Dr Justin Coulson spoke with teachers at James Sheahan Catholic High School last Wednesday and then spoke to about 100 parents that evening.

“They were totally different [talks], I worked with the teachers on dealing with some of the challenges they face in dealing with students in school,” Dr Coulson said.

Among the topics he discussed with the teachers were emotional intelligence, communication, conflict resolution and managing bullying in a school environment.

With parents he talked about creating happy functioning families and through his three principles of love, limits and laughter.

Whether it is helping children have a happy life, deal with bullying, getting them to do what parents want or working out what to do if a child wants to quit an activity their parent does not want them to quit, he said the principles help.

He said in terms of setting limits his aim was to get parents to work with their children to set boundaries and punishments rather than simply have parents do something to them. 

“Discipline strategies that don’t work are doing things to kids to make them compliant,” he said.