In today’s episode, we dive into the exciting world of AI in education with global futurist Graeme Codrington and the team at Future Smart Teacher. Graeme shares valuable insights on how AI tools, particularly ChatGPT, can serve as powerful assistants in teaching, helping educators enhance their workflow, engage students in new ways, and save valuable time—all while preparing for a tech-driven future. Key Takeaways: AI as an Assistant, Not a Replacement: Learn why AI tools like ChatGPT are be...
Episode Summary: In this episode, Jude chats with music therapist Graeme Sacks about what music therapy is, how it encourages growth, self-expression and healing through music and how this might impact parents and their kids today! Graeme challenges the notion that music should be something we add competition to, especially because of how that pressure can often lead children away from music and singing. Instead he says, we should be encouraging children and teens to be making music and s...
Episode Summary: In this episode of the Future Smart Parent Podcast, Jude chats to Vanessa Raphaely, co-author of "We Were Perfect Parents Until We Had Children" and founder of The Village, a community of diverse, imperfect parents in South Africa. Vanessa and Jude talk about the principles of The Village - community support, kindness, respect and constructiveness and chat about the ways in which parents from diverse backgrounds can come together to support each other in raising the next ...
In this episode Jude chats with Dr. Michael Mol about the invisible labour that oftens lands on the shoulders of moms. The fact that women are typically taking on more of the labour of childcare, organising the home and housekeeping, often in addition to their ‘actual’ jobs is a sad reality. The burnout that so many moms experience should not be the norm. And so in this conversation Michael and Jude talk about practical things, backed by science, that we can do to care for ourselves.&nb...
Helen Nicholson is the Founder and CEO of The Networking Company. She specialises in speaking and teaching people to develop powerful personal brands and networks all over the world. Her work in Mindful Resilience has helped thousands of individuals overcome burnout. She has also written a best selling book “Mindfulness: How to Stay Sane in an Insane World”. In this episode, Helen and Jude discuss what mindfulness is and how parents can practice mindfulness in their every day lives. It’s not...
In this episode of the Future Smart Parent podcast, Jude chats with Tarryn who is the creator of a life-changing ADHD system designed for overwhelmed and frustrated parents who want smoother days, less chaos and to see their ADHD kids thrive. Tarryn is an Occupational Therapist and a mom to a daughter with ADHD so is able to help through both her professional and personal experiences. This was a very insightful conversation! Resources mentioned: The Anxious Generation book by Jonathan Haid...
In this episode, Jude speaks with parenting coach, Lelia Schott, about engaging with our teenagers - a time often accompanieed with many emotions (from both teens and parents), boundaries being pushed, connection sometimes being tested, but also a time where our teens need these deep connections with both their peers, and their families - the family being the safe harbour that it provides through holding boundaries, while maintaining and working on deeper connects and relationships. &nb...
In this episode Jude speaks with Natalie Meerholz, the headmistress of Holy Rosary Primary School, who started this campaign where many students pledged to go ‘phone-free’ for 40 days. The campaign was about calling for the delay of smartphone ownership in children "in a bid to restore a play-based childhood and to protect the mental health and well-being of its learners." We know that with technology our children have more access to information than any generation before them. And whil...
In this week’s episode, Jude chats with Buhle Dlamini, author of Unleashing Your Greatness. They chat about how to raise greatness and nurturing potential in our kids. Buhle Dlamini discusses his concept of unleashing your true potential, your greatness and specifically how this can impact our parenting. We all possess untapped potential, and this is your guide to help your kids harness their potential to the fullest. Buhle breaks down the process of unleashing your greatness into five essen...
Episode Summary: Mandy is passionate about supporting parents, teachers and schools on their journey to develop safe, connected and problem solving environments for children to thrive. Academics aren’t enough! We need to equip ourselves with tools to teach children missing skills through Social Emotional Learning. In this episode, Mandy and Jude discuss what social emotional learning actually means, and how we need to shift our mentality, as parents and teachers, to connection over corre...
Episode Summary: In this episode, Jude talks with Naomi Holdt, author, mom and child psychologist, all about her new book Bounce: How to Raise Resilient Kids and Teens. This book is so important and we encourage you to read it - if nothing else it will remind you, as a parent, that you are not alone. Bounce will help you tackle this messy and beautiful journey of life and parenting in a very human way. Bounce: How to Raise Resilient Kids and Teens is an easy-to-read, effective guide t...
This week Jude chats with Graeme Codrington, global futurist and co-founder of the Future Smart Parent Club. Graeme specialises in the future of work and in this episode, we specifically talk about a job of the future. We discuss prompt engineering and how it might be a career path for our kids in the future. Prompt engineering does mean we should teach our kids how to use AI, how to think differently about technology and give them the opportunities to play with this technology themselves. ...
Today, I’m thrilled to talk with Cheryl Williams, an exceptional STEAM Based Learning Educator. With a teaching journey that began in 2000, Cheryl has gained invaluable experiences in various grades and leadership roles - however, her true passion lies in the Edtech world, where she has been wholeheartedly dedicated for the past decade. Cheryl's days are immersed in the world of technology, exploring innovative approaches like the Internet of Things, Computers, iPads, Robots, and Coding...
Today I got to speak with Rebekah Clark from Happy Marlo. Happy Marlo is an organization dedicated to helping children build skills for dealing with their emotions and being empowered to find their calm space. While these tools and resources are designed specifically for 3 to 11 year olds, the holistic approaches to emotional well-being can, and should, also apply to the parents, guardians and carers of these children. Some of us parents also need to learn some emotional regulation skil...
Today we’re talking about tech habits - specifically tech habits for families because I don’t know about you, but I find it incredibly difficult to break some of my own bad tech habits. Yes, I'm also acutely aware of the saying that goes 'More is caught than taught' and so I'm acutely aware that I need to try a little harder! For example, I know I sleep so much better when I read a physical book before going to bed, but too many nights I’m on my phone right before bed. Even...
Zanele has built her profile as one of Africa’s brightest organisational change & learning influencers. She’s known to her clients as 'The UnLearning Lady', and is a global leading voice on using key unlearning principles to help companies build cultures that support change & transformation. She’s worked with companies such as Visa, Coca-Cola, The South African Reserve Bank, Deloitte & Discovery. In this episode, Jude and Zanele talk about how to help our kids manage transitions. ...
Sextortion might sound like the name of a really bad movie, but in fact it’s a lot more serious than that and it’s affecting all of our kids online. Essentially “sextortion” is a crime, classified as cyber extortion under the South African cyber laws, and occurs when predators blackmail our children into sending them sexual or nude pictures and videos. This is obviously child pornography, which is a criminal offence, and these predators need to be caught. This might be scary, but as par...
Today I spoke with Melanie Williams, who is a psychometrist and careers expert. She used to teach high school English and Life Orientation and now works with high school students on looking beyond high school and preparing for life in the real world. In this episode, we discuss: The benefits of school leavers taking a gap yearIs a gap year for everyone?Who should take a gap year? Melanie is the author of The Good Gap Year Guide and she breaks down what makes a successful gap ...
In this episode, I chatted with Christy Herselman from The Chat. We spoke about the changing gender landscape, and what this means for both our children, and for us parents as we all try to navigate and understand this phenomenon that's unfolding so quickly. We spoke about the massive rise in transgender and nonbinary teens, and touched on how the world got here. I think what I loved the most from this conversation is the way Christy helps us parents think about this topic. She does...
Episode Summary: Today I spoke with Dr Beulah van der Westhuizen, who is a specialist in neuro-development, education and the founder of EduExcellence. In this episode, we discussed the education system, and where traditional schooling stems from and how it functions. The institutionalisation of schooling first appeared during the Industrial Revolution, when children needed to be somewhere while their parents were working in factories. School became a place to train children for their f...