Browse Articles in "Parenting"

Teaching your child things about life can be a great experience. Potty training a toddler is very important in life and can be fun. Make sure your child is exhibiting signs of readiness before moving forward.

I do believe that some of the toughest things we have to deal with when we are parents are our own impulsive reactions. One thing we need to learn is how to stop yelling at kids. Our responsibility is a big one; we are teaching life to our kids, trying to give them the tools they'll need in order to become healthy, happy, successful adults.
Many parents underestimate the importance of communication and the impact of their own words and behavior on their children. This, dear parents, is the basis of parenting as the majority of the bad behavior you see in your child is generated by you, whether you accept it or not. Instead of feeling guilty and scared by this truth, I believe it's time to learn how to stop yelling at kids and make a beneficial change in how you react and therefore in how your child behaves!
Here are 3 key advices on how to stop yelling at kids:
1. There's a basic ...

Learning how to handle children is something that never ends because being a parent is a journey and we keep learning along the road. Still, there are tips and tools on how to handle children that you can use right now to improve your relationship with your child and make him more co-operative. What I'm going to help you understand is that to make your child have a good behavior and stick to it, you are the one who has to make the first step or rather the 3 first steps actually.
Here's how to handle children in an effective way:
1. Don't give orders, give choices. Carefully choosing your words is an important aspect of how to handle children. What I mean here is that what kids dislike the most is having the feeling you are being unfair with them. Do you want your child to do chores? Don't say "do this", give the choices between this and that and stick to these ...

Bedtime issues are one of the main problems parents are facing with their child. To be more specific, the main problem isn't that their child won't sleep, but mostly that he won't stay in bed. Sleep is very important in young children and making a child sleep is actually impossible. If he's tired, he'll sleep. But when a child doesn't sleep, he usually gets up and finds excuses: he wants a glass of water, forgot to tell you something, want to sleep in your bed... Even if you can't make your child sleep, you definitely can make him stay in his bed and therefore fall asleep faster.
Here are the 5 things to do when a child won't sleep or rather won't stay in bed:
1. Establish a bedtime routine. The steps you choose to create your bedtime routine don't matter as much as the routine itself. Basically, the steps can be: put his pajamas, brush his teeth, pick a short book to read, pick a ...

It seems that for a very long time now, to spank a child was equal to disciplining a child. The reason the parents who spank their children do so is that they want to show them that it hurts when they hit or they want to make them calm down, or they think it's the only way children can understand they did something wrong.
What I think, and what many parenting experts think, is that it's wrong to spank a child. Yes, even a light spank.
Here are the reasons why:

Spanking, in a child's mind, means that it's ok to hit others. Parents who spank are surprised to see their child hit them. But it's pretty logical that they imitate your own behavior. Spanking a child because he hits is perfectly absurd.

 

Spanking can have very bad consequences. To spank a child makes him be afraid of you and he will start hiding the little bad things he does to avoid being spanked. ...

Rules are important but if badly explained or not explained at all, they can easily sound unfair to your child. An unruly child is a child who doesn't understand the rules settled by his parents. What you need to understand is the ineffectiveness of your rules when they are not discussed.
An unruly child, just like a lying child, or a child with any bad behavior is the result of a bad communication between you and your child. You can clearly change your child's behavior by applying a different "strategy" with him, by using new communication tools.
Here are the 4 easy steps you can take to deal effectively with your unruly child:
1. Give an accurate explanation of your reactions, the rules you set up, the punishments you give. Say exactly what you say no to. If you don't explain things but just apply logic consequences to your kid's bad behavior (logic to you!), you can't ...

I do know that we can lose our sanity when we are a mother. At one point, we just feel and know that things aren't any longer under our control. Perhaps you know what went wrong, maybe you don't even recall the way it happened, how this routine made of tantrums and screams established itself into your life. I think that the minute we are tempted to google "desperate mother", is when we feel like we have tried everything and that we are powerless and tired and maybe worried we might not love our kid enough. It's a shocking thought, but it can happen too, it is a reality.



What I would like you to do, dear desperate mother, is to look at things in perspective, take some time to think and understand that your child is a child, that he'll not adapt himself to you if you do not change your own behaviour, reactions, words. What you need is good communication skills, know which ...

The motive why that article isn't about "handling bad kids" is because bad kids don't exist! The difficulty is their behaviour, the one moms and dads create without knowing it, the one they have to modify. I must underline that for the reason that dads and moms often believe they only have to say "no" to make kids bad behavior stop. Children need to understand things before doing a change in how they react. The first thing they have to understand is that their parents' love for them is unconditional and that it's their bad behavior that's punished.



Kids bad behavior has for major cause their moms and dads behaviour. It's not simple to accept, I know that, but you shouldn't feel guilty about it. You're not born dads and moms and you're doing your best with what you know. You must know far more communication tools. If you feel ready to do something about your ...

I am not going to write a very long intro here considering that you just need to see your reality from another point of view. We as human beings generally mix up our deep feelings with our emotions generated nearly immediately by some situations. Exclusively the thoughtful ones, or the dads and moms who have read this article (!), have the ability to put their emotions and impulsive reactions aside and always express what they really feel inside of them. I'm going to reveal to you what "I hate my child" really means. Kids are good at pushing our buttons, they make us be impulsive, do and say things we often regret.

I want to be more straightforward here. Saying "I hate my child" is the logical consequence (yes, I mean this) of the undesirable emotions that are accumulated. The emotions and circumstances I'm referring to probably are your best enemies at the ...

To start with, what do we really mean by "How to discipline a child?". I honestly think that the term "discipline" is an old fashion way to express a positive behaviour in a child with you and with other people. It suggests the respect of the boundaries you're trying to create inside your family. That is the discipline. Rules. Obey. Discipline. Sounds a bit military to me. So what about love? What about tender moments with your little one? Some of you will think "I can love my little one and still set up strict rules he has got to obey. Principles are necessary, love is natural. It is distinct." Well no. It is not different. It precisely needs to be the same. Allow me to explain this.

My straightforward and clear answer to the question "How to discipline a child?" is the following: Make your limits mean love. Do not separate the tender and ...