I have started the school year seeing countless photos posted by my friends with teased hair and dressed in the synthetic neon-colored tracksuits typical of the eighties. It has been a viral trend on social media where people of all ages have asked artificial intelligence for an image that evokes this iconic decade. Our aesthetic has changed a lot, but I'll warn you that the school keeps the desks with greenish iron legs and a drawer underneath where chewing gum still gets stuck. Years pass, school furniture remains.

That a child feels safe is essential for their development, a duty for the welfare society and a longing of families. But when we live in a world where bad news arrives everywhere, it is more difficult to maintain the sense of security.Wars, AI threat, climate emergency, floods, weather alerts, emergency kits... We want to protect them and spare them any suffering, but, at the same time, it is not a solution to deceive them by saying that it is all a lie.How do we do it? Two ideas:The first would be to lower the noise of the alarm: a smoke detector warns us when there is a fire. Let's imagine that this alarm rang every day: we would end up living stressed, scared, and in a state of alert. This is what happens to children if we let all the bad news reach them, especially if we have not prepared them or their brain to understand when the danger is real, exaggerated, or fake news.That is why it is important to reduce screen time and, above all, try to control what reaches them. If we know what they have seen or listen to the news with them, we can provide context, contribute critical thinking, and prevent them from ending up frightened by the catastrophism or exaggeration that some media outlets often use.And the second would be to strengthen them from within: avoiding all worries for them is overprotecting them, which ends up leaving them unprotected because we waste opportunities to train their resilience, adaptability, and inner strength. It would be like putting them in a bubble so they never feel fear, and when one day that fear arrived, they wouldn't know how to manage it because they hadn't been trained.Information, context and resources

Children are much stronger than we usually think. Let's trust them, because adaptability is an innate capacity of human nature. We just have to try not to annul it while we educate. Parents should, first, stop, look at them, and ask them: "What have you understood from what you just heard? What is it that worries you about this news?"Fear grows when there is uncertainty, that is to say, when information is missing, or when we only have a part of the information, the bad part. Completing it, contextualizing it, and helping them to think is educating them in inner strength.I remember that a couple of years ago, during the severe spring drought, a very distressed 5th-grade group arrived at the summer camp. They told me that it wasn't worth the effort or thinking about the future because the world would end before they turned thirty. They were convinced that, due to climate change, we would all die of thirst. I asked them: "And in countries where there is a desert, how do they manage? Do they all die of thirst?" They looked at each other in surprise and answered no. I remember how their expressions changed and some smiled. I explained to them that humans are extraordinary beings, also capable of doing beautiful things, of adapting to circumstances, of inventing solutions, and of overcoming enormous challenges.I believe that here lies our responsibility as adults: we cannot promise our children that nothing bad will ever happen, but we can train them so they know they will have resources to face these situations, such as pausing before a piece of news, thinking critically, asking questions to calm down, and feeling that the world is a safe place to grow up and live in.

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Learning to wait is one of the most important emotional skills of childhood, and it is built in the small situations of everyday life. We live in a society accustomed to immediacy where everything goes too fast. A click buys what we want, a message arrives in seconds, and any doubt is resolved almost instantly. In this context, waiting has become one of the most difficult skills for both adults and children. But precisely because the world is accelerating, cultivating patience is more necessary today than ever.

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Although childhood vaccination coverage has advanced steadily in Europe over the last few decades, a study published in The Lancet Regional Health - Europe warns that this positive trend is losing momentum.

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In a few days we enter autumn, although climate change has been altering the seasons for some time now. Since it looks like it will be sunny this weekend, we have prepared a selection of activities for you to do with your sons and daughters on September 18th, 19th, and 20th, such as taking a stroll through the Week of the Book in Catalan, enjoying the return of the Festa al Cel in Salou, watching birds at the Delta Birding Festival at Món Natura Delta, or awakening artistic creation at the Pluja d'Art Fair in Sant Jordi Desvalls.

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My character is a real person, Verónica Estay. As an actress, playing someone real is quite a challenge. When she saw my work, she was very happy. She told me that there were moments when she felt that I was more her than she was herself.

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Siblings dressed the same: the same t-shirt, the same trousers and matching shoes. Sisters with the same dress and the same hairstyle. In many families, dressing siblings the same has a practical, almost logistical, sense, although it often also responds to an aesthetic issue.

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A video recorded in Brazil, showing parents making their son believe he has worms in his stomach from eating too many sweets, has generated enormous controversy. In the images, the parents show him a fake ultrasound in which a supposed worm appears to be moving inside his stomach. The boy, who still has a sweet in his mouth, ends up crying and promising to stop eating them.

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First days of school and a long weekend in sight. That is why we have prepared a good collection of activities for the coming days, such as attending FiraTàrrega, where you will be able to see 57 shows by local and international companies; enjoying La Terrasseta in Tarragona, an independent festival with musical and contemporary circus proposals; listening to and reading stories at the 16th edition of the Medinyà Story Fair, and delving into Gaudí's imagination by visiting La Pedrera - Casa Milà, among others.

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“The beaches, which should be a place of tranquility, have been transformed into a space where you have to keep an eye on mobile phones and try to guess if a person is using it to look at Instagram or if they are actually taking photos or videos of your children,” explains Laura Ferrer, a specialist in conscious and emotional sexual education for children, youth, and adults. The widespread presence of mobile phones, cameras, and social networks has changed the way many families experience children's swimming in public spaces like the beach. What a few decades ago could be experienced with more naturalness – small naked children playing in the sand or entering and leaving the water – today coexists with a new concern: what if someone photographs or records the child without permission? And where could that image end up? Ferrer's practice is increasingly receiving families who have suffered or are suffering unpleasant situations on the beach and who live in fear of the non-consensual dissemination of images of their children. “It’s not paranoia, it’s real, it’s happening and it’s very sad. We are moving to ensuring that our privacy is not stolen from the sand,” warns Ferrer. According to the therapist, these concerns have reached her from families she works with from various parts of Catalonia, Galicia, and northern Spain. Children's privacy, more exposed

Although there is no comparable data to measure the extent to which this habit has changed, many families and professionals perceive a change in the way childhood is lived in public spaces. “A daily photograph that may seem innocent at first glance – for example, at the beach, in a bikini or swimsuit – can end up being reused with artificial intelligence tools or circulating in criminal environments for the exchange of child sexual abuse images,” warns Irene Montiel, professor of Law and Political Science at the Open University of Catalonia and researcher at the VICRIM group. The current regulations on data protection do not establish specific regulations for spaces such as beaches or swimming pools, but rather apply the general framework on the right to one's own image, privacy, and data protection. There are situations in which a person may appear incidentally in a photograph taken in a public space, but the general principle is that the capture and, above all, the dissemination of identifiable images require special caution, even more so when minors are involved. “In the case of minors, it would not be permitted to photograph them, as the aim is precisely to protect their image and privacy. Since these are public spaces, we must be aware that people may appear in our photographs at any time, but the general principle is that no one should be able to take a photo of someone else without authorization,” explains Francisco Pérez Bes, deputy of the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD). In the case of minors under fourteen years of age, if a photo is to be taken of them, authorization must always be given by parents or legal guardians.More eyes: when it's no longer just the mobile phone recording

But the challenge, adds Pérez Bes, is no longer just mobile phones. “There are increasingly more devices with a conventional appearance that can be used for recording. For example, smart sunglasses that incorporate photographic and video cameras. This threatens our right to privacy and makes it increasingly difficult to identify whether we are being recorded or not,” he warns. For Ferrer, the debate should not fall solely on families, but also on how we protect shared spaces. “Perhaps we will have to start implementing mobile-free beaches, as is already done in some nightclubs, to regain freedom and avoid digital exposure,” he suggests. The line between protecting and scaring

Faced with this situation, many families opt to put swimsuits or some piece of clothing on children. “Families cover them with sun protection clothing, using it as a shield so they are not so exposed to a sexualizing gaze. But, of course, the internal moral dilemma as parents is there: ‘I want my son to be able to go naked, calm and relaxed, but at the same time I am teaching him that his body is not to be shown’,” reflects Ferrer. For his part, Montiel considers that measures must be taken and the most vulnerable protected by setting limits if necessary: “Thirty years ago it was not common to see so many mobile phones or electronic devices and we did not feel so exposed. Now, anyone can take a photo or record a video without you noticing. We have to have a little more awareness and set limits, we should not fall into collective panic, but we must transmit values of care and respect for our own body”.Ferrer recommends looking for less crowded beaches and quiet spaces and, if nudism aligns with family values, opting for contexts where this practice is lived more naturally. Precisely, recent information on nudism in Catalonia suggests that the naturist collective perceives a reduction in the practice and links it, among other factors, to shame and fear of exposure on social media. "Any public space can be a risk context, considering that there are people looking for this type of images. It's not about living in fear but about being aware of it," explains Montiel, also a professor in the criminology degree at the UOC.

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It's almost a classic in the family imagination: sooner or later we end up heading to the famous Parisian park to experience a few days of pure fantasy. The excitement in the children's eyes when they see the big castle or hug their favorite character is an image that remains etched in the retina forever, and that is undeniable. It's one of those places you have to go to once in your life. However, once the dream is fulfilled, parents also know the fine print of the experience well: budgets that require financial engineering, hours of queuing that test the limits of our patience, and the feeling of being in a constant traffic jam of people and strollers.

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Births in Catalonia rose slightly last year after 17 years of decline. In 2025, 28,019 boys and 26,230 girls were born, a total of 54,249 infants, representing an increase of 0.8% compared to 2024, according to provisional data released this morning by the Institute of Statistics of Catalonia, Idescat. This breaks a downward trend of almost two decades, although the increase is so slight that the crude birth rate remains at 6.7 births per 1,000 inhabitants, the same as in 2024.

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Most children stop using daytime diapers between the ages of two and four, although nighttime training can be more difficult and may not be completed until around five or six years of age. For Alejandra Pérez, supervisor of pediatrics and neonatology at Sant Pau Campus Salut Barcelona, it is key to understand that sphincter control is not a habit learned through repetition, "but rather a maturational milestone acquired when the child's body is physiologically, cognitively, and emotionally ready." Neurologically, Pérez continues, "it involves a transition from an involuntary reflex action (where the bladder empties automatically) to a voluntary and conscious act under cortical control." Forcing this process prematurely, therefore, "is ineffective and can generate frustration, anxiety, and unnecessary conflicts, as each child has their own pace of nervous system maturation."

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Born more than 25 years ago as a non-profit social initiative associated work cooperative, DELTACOOP has consolidated its own model of support for children, adolescents, and families based on proximity, quality, and commitment to the territory. Currently, the entity is made up of professionals who actively participate in a horizontal, democratic, and people-centered organization.

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The other day, at a social gathering (they call it baby shower and I haven't been able to sleep since), there was a mother with a small child in a stroller. She was next to me, so I could see how she was looking, all worried, at children's reels on her mobile phone (a phone the size of the middle slice of a rustic loaf). To spare myself the sight of the creature passing, with its little fingers, disturbing frogs with a narco accent, I made a joke. The kind of jokes you make to kids. Then the mother looked at me, condescendingly, and said: "You'll be a good grandmother." If my daughter made a joke to the same creature or said things to it, the deceased wouldn't tell her: "You'll be a good mother."

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Each year, the Joan Brossa Foundation adds more and more educational centers that want to practice poetry and art from a playful, experimental, and radical perspective, just as the poet Joan Brossa created. To break away from canons and innovate, to try new ways of writing, to play with the forms of language as if they were objects you can hang on walls... Brossa is intuition, play, and freedom, and so too is the educational program that the Joan Brossa Foundation's Centre for Free Arts makes available to schools and families.

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Summer and heat are here, and we change our footwear, but which is the most suitable for children's feet? Podiatrist and communicator Neus Moya advises that to choose respectful footwear, you must observe that the child walks exactly the same as if they were barefoot. "The shoe must respect the shape and function of the foot. It must have an anatomical toe box and allow movement".

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“At first I was afraid of everything: of the food, that something might happen to them, I was even afraid of them sleeping away from home. But after the first experience, the girl came back very happy and the fear has passed,” explains Nabila, mother of three, about the summer camps. Her daughter Yosra, eleven years old, has already been to camps twice, once with school and once in the summer. Her son Marouan, 16 years old, has also been – this year will be the fourth time – and the youngest, Omar, hasn't dared to go yet, although Nabila has hopes.

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The Romans left a profound mark on the Iberian Peninsula, visible in Latin, Roman law, aqueducts, bridges, amphitheaters, and triumphal arches. Thanks to genetics, we now know that their arrival also changed the population's DNA. A study led by researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and published in the journal iScience has obtained the most complete and precise picture to date of the history and genetic evolution of the Iberian peoples who inhabited the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula from the beginnings of the Iron Age until the Roman conquest, between 2,700 and 2,100 years ago.

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The end of the school year is approaching, and with it, a scene that repeats in many homes with school-aged children: they arrive with various – if not many – crafts they've made at school, in after-school activities... And the questions return: what should we do with all this? Do we keep it all? Do we throw it all away? Do we leave it at home and gradually discard it after a few days without the children noticing?

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