Talking Early Years with June O'Sullivan

Can we reclaim one small moment?Parents are under enormous pressure. They are expected to raise happy, healthy children while navigating work, rising costs, social media and a constant stream of advice telling them what they should be doing. It is hardly surprising that many reach for the easiest solution when everyone is exhausted. Sometimes that solution is a screen. In this week's podcast I talk to parenting expert Sue Atkins, who has spent years helping parents find practical ways through the digital maze without guilt or judgement. What struck me most was Sue's determination not to wage war on technology. She isn't asking families to throw away their phones or ban tablets overnight. Instead, she asks a much simpler question. Where can we create one moment each day that belongs to us rather than our screens?

 Around 4.5 million children in the UK are living in poverty. Yet poverty is not always immediately visible. It is not necessarily a child without shoes or food. It can be the child who cannot go to the birthday party, have the right school shoes, join the school trip or take part in the ordinary experiences that allow children to feel that they belong.  In this episode, I sit down with Baroness Ruth Lister, one of Britain's leading voices on poverty and social policy, to explore what relative poverty really means, why children's own experiences and voices should shape policy, and why tackling poverty is about more than income.  Because ultimately the test is not simply whether the statistics improve. It is whether childhood improves. 

Is giving a young child unrestricted access to digital technology like handing them a vape? In my latest podcast, I sat down with digital safety expert Katy Potts to confront what many of us are reluctant to say out loud. There is no app to replace your lap. Listen to the podcast. This matters more than we think!

 This is the first hour I’d spent with Professors Chris Pascal OBE and Dr Tony Bertram since they stopped supervising my PhD, and the conversation was every bit as energising and engaging as ever. Affectionately dubbed our “National Treasures” by the study group, Chris and Tony are as generous as they are sharp. We set out to talk about ‘quality’, but it quicky widened into pedagogy, community inequality and the digitally-saturated world children now inhabit. What emerged was a deeply human, deeply practical account of what quality really looks and feels like for children, families and educators. 

 SEND, Social Justice and the Question We Keep Avoiding Everyone is talking about SEND. Inclusion. Rising need. Pressures on schools and nurseries. But I am not convinced we all mean the same thing when we use those words. In my latest Talking Early Years podcast, I sat down with the wonderfully energetic Catherine Mole, CEO of Dingley’s Promise and one of the sector’s most passionate advocates for children with SEND, to unpack what is really going on. 

Kindness Is the Work: A Conversation with Salas Balde for the Next Generation of Early Years Educators Every now and then, someone walks into your professional world and reminds you why you care so deeply about Early Years, community, childhood development, and humanity itself. For me, one of those people is Salas. He was last on Talking Early Years in December 2023, and even then, he was a burst of optimism and purpose. Since then, he has done so much more that I felt it was time to bring him back and let him tell the next chapter of his story. Listen now!

Social justice can sound lofty. Abstract. Something discussed in policy papers or parliamentary chambers. But the truth is, the seeds of fairness, compassion, sustainability and community are planted much earlier than that. They’re sown in the nursery, long before children learn the language of politics. And if we don’t plant them early, we risk raising a generation who see inequality as inevitable rather than something they can change. That was the heart of my conversation with Susan Santone, author of Reframing the Curriculum and one of the thinkers who most shaped my own PhD journey.

Learning by Living: Barbara Rogoff on Sociocultural LearningListen now In this episode of Talking Early Years, I’m in conversation with one of the most influential thinkers in developmental psychology, Professor Barbara Rogoff, whose work on sociocultural learning in early childhood has reshaped how the world understands children and learning. 

 This week on the podcast, I’m joined by Howard Roberts, a creative strategist whose superpower is curiosity. The real kind—the kind that asks why, digs deeper, challenges the status quo, and isn’t satisfied with surface-level answers. In the Early Years, we know just how powerful curiosity is. It’s the engine of learning, the spark of joy, the heart of play. But what happens when we apply that same thinking to big public issues—like how we help people truly feel why the Early Years matter?