A Night With Maggie Dent

Commonly known as Australia’s ‘queen of common-sense’, Maggie Dent is an author, educator, and parenting and resilience specialist with a particular interest in the early years and adolescence. 

Maggie’s experience includes teaching, counselling, and working in palliative care/funeral services and suicide prevention. Maggie is an advocate for the healthy, common-sense raising of children in order to strengthen families and communities. She is a passionate, positive voice for children of all ages. 

Now an in-demand writer and speaker, Maggie is a regular contributor to Fairfax's Essential Kids website and Teachers Matter magazine. She can also be heard on commercial and ABC radio around the country and appears on TV programs such as The Daily Edition, Sunrise, Today and news.

Maggie grew up in a large family on a farm in rural south-west Western Australia with 4,000 acres and 10,000 sheep. Her childhood and adolescence were shadowed by low self-esteem, and this experience built the foundation for her work today. Today she lives with her husband in the Illawarra in NSW.

She is the author of nine books, several e-books and a prolific creator of resources for parents, adolescents, teachers, educators and others who are interested in quietly improving their lives. Her books include:

• Saving Our Children from Our Chaotic World: Teaching Children the Magic of Silence and Stillness (rev ed, 2009)
• Nurturing Kids’ Hearts and Souls: Building Emotional, Social and Spiritual Competency (rev ed 2010)
• Real Kids in an Unreal World: How to Build Resilience and Self Esteem in Today’s Children… (2009)
• Saving Our Adolescents: Supporting Today’s Adolescents through the Bumpy Ride to Adulthood (2010)
• Black Duck Wisdom (rev ed 2011)
• 9 Things: A Back-to-Basics Guide to Calm, Common-sense, Connected Parenting Birth-8 (2014)
• Some Secrets for the Modern-Day Mammoth Hunter: Becoming and Being a Good Man (2014) 
• My Cool Plastics Cupboard (a picture book illustrated by Linda True-Arrow) (2015)
• Building Children's Resilience: Essential Tips for Parents of Children birth-12 (2015).

Maggie is a patron of the Bold Park Community School in Perth, the Peel Youth Services, Mandurah WA, and the WA Association of Teacher Assistants (WAATA). She is an ambassador for The Sanctuary - The Hills Women's Shelter in NSW.