Conference Keynote Topics
Below are some examples of Maggie’s topics but this is an evolving list, subject to change. Please note Maggie does not do customised topics. For conference enquiries, we suggest you email conference details to Kate including the theme and Maggie’s team will send a list of recommended topics.
Helping All Boys Shine in Our Schools – Year 7-12
In this seminar for educators, Maggie presents the latest research and strategies to address the decline in boys’ achievement and to re-engage the disengaged lads we are seeing far too often. Maggie will help you appreciate the key differences in boys’ adolescent development and behaviour, and explore the additional stressors impacting today’s boys in schools. She outlines keys to improving communication, examining expectations and helping boys experience external forms of success so they can shine. Maggie will also address creative ways to help boys when they fail, and how to help boys explore vulnerability and manage big ugly feelings so they can thrive in their school years. NB Please allow 1.5hours for this topic when delivered as a webinar.
Girlhood: Raising our little girls to be healthy, happy and heard (for early years educators & parents)
The early years of a little girl’s life will shape her future in powerful ways. In her book Girlhood, Maggie Dent, Australia’s queen of common-sense parenting, has investigated the development period from birth to age eight. In this keynote topic, Maggie draws on nearly 5,000 survey results plus the latest research, and her own extensive experience as an educator, counsellor, facilitator, mum and grandmother, to show us how to help our girls build an emotional and psychological base for life. She will cover among other things: social norms and helping girls develop their own identity; temperament; understanding our girls’ emotional world; navigating friendships; sexualisation, body image and health self-esteem; and nurturing her spirit. This will be both a deeply practical guide to raising girls birth-8 (and the content is definitely relevant to raising girls a few years beyond that too), as well as a celebration and reflection on the state of being female, which women of all ages will relate to.
Dare to be Exceptional as an Early Years Educator
The most successful educators are a blend of professional knowledge and competence as well as having the ability to engage, connect and communicate that knowledge to students using relational safety. This keynote explores the importance of high-quality early childhood educators in today’s busy, uncertain world. From a strong background in the classroom, counselling and drawing on research, Maggie will positively affirm the incredible impact and influence that early years educators have on little ones and their parents and caregivers. (NQS-Outcomes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Dare to be an Exceptional Educator (K-12)
This seminar explores the importance for educators in today’s busy and rapidly changing work to be better than average – indeed to step up to be exceptional. From a strong background int he classroom and drawing on research, Maggie will challenge your thinking and expectations in an entertaining and practical way. Many educators have called this – “the best PD I have ever attended”. (NQS-Outcomes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
9 Things: A back-to-basics guide to calm, common-sense, connected parenting Birth–8
Are you struggling with your toddler? Wondering where to next when time-outs and sticker charts don’t work? Confused by an often-angry child? Join one of Australia’s most-loved parenting authors and educators as she explores the ‘9 Things’ that truly matter in raising children eight and under, and why they matter so much. This seminar is based on Maggie’s popular book of the same name, and offers a back-to-basics, common-sense guide for anyone working or raising babies, toddlers and young children to help them be able to thrive and be ready for school and life.
Building Children’s Resilience
Are you worried, confused or concerned about parenting in today’s chaotic world? Children need to have certain basic experiences to build the competencies that will help them manage life – the good, the bad and the ugly. Maggie has developed a common-sense, practical model of 10 building blocks that will reassure parents that what we have always known to be important in the early years of a child’s life is still important. This seminar will offer you practical, common-sense ideas and strategies to make small changes in your home, which will make a big difference to your children’s cognitive, physical, psychological, emotional and social health later in life.
From the Sandpit to Adulthood: Helping Today’s Children to Thrive
This is one of Maggie’s most popular topics as it is packed full of common sense and inspiration for parents and communities raising children throughout their childhoods and adolescence. Every parent wants their children to thrive – to grow up happy, healthy, strong, kind and capable of realising their full potential. In this seminar, Maggie explores the 10 keys to parenting that support this goal. She acknowledges there is no ‘perfect’ and that challenge, adversity and failure can actually help our kids grow stronger and smarter.
Help Me Help My Teen
(teens 14+ welcome to join with their parents/carers)
This keynote topic, based on Maggie’s 2024 book of the same name, is a reassuring, practical guide for parents and people who work with teenagers to help them navigate adolescence and grow into confident, capable adults. Adolescence has always been a time of huge transformation, but today’s teens deal with challenges that parents may never have imagined. An increasingly digital world filled with social media, gaming and harmful content, along with changing cultural norms, has intensified the pressure to excel and ‘fit in’ – leading to heightened levels of stress, anxiety and depression. Drawing on up-to-date research, a survey of modern teens and her own experiences as a teacher counsellor, mother and teen, Maggie provides clear and compassionate ‘what to do’ advice for some of the most difficult, sensitive topics – such as technology use, sex, drugs and alcohol, dropped school grades, school refusal, mental health and identity – and shows us how we can provide a safe and supportive environment for all our teens.
Calming Teen Stress & Anxiety
(teens 14+ welcome to join with their parents/carers)
Adolescence is by nature stressful because there is so much change and uncertainty – often invisible – happening in our teen’s brains and bodies. Add to this the busy pace of life today, and the huge influence of technology on our teen’s day-to-day lives and friendships, and we see that our teens are being seriously impacted. In this seminar, parenting author, educator and former high school teacher and counsellor Maggie Dent will explore stress and anxiety and how adolescents (and their parents/carers) can better understand and cope with it. Maggie explores how adolescents can see anxiety and stress as a superpower and learn to help each other to navigate big ugly feelings, ‘ANT’ attacks (automatic negative thoughts), failure, loss and disappointment. Maggie draws from neuroscience and other research to share the latest information about lowering stress holistically, how parents can help, and the importance of connection and communication.
Navigating Life’s Challenges
Through her experience as a teacher, counsellor and working in death and loss, Maggie has an extensive background in the area of resilience in a theoretical and practical sense. In this community workshop, she will explore some of the key differences in dealing with loss and trauma for different age groups and genders. These sessions will help build understanding and the ability to cope with the unwanted roller coaster of emotions and experiences that occurs when a community has faced tragedy and challenge in whatever form it arrives. Steps to recovery will also be explored.
Death Through the Eyes of a Child: Everyday Learning about Loss and Grief
Maggie has worked very closely with death and dying due to her extensive background in palliative care, the funeral industry, as a counsellor and as a celebrant who has conducted over 250 funerals. This seminar explores how to prepare and support children and teens through loss and death. How we manage loss will influence us for the rest of our lives. Protecting and insulating children from death can have painful consequences in adolescence and adulthood . This seminar supports families and communities to help children understand and process loss as a natural part of life.
Mothering Our Boys
Mothers of sons are worried about raising their boys in a world where negative images of masculinity are front and centre of our media, almost every day. Also, statistically our boys are still struggling in many ways. In this keynote address, one of Australia’s favourite parenting authors Maggie Dent explores the power of mothering our precious boys in a warm, firm, fair and fun way from birth to adulthood. A mother of four sons herself, Maggie draws on research and personal experience – and over four decades work as a teacher, counsellor and now author and speaker – to help build understanding, empathy and compassion for our boys. Although aimed primarily at mums of sons, the seminar will be useful and insightful for dads and other father figures, to help build a better understanding of the importance of cooperative intimate relationships.
Exploring Children’s Anxiety
From Boys To Men
In this conference keynote, parenting author and educator and ‘boy champion’ Maggie Dent shares insights, tips and common-sense wisdom from her best selling 2020 book, From Boys to Men: Guiding our teen boys to grow into happy, healthy men. Adolescence is a confusing time for teens and their parents and carers — and our boys have some particular challenges that we need to understand if we are to guide them safely to healthy manhood. Aimed at parents, carers and educators of boys aged 12+ years old.
Q&A Session with Maggie
Parents are drowning in too much information! In this address/webinar, Maggie offers some of her resources and an opportunity for attendees to ask specific questions about anything that is worrying them. With her background as a teacher, a counsellor and a parent, Maggie gives grounded practical suggestions in a Q and A format. If being done as a webinar, questions need to be sent in before the webinar and the webinar should be available for participants to watch after the live event.