About Teri Farrari
Developmental psychologist, natural health practitioner, author — and mother.
For more than thirty years I've been fascinated by one question: how do we give a child the very best possible start in life?
It's a question I've pursued as a developmental psychologist, as a natural health practitioner, as the founder of my own early learning schools, and — most instructively of all — as a mother.
I'm not your usual developmental psychologist. Alongside my work in child development, I trained as a natural health practitioner and stress therapist, and I've spent my career exploring how children think, feel, learn and thrive.
It's this rare combination of perspectives that lets me see the whole child — and find creative solutions where more conventional approaches have fallen short.
Where it began
My understanding of young children's potential has been a lifetime in the making. It began, in fact, when I was just five years old and starting school for the very first time — even then, I sensed how little was being done to nurture young children's remarkable capacity to learn. It's an awareness that never left me, and, as I describe in my book, it seems that remarkably little has changed in all the years since.
That early instinct grew, through years of study and rigorous university research as a developmental psychologist, into a firm and evidence-based conviction: that most people — and most early-years settings — dramatically underestimate what a young child is capable of.
My understanding has been shaped by a wide body of research, observation and experience, and affirmed along the way by pioneers in the field, including Glenn Doman's renowned Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia.
And here is what still troubles me most. For decades, child psychology — and more recently neuroscience — has shown us just how extraordinary babies' and young children's brains are, and how vast their capacity for learning.
Yet strikingly little of this understanding has found its way into everyday awareness, or into what actually happens in most early-years settings.
There have, of course, been shifts in early-years practice along the way — the arrival of phonics, the embrace of learning through play — and these are not without merit.
Some long-established approaches have genuine value, too: Montessori, for over a century, has rightly emphasised practical, hands-on learning and independence, and many settings continue to build thoughtfully on those foundations.
Yet too often the pattern has been one of replacing one trend with another, rather than genuinely acting on what the science is now telling us about how much more young children are capable of.
Learning through play, for instance, can become learning very little, when the same familiar activities are repeated day after day without the new and novel experiences that truly stretch a young mind.
In many instances, the gap between what the science tells us and what young children are actually offered remains woefully wide.
This matters far more than academic head-starts. The same sandpit and the same old equipment, day after day, may help a child's social skills — but it does little to build the confidence, adaptability, knowledge and resilience they will need to become adults who can genuinely thrive in an uncertain and rapidly changing world.
Young children are capable of learning about so much more than we tend to offer them — and it's in these earliest years that we lay the true foundations for a capable, resilient and adaptable life.
It was this deep, evidence-based understanding — not guesswork — that I later drew upon in raising my own daughter, and built into my ground-breaking Holistic Early Learning Schools, which demonstrated again and again just how much little children can flourish when the right environment, inspirational activities and opportunities come together.
My work today
Everything I've learned over these years — about how children think, learn and flourish, and about the gap between what's possible and what most children are offered — now shapes how I help families directly. Whether through working with a family one-to-one, through my writing, or through the books and resources I create for children themselves, my purpose is always the same: to help every child reach their remarkable potential.
Over the years my work has been featured across national and international media, including BBC News, Sky Television, The Sunday Times, the Daily Mail and Parents magazine.
Today my work takes three forms, all growing from the same roots:
What I believe
Every child is capable of remarkable things, given the right start. Learning should be fun, inspirational and meaningful — and the early years, from birth to seven, are where the foundations of confidence, curiosity and resilience are truly laid. My aim, in everything I do, is to help you help your child flourish — far beyond what most people imagine is possible.