Parenting: a crossroads many of us find ourselves at eventually, somewhere between asserting control and giving our children the space they need to flourish. “Good parenting” –who’s to say what that even is? From developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik’s The...

The battle of wills between teacher and student, and even parent and child, is one that is age-old.  Beneath that brews a powerful shift in the way we understand the children in our care by leaning into a relinquishment of control.  We know–this is probably hard to...

The answer is invariably: yes.  Psychologist and Harvard professor Rebecca Rolland recently shed light on this issue–suggesting that the absence of genuine connections, caused by a lack of parental cultivation and the imposition of unrealistic standards, is shaping...

We’ve been no strangers to the fight to legitimise the idea of ‘inclusivity’ in the Singaporean educational landscape and beyond, doing so right from within our doors at Imagine If.  We have always emphasised that when we say inclusive, we mean it. The conversations...

As a society, we often examine a child's behaviour from a very limited perspective.  If we were being honest and introspective with ourselves, how we take seriously the opinions of children themselves, let alone their ‘antics,’ can attest to this narrow-mindedness. ...

It's been over 30 years since Seymour Papert's article, "Obsolete Skill Set: The 3 R's, Literacy, and Letteracy in the Media Ages," was published, and his words are more relevant than ever.  With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), society is undergoing a...

Peter Gray, on trustful parenting, offers an exploration of a parenting philosophy that emphasises trust, respect, and collaboration between parents and children. At the heart of this philosophy is the belief that children are naturally curious and capable of taking...

The topic of mental health is inextricable from the subject of the schooling system – this will sound familiar to you if you’ve followed us for any length of time. A recent article in The Straits Times recounts a parent’s struggle with their child’s ‘school refusal’...

You don't create resilience in children by throwing them in the deep end at school and forcing them to cope. That's how you create resentment. That's like sending the average person into the gym to lift 100 kg and saying that if they just do enough mindfulness, think...

Recently, I received a referral from the 'Head of Inclusion' of a large international school about taking in a child that the school cannot include. Needless to say, right away, this seemed rather contradictory to the principle of inclusion. After this, I received...