Growing pains – Children’s Health Queensland blog

For years prior to this, our daughter had suffered from debilitating social anxiety, school refusal, and chronic shyness. Her family, her school, and health professionals all worked to try to help her overcome these challenges.

For most people, a case of appendicitis involves a bit of short-term pain that goes away once the condition is treated with antibiotics or the offending organ is surgically removed. But for 15-year-old Indianna, it marked the start of a long, isolating journey with persistent pain that frequently left her in tears and unable to enjoy life.

Anyone who has cared for a child with whooping cough knows how frightening the disease’s signature coughing attacks can be. Here, Dr Sophie Wen, an immunisation specialist at the Queensland Children’s Hospital, shares what happens when children come to hospital with whooping cough, and what can be done to prevent them contracting it.

Babies are born ready and eager to connect with other people and their surroundings. Their brains are ‘hard-wired’ to quickly learn about family, community and culture, and in the first three years of life, the brain grows to 90 per cent of its adult size. Here are five simple things parents and caregivers can do to foster healthy growth and development in their baby's early formative years.

Though the subject of death and dying is uncomfortable for many of us and the experience of losing a loved one can be overwhelming for all of us, talking about death to your child as openly and honestly as you can is important in helping them to understand that it is a part of life.

Our son, William, was diagnosed with level 3 autism when he was only four-and-a-half years-old. His mind and body had already been compromised from a cancer diagnosis and treatment, but it wasn’t until we engaged with an early childhood development program for his global development delays that we, along with his teachers and hospital staff, noticed his autism-like traits.