Eileen Hayes is a parent of four, Parenting and Child Behaviour Expert, author, magazine columnist, trained family counsellor and parent coach, and frequent broadcaster on television and radio.
Her background includes psychology and health education degrees, teaching, and research on ante and post-natal care and education. She had a monthly Q&A column and wrote regular features for Practical Parenting for eight years, and previously for BBC Parenting as well as frequent features for other magazines such as Junior. She is Editor-in-Chief of the new Redwood magazine, Your Family which first came out in March 2005. She is one of the Parenting Experts on www.bbc.co.uk/parenting and wrote a large amount of the content across all ages for that site.
Her books include Crying, by MacMillan, Understanding Your Baby and Understanding Your Toddler by Egmont, Tantrums by Hamlyn, Crying and Comforting from Dorling Kindersley, and Your Baby’s First Year (Contributor) Dorling Kindersley.
Eileen is a regular contributor to the media on parenting and family topics. For television, she has done several series of Practical Parenting slots for Living Channel; presented a parenting strand on BBC1's A Family of My Own; a Parenting Tips strand on the BBC2 series Everyone’s Got One as well as appearances on many other shows, including Granada’s Perfect Parenting, Channel 5 Espresso magazine, GMTV, Carlton People, and This Morning with the survival guide for new mums. She has recently filmed a series of parenting tips for the new Baby Channel. She is currently doing regular slots on channel 5’s The Wright Stuff.
For radio she is often interviewed on such programmes as Woman’s Hour and Jeremy Vine, for which she does a regular lifestyle slot. She recently made the four part parenting series A Very Important Profession for the World Service.
Eileen is currently Vice-Chair of the national organisation Parenting UK, which aims to improve education and support for all parents. She also chairs a Media and Parenting Working Group, trying to persuade all sections of the media to give better coverage to parenting and childcare issues. It has produced the research reports Family Viewing and Parenting Online.
She is a popular speaker on parenting both in this country and abroad, and is currently working with the company, Parents Matter giving parenting talks and running Parenting Surgeries in the workplace and other settings.
As Parenting Advisor to the NSPCC, Eileen has written all of their highly acclaimed Parenting materials, including Get Ready, Baby’s First Year and Encouraging Better Behaviour. She has worked on many of their major campaigns, including Protecting Babies and Toddlers and helped devise the Not Naughty but Normal campaign on toddler behaviour, producing the popular Toddler Tips booklet.
Eileen is also Parenting Consultant to Bounty who distribute information material to all new parents, to Mothercare concerning their new website development, and to Playhouse Disney, for whom she helped devise Friendship Week, including a pack of materials for all nurseries and tips for parents, and for which she helped promote Play With Me Sesame, Higglytown Heroes, Little Einsteins and Mickey Mouse Club House in the U.K. She is currently developing a Baby DVD funded by Huggies and carrying out PR work for Johnson and Johnson, Mothercare, and the DfES Parent Know-How Campaign. She writes regularly for Tesco Baby Club magazines.
She has been nominated several times as one of the Women of the Year for her work in promoting better parenting and childcare.
