Sound familiar?

School refusal can be incredibly stressful for the whole family.

And in those moments, it’s often tempting to try everything.

More reassurance. More explanations. More negotiating. Perhaps a little frustration when nothing seems to work.

But when children are experiencing significant anxiety, more talking isn’t always more helpful.

Sometimes we need to make things smaller.

💛 Regulate ourselves first. Our children need us to be the steady adult, even when we’re feeling stressed too.

💛 Connect and validate. We can acknowledge how hard school feels without immediately changing the plan.

💛 Use fewer words. Save the problem-solving conversations for when everyone is calmer.

💛 Focus on one small step. Sometimes getting dressed is enough to focus on for now. Then we work towards the next step.

💛 Work with the school. A predictable drop-off plan, familiar teacher or additional support can make an enormous difference.

And importantly, if your child is regularly struggling to attend school, we need to understand what’s driving that distress.

Is it separation anxiety? Friendships? Bullying? Learning difficulties? Sensory overwhelm? Something else?

We don’t want to simply push children through an environment that isn’t meeting their needs.

We want to understand the problem, address the barriers and build their capacity to manage school with the right support.

Confidence follows courage. But courage often needs scaffolding.

And if your child is experiencing significant or ongoing difficulties attending school, please reach out to your school and an appropriate health professional for additional support 💛

It’s game day.Which means there are also going to be a LOT of very happy children…and probably quite a few devastated on...
04/10/2026

It’s game day.

Which means there are also going to be a LOT of very happy children…

and probably quite a few devastated ones. 🏉😅

And if you’ve ever watched a child sob because their team lost — or witnessed the aftermath of an unexpectedly competitive game of UNO — you’ll know that losing can bring up some very big feelings.

Our instinct can be to make those feelings disappear.

“It’s only a game.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“They might win next year.”

But disappointment isn’t necessarily a problem we need to fix.

If your child is devastated because their team loses, start with connection.

“I know. You really wanted them to win.”

Let them feel disappointed.

Stay nearby.

Ride out the wave.

And if their behaviour crosses a boundary, we can hold that too.

“I know you’re really angry. I won’t let you hit your brother.”

Understanding the feeling doesn’t mean allowing every behaviour that comes with it.

But perhaps the most important work happens well before game day.

Frustration tolerance is a skill.

And like most skills, children learn it through lots of small opportunities to practise.

Play UNO.

Kick the footy in the backyard.

Play board games.

Let them lose sometimes.

Let them see **YOU** lose.

Let them hear you say:

“Ahhh! I really wanted to win that.”

And then let them watch you recover.

Because our goal isn’t to raise children who don’t care whether they win or lose.

Sport matters to them.

Their heroes matter to them.

Their own games matter to them.

The goal is to help them discover that they can really want something, not get it, feel the disappointment — and still be okay.

And if your team wins?

There’s a skill there too.

Celebrate wildly.

And teach them how to win kindly 💛

Meltdowns can be incredibly hard.For our children.And for us.Particularly when you’re trying everything you’ve been told...
03/10/2026

Meltdowns can be incredibly hard.

For our children.

And for us.

Particularly when you’re trying everything you’ve been told you’re supposed to do and nothing seems to be working.

One thing I want parents to know is that your job isn’t necessarily to make the meltdown stop as quickly as possible.

Sometimes we become so focused on getting our child calm that we inadvertently add more pressure:

“Take a breath.”
“Use your words.”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Calm your body.”
“Look at me.”
“Remember what we talked about?”

All good skills.
Just perhaps not accessible right now.

Sometimes the most helpful thing we can do is make the moment simpler.

Keep everyone safe.

Reduce the demands.

Use fewer words.

Stay nearby if that’s helpful to your child.

Hold the boundaries that need holding.

And wait.

There will be time for teaching.

But we want their thinking brain back online first.

School holidays can come with a surprising amount of pressure.The trips.The activities.The outings.The seemingly endless...
02/10/2026

School holidays can come with a surprising amount of pressure.

The trips.

The activities.

The outings.

The seemingly endless requests to go somewhere that costs $37 per child before you’ve even bought lunch. 😅

And with the cost of living putting pressure on so many family budgets, I suspect there are plenty of parents looking at these school holidays and wondering how they’re going to make it all work.

So, as a Child Psychologist (and a mum), here’s something I think is worth remembering:

**Expensive doesn’t necessarily mean valuable to a child’s development.**

Some of the things children benefit from most over the holidays are actually incredibly ordinary.

Time to move their bodies.

Unstructured play.

Being outside.

Downtime.

Boredom.

Opportunities to be creative.

And small moments of genuine connection with the people they love.

That doesn’t mean children won’t desperately want to go to the theme park / movies / trampoline centre / insert-expensive-activity-here.

And it’s okay for them to feel disappointed when the answer is no.

We don’t have to make every disappointment disappear in order to give our children a good childhood.

So if your family is staying closer to home these holidays, or you’re saying no to things you’d really like to say yes to, please don’t measure the quality of your children’s holidays by how full the calendar is — or how much you’ve spent.

Make a fort.

Pack dinner and take it to the park.

Turn on the sprinkler.

Walk somewhere new.

Watch a movie in the middle of the afternoon.

Let them get bored.

Let them play.

Let some days be completely unremarkable.

**School holidays don’t have to be expensive, elaborate or Instagram-worthy to be good.**

Sometimes ordinary family life is more than enough 💛

Parents often ask me:“But what should I SAY?”And sometimes I think we’re putting far too much pressure on ourselves to f...
01/10/2026

Parents often ask me:

“But what should I SAY?”

And sometimes I think we’re putting far too much pressure on ourselves to find the perfect sentence.

There isn’t one.

Sometimes:

“I can see this is hard.”

is enough.

Sometimes:

“I’m here.”

is enough.

And sometimes saying very little at all is enough.

When children are highly overwhelmed, lots of language can become another demand for their brain to process.

So rather than explaining, reasoning, questioning and problem-solving, we can simplify.

Of course, different children need different things.

Some want closeness.

Some want space.

Some find touch comforting.

Others absolutely do not want to be touched when overwhelmed.

Co-regulation isn’t a script.

It’s noticing:

“What helps this particular child feel safe and supported right now?”

And responding accordingly 💛

Some parenting hills I’ll happily stand on.And perhaps the thread connecting most of these is this:Our children’s discom...
30/09/2026

Some parenting hills I’ll happily stand on.

And perhaps the thread connecting most of these is this:

Our children’s discomfort isn’t necessarily evidence that we’ve done something wrong.

We can become so focused on helping our children feel happy, confident and secure that it’s tempting to remove the things that create frustration, disappointment, uncertainty or discomfort.

Sometimes that’s exactly what our child needs.

And sometimes it isn’t.

Children also need safe opportunities to:

be disappointed.

hear no.

lose.

wait.

get things wrong.

struggle.

feel nervous.

have someone disagree with them.

and discover that those experiences are uncomfortable — but manageable.

Of course, that doesn’t mean throwing children into situations they’re not equipped to manage.

There’s an enormous space between rescuing a child from every uncomfortable feeling and leaving them alone to cope with something overwhelming.

That’s where so much parenting happens.

We support the struggle without always removing it.

I’m curious — which one of these is your hill too? ⛰️

School holidays are here.And after a long Term 3, I think there are probably plenty of tired children — and tired parent...
29/09/2026

School holidays are here.

And after a long Term 3, I think there are probably plenty of tired children — and tired parents — who could do with things slowing down a little.

Supporting regulation over the holidays doesn’t necessarily require a list of activities, expensive outings or carefully planned “quality time”.

Often, it’s much simpler than that.

🌿 Get outside.

🏃 Let bodies move.

🏠 Leave some blank space in the calendar.

🥱 Let them be bored without immediately becoming the entertainment committee.

🧱 Give them time to play without turning the play into something productive.

😴 Let some mornings be slow.

❤️ Look for small moments of connection inside the day you’re already having.

And when everyone is tired, cranky and completely done with each other?

Make the day smaller.

Cancel the optional thing.

Put the movie on.

Separate the siblings for a bit.

Make the easy dinner.

Go to bed early.

School holidays don’t need to be Instagram worthy magic every day.

There will probably be beautiful moments.

There will also be sibling fights, complaints of boredom, too much screen time, plans that don’t work, children who are inexplicably furious about leaving an activity they complained about attending…

and moments when you desperately want everyone to go back to school.

It is okay not to love every minute.

The goal isn’t to create the perfect school holidays.

Sometimes it’s simply to give everyone a little room to rest, play, connect and reset before Term 4 💛

28/09/2026

Sometimes the tiny thing really is tiny.

But the feelings around it aren’t.

We’ve all had days like this as adults.

Someone asks one perfectly reasonable question and suddenly we’re disproportionately irritated.

Not because of that question.

Because we’re tired.
We’re running late.
Something went wrong at work.
We haven’t eaten.
There are seventeen things still on our mental to-do list.

And that one little thing lands on top of everything else.

Children can experience this too.

The difference is that they have fewer years of practice managing it.

So sometimes we see a huge reaction to a seemingly tiny trigger.

That doesn’t mean we need to fix every tiny problem.

You don’t necessarily need to find the blue cup.

Your child can be disappointed about the green one.

But understanding the accumulated load can help us respond to the child in front of us rather than only reacting to the size of their behaviour 💛

My latest blog is up ✨
25/09/2026

My latest blog is up ✨

When behaviour is hard, understandably we want it to stop.And sometimes it does need to stop immediately.If someone is b...
24/09/2026

When behaviour is hard, understandably we want it to stop.

And sometimes it does need to stop immediately.

If someone is being hurt or something is unsafe, I’m not standing back pondering the psychological meaning of it.

Safety first.

But once the immediate moment is managed, I think there are three really useful questions we can ask.

What was happening underneath this?

What skill did my child need?

How can I help them learn that skill?

Because our goal isn’t simply a child who behaves well when we’re standing beside them telling them what to do.

We’re gradually trying to build the skills that allow them to navigate frustration, disappointment, anger, anxiety, conflict and mistakes more independently.

That takes time.

And it takes practice.

So while we definitely want the meltdown to stop, sometimes what we need to try and focus on is:

“What does my child need to learn for next time?”

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