We all want our children to grow up to be happy, healthy, strong, kind and resilient.

In order to do this, children need to have certain basic experiences to build the competencies that will help them manage life — the good, the bad and the ugly.

In her bestselling book, Real Kids in An Unreal World, one of Australia’s favourite parenting authors and educators Maggie Dent outlined her common-sense, practical model of 10 building blocks to resilience.

In this video seminar she takes us through that model, and reassures parents that what we have always known to be important in the earlier years of a child’s life is still important.

Maggie offers practical, common-sense ideas and strategies to make small changes in your home, centre or classroom — changes which will make a big difference to your children’s cognitive, physical, psychological, emotional and social health throughout their lives.

View the trailer:

Maggie speaks with a rhythm and truth that captivates, confronts and instils hope in everyone in the room. Maggie also has a wickedly honest sense of humour that manages to engage and uplift you, scattered among her more serious moments. She is so informed and with her bold, emotive yet simple language, she speaks to you on the deepest of levels. She knows how to restore a child-like sense of wonder in us all, but deep down Maggie just wants us all to be brave.

— Caitlin Murphy, Wearthy (commenting on this presentation when it was delivered at The Childhood Summit 2019 in Brisbane).

How do I put Maggie Dent into words? I think she shifted everyone’s thinking in that room to a different place and brought us all back to our childhoods and got us to look inside our hearts to see who we really are. No matter what trials and tribulations this ever changing world throws our way we can face it with grace and get through it.

— Gloria Hackett, Inclusion Support Facilitator ECA, NT

I had promised myself that if I didn’t get any clarity after hearing you speak last night, it would be my last stop before getting some kind of help. I have a ‘rooster’ and a very difficult one at that. I wanted to say thank you, because you’ve given me the confidence to accept my child just as she is … and to laugh a lot more. Thank you for helping me be ‘Ok’ with some old fashioned parenting values, and for helping me to just accept that every child is different.

—Mother of Two

Video run time: 1hr 50mins

NOTE RE STREAMING: Once purchased you can play this video from with your Account area. This video is played back using Vimeo which is able to stream on most computers and mobile devices.  The video will scale to the best quality for your connection. Viewing streaming content will count towards your metered download limit. If you are unaware of your download quota, please check with your internet service provider. The file size at HD720 resolution is 1.3GB.