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Michael Grose is popular parenting expert and parent coach. He is the author seven books for parents, including the best-selling Why First borns rule the world and last borns want to change it. Michael helps parents raise happy, confident, well-behaved kids and resilient teenagers. Michael is also a popular presenter giving over 100 keynotes and seminars a year in many parts of the world.

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Simple Ways to Prevent Sibling Rivalry
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] There's no doubt that sibling rivalry destroys peace and harmony in many families. In extreme cases it can make family-life hell for parents when kids refuse to cooperate with each other or they always put each other down.

Sowing the Seeds For Future Sucess
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Raising kids is a lot like growing an olive tree....or any plant, for that matter. You have to hang in there as you don't always see the results of all your efforts straight away. You have to keep plugging away and doing your best as a parent. That's why patience is one of your best assets.

Parenting The Difficult Child
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] I hadn't been to one in years - a kids' birthday party, that is. Recently I was invited by a relative to the 1st birthday of her daughter, where I got a first hand lesson in some great parenting. The birthday girl's mum organized party games, catering for toddlers through to early primary school kids.

Does Your Child Learn the Hard Way?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Does your child act before he thinks? Does your child pat a dog, even though you warn him not to? Would your child ignore a 'wet paint, don't touch' sign and check it out for themselves? If you're busy nodding your head then chances are your child likes to learn through trial and error.

Would Your Child Eat the Marshmallow?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Between 1968 and 1974 Stanford University researcher Michael Mischel conducted an unusual experiment that demonstrated the importance of delaying immediate gratification to lifelong success. In a long-term study Mischel, offered 4 year-olds a marshmallow, and told them that if they could wait for the experimenter to return after ten to fifteen minutes, he would reward their patience with another marshmallow.

What Bullying Isn't and What to Do When it Happens
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Bullying is an insidious behaviour that transgresses children's natural right to feel safe and secure. It can adversely affect their learning, emotional well-being, further peer relations and their sense of self.

Secrets to Parenting Together, Not Apart
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Differences in parenting approaches are natural reflecting past parenting experiences, gender differences and experience of children. Differences are healthy, a sign of independent thinking, and can provide a sense of balance to family life. BUT different approaches can cause discomfort, stress and anxiety to one or both parents, particularly when communication and empathy levels are down.

What's Your Family Brand?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] The family frame is the total family environment that kids experience. In many ways, the family frame is similar to the brand of a product or service. It is a reflection of how others perceive you and what you stand for as a family.

A Little Benign Neglect Goes a Long Way
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] It's official! Middle children do get neglected according a recent survey of 1,000 parents and 1,000 middle children. A third of these parents with three children admitted that they tended to leave their children out.

Turn Down the Catastrophe Switch
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] The use of language is important for children to keep perspective of what is happening around them. I was sitting in my living room reading a book last Sunday evening, with the TV on in the background, when I heard the presenter say:

Teen Drinking - Never Safe
[Health-and-Fitness:Drug-Abuse] The current trend to introduce alcohol to teenagers before the legal drinking age of eighteen needs to be urgently reviewed in light of recent Australian research into adolescent drinking. A team from Melbourne's Murdoch Children's Research Institute, tracked 1520 young people's drinking habits over a ten year period and found that there is no safe drinking level for teenagers.

Do Your Kids Deal, Barter & Bargain?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] It seems siblings always seem to be fighting with each other in families, but overt fighting doesn't tell the whole story. Kids develop a complex set of negotiation skills to survive within their family. The following article looks at how kids can develop their own ways of getting on, which you won't necessarily find in parenting manuals.

How Much Do You Compare & Compete With Other Parents?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Do you ever compare your child's behaviour or progress with other children of the same age? It's tempting to use other children's development as benchmarks for your own children's development. It's also tempting to use other children's behaviour as benchmarks for your own child's behaviour. Comparing your child with others is a stress-inducing and, ultimately, useless activity - BUT it's a natural thing to do...

Is Perfectionism Holding Back Your Child?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Are you living with a perfectionist? Do you have a child who is held back by the curse of perfectionism? Perfectionists can also be hard to live with. They make demanding partners and anxious children. Being a slave to perfectionism means kids become observers rather than participants in many aspects of life. Read the following article to discover the '9 ways to spot a perfectionist'.

Helping Kids Cope With Natural Disaster News
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Natural disasters can be brought into our living rooms via the media from time to time. As adults we all want our children to live carefree lives and keep them from the pain and even horror of tragedies such as natural disasters. In reality we can't do this. So what is a parent, teacher, or other caring adult to do when the natural disasters fills the airwaves and the consciousness of society? The following article provides some ideas on what to do.

Help Your Child Make the Most of the Fresh Start
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] I was walking my dog Mia through my local primary school this morning. It had gone through an instant transformation over the long weekend. The grass had been mowed. The playground tidied and classrooms had been cleaned in preparation for the new year.

20 Parenting Ideas to Be a Better Parent
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] During the end of year holidays I like to kick back and put my feet up. I also like to read widely to get some inspiration to help me focus in the coming year. Here are two quotes I read during my break that really resonated with me: "If you want better children and a better society then you need better parents." Maurice Balson. "Parenting is probably the most important public health issue facing our society." Professor Graham Vimpani.

New Year's Goal-Setting For Parents
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] The New Year is an ideal time for reflection and renewal so for the last four years I have given readers a gift designed to help you reflect on your parenting - I am giving you a damned good question ...... to ask your kids! Read the following article to find out what that question is and how it can make you have a hard look at yourself and put some changes in place!

What Did You Overhear at the Kitchen Table As a Kid?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Do you ever hear your own parent talk through you? I do. Sometimes I think I am channelling my father. I open up my mouth and my dad jumps right out.

Overcoming the Jitters - Helping Anxious Kids
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Anyone who has experienced anxiety will know how debilitating it can be. For those with no personal experience of anxiety it can be hard to know what all the fuss is about. Around 1 in 10 children struggle with anxiety and nearly 50% of adult sufferers identify that anxiety began in childhood. The following article offers skills that can help kids cope with anxiety before it takes hold on their life.

10 Ways to Sabotage Effective Family Meetings
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Meetings often reflect the culture of the organization or group that runs them. If you are in a laidback family then my bet is that the meetings will be laidback and relaxed too. If you are a highly-organised, routine-driven family then your meetings will tend to be that way too. So while we try to follow a general meeting structure their application should vary to suit your family style.

3 Questions That Prompt Smart Decisions
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Children at any time are either out of control, under control or in control. Hopefully your children are not out of control, but many parents think they are successful if their children are under their control. Sooner or later kids will break out and rebel against overly strong authority - either that or they never grow up. However, if your child is often out of control then it maybe necessary to get them under control before they can be in control. The following article provides some simple guides to help achieve the middle ground: children in control & learning to make decisions for themselves.

11 Going on 25
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] "Got any kids?" I said to the taxi-driver to break an awkward silence during a recent trip to Brisbane. "Yep, I got one daughter. She's 11 going on 25." The cabbie was a single dad whose eleven year old only daughter stayed with him two days a week. "It used to be easy, mate! We'd have a ball when she come and stay with me. She was me best mate. Now, she doesn't want to know me!"

Who is the Boss?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] How much voice should I give my child? is a common question I am asked. 'It depends....," is my reply. "Do this and do it now!" may have cut it in the past and it may cut it with 'easy' kids but it doesn't cut it these days, particularly with challenging kids. The following article looks at the best managerial styles for families, family meetings and how they can foster less sibling fighting and kids that are better equipped to make decisions as teens.

You Can Say No!
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] The mums were sweating over a decision they had to make. Their 13yo daughters had asked for permission to go on a Saturday night party bus with over forty 16 & 17 year olds. Both mums admitted that alarm bells were ringing & they didn't feel good about letting their daughters go.

Getting More Cooperation From Kids
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] 'Obey your elders' was something many of us as kids were constantly reminded about. The concept of obedience belongs to a bygone era when kids were seen and not heard and respect was hierarchical ('respect you elders') rather than mutual ('we respect each other'). Obedience has been replaced by the concept of 'cooperation'. The following article looks at strategies for getting your children to cooperate with you - which is perhaps one of the biggest challenge for many parents.

Which Would You Choose For Your Child - IQ Or Persistence?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Imagine at the birth of your child you are given a choice between bestowing 'great intelligence' or 'great persistence' on your baby. Which would you choose? One of them will make a profound difference - it will impact heavily on your child's success at school, their future levels of achievement levels and eventually income levels as an adult. Read the following article to find out which one it is and how it can give your child a significant leg-up for future success.

Parenting the Family Underdog
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] One of the unwritten laws of family-life is that talent and ability is unevenly distributed between siblings. For some children achieving success takes more effort and concentration than it does for their siblings. The following article provides some ideas to keep in mind if you are parenting a child where success, at school, sport and other common childhood activities, just doesn't come naturally.

Disciplining Other People's Kids
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Disciplining the children of a friend or relative is easy if you are on the same parenting wavelength, but it's really challenging when your standards of behaviour are worlds apart! Parents can be protective of not only their children, but their way of raising them. Disciplining of children in public by someone else can be taken as a personal affront to their effectiveness as a parent. The following article provides some guidelines to help with the process of disciplining other people's kids.

Make it Easy to Behave by Cuing, Grooming & Shaping
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Getting kids to behave well is a dilemma for many parents. Discipline is thought to be reactive - that is, something that we do after kids have behaved poorly. But it is also about being proactive - that is, making it is easy for kids to behave well). Read the following article to discover the three tools that make it easy for kids to behave well.

12 Friendship Skills Every Child Needs
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Popularity should not be confused with sociability. A number of studies in recent decades have shown that appearance, personality type and ability impact on a child's popularity at school. Good-looking, easy-going, talented kids usually win peer popularity polls but that doesn't necessarily guarantee they will have friends. The following article looks at the things that help children and young people develop strong friendships and gives them a definite set of skills that help make them easy to like, easy to relate to and easy to play with.

What Kids Learn From Fathers
[Home-and-Family:Fatherhood] Kids learn important lessons from their dads. A recent study found that three quarters of dads nominated their father as the person from whom they learned their most important life skills. The following article looks at the fundamental lessons dads teach their kids and also highlights 'What do dads teach girls?' and the fact that 'Boys grow into their dads'

Helping Kids Unwind
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Modern kids are busy kids. Regardless of age, their days are filled with activities. There is nothing wrong with kids being busy as long as they have plenty of chances to relax and unwind. The following article looks at how relaxation as well as being a key to good mental health and well-being, is also an important life skill for kids to learn.

"Race You!" - Constantly Competing Kids
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Some kids turn every activity into a competition, especially when their siblings are involved. At times, even getting into the car becomes a race for the front seat! The following article looks at where your kids' competitiveness can come from and what you can do about it.

Create the Right Family Culture and Good Behaviour is Easy
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] When parents focus on promoting the right culture within their family then children's behaviour will generally fall into line with that culture. This requires parents to be effective leaders of the family rather than just be competent managers of children's behaviour. But what type of culture should we be focusing on? Read the following article to find out about the family culture that has the best outcomes for kids and the values it promotes.

Are You Robbing Your Child of Their Resilience?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Parents have the best of intentions when raising their kids. But the best of intentions don't necessarily lead to great parenting. Modern kids need to be resilient so they can deal with the ups and downs of life. There are seven ways that well-intentioned parents rob their children of their resilience.

Building Scaffolds to Independence
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Ever had the situation where your child wants to do something that you consider risky or outside their capability range? On one hand, you want to develop a sense of independence in kids. On the other hand, your duty of care means you must match the potential risk attached to a situation with your assessment of your child's ability to manage. In this article read some recent examples of potentially risky situations that were child-initiated.

The KEY to Reducing Sibling Fighting
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Singling fighting in families is common but not inevitable. There are effective strategies to put in place to reduce the amount of sibling fighting.

10 Classic Sibling Fighting Mistakes Parents Make
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Sibling fighting is common but not inevitable. Sometimes we are parents get drawn into sibling disputes when they don't involve us. And we become part of the problem, and become involved in the conflict.

Get Your Parenting Act TOGETHER
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Ideally communication happens naturally within families however in busy times it is best not to leave things to chance. But it pays to plan some time to spend with your partner both to nourish the partnership and also to help you work off the same song sheet with your parenting.

Attention - Helping Kids Cope With Hardships, Frustration & Difficulties
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Coping with Hardships, Frustration and Disappointments, both big and small is part of growing up. How kids respond to these events will be determined by their resilience and will have a profound impact on their future success and well-being. There are five factors that determine how they react and how quickly and how far they spring back when they experience HFD's.

Discipline Checklist - 10 Things You Must Do To Get Cooperation From Kids
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Effectiveness when managing children is largely about attention to detail. That is, attending to the minutiae of communication - the little things that matter. Attention to detail and consistency of application are the two keys to effective discipline. Discipline is a process that when followed leads to cooperation. Here is checklist of 10 things you must do to get cooperation from kids.

Improve Your Child's Concentration
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] There are many things you can do at home to impact on children' concentration levels. Like any skill concentration can be enhanced and made automatic. The trick to effective concentration is to know what to concentrate on and what to filter out.

Raising Sensitive Children
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Sensitive kids are like mood detectives with their antennae up trying to detect subtle changes in the moods of those around them. In some ways this is healthy as emotionally intelligent people are tuned into the behaviours and feelings of others. Sensitive kids generally have high emotional intelligence quotients. Find out the keys to raising sensitive or anxious kids.

6 Ways To Stop Tell-Tale Behaviour In Your Family
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Telling tales' on a sibling seems to be part of family-life. It is funny how children will dob in their siblings at home, when they wouldn't dream of dobbing in their friends at school for similar behaviours. The message for parents is fairly clear. Avoid responding automatically to children's tales and recognise that children use 'tales' to involve parents in disputes that are really should belong to children. Here are six strategies guaranteed to reduce tall tales of woe in your family.

Five Easy Ways To Help Kids Learn
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] One way to impact positively on children's futures is for parents to help children value learning for learning's sake. This sounds a little bizarre as children are natural learners. They have to be or they would never develop. Sometimes children shut down from learning. They do so when they experience failure or someone tells them they can't learn.

Ask Kids GOOD Questions
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Like everything else talking to kids can be done a) poorly, b) moderately or, c) really well. Talking develops your relationship with them, their relationships skills, their self-esteem and, if done really well, their own self-knowledge. If you talk really well to them they become encouraged to talk to you. Talking is a skill, like any other, that takes practice.

Effective Parents Need Two Qualities
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] It is cliche to say that being a parent isn't easy. But modern parents face unique challenges that requires more than the ability to feed, house and nurture kids. Parents today need two qualities in particular to help them raise confident kids who are happy in their own skins.

Parenting Foundations - What Great Parents Do
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] There is no great secret to being a great parent. There are many. The best parents are informed parents. They want the best for their kids so they actively seek out the best information and advice available.

Do Less Rather Than More For Your Kids
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] It is easy as parents to take on the jobs and responsibilities that really should belong to our children. With toddlers it is so easy to dress, feed and clean up after them rather than give these jobs over to them. With school-aged children we can find ourselves making lunches, getting kids out of bed and cleaning out schoolbags rather than giving these basic tasks of living over to them. And as I discovered, it is easy to still do the basics of life for adult-aged children.

Which Birth Order Position Is Smartest?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] A recent Norwegian study found that when it comes to being bright, one birth order position stands out from the rest. This study even found a way to resolve the nature V's nurture debate.

5 Social Skills Your Kids Need For Success
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] We underestimate the importance of social competencies in kids in terms of their contribution to kids’ well-being and, indirectly, their success at school. There are five social behaviours that are generally considered core social and friendship skills.

Cheeky kids
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Arguments, last-wordedness or comeback lines, which are often about kids saving face, threaten our position or prestige as parents or teachers. “You can’t say that to me, I am the adult,” is the type of thinking that brings us undone every time.

Bringing Out The Best Behaviour In Kids
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] New discipline is based on different consistency and uses common sense tools to bring out children's best behaviour. It is more concerned with "teaching children how to behave well" than teaching "them a lesson." Bringing out children's better behaviour is easy if you have easy children. It can be more testing if you have challenging kids or when you are raising active toddlers and feisty teenagers with plenty of 'tude (attitude).

My Child Did "What?"
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] And most of the time kids will follow the messages and values that you promote. As parents we want our kids to behave well as their behaviour reflects on us, doesn't it? Kids are kids. As every parent knows children will often say what they are thinking. They are not constrained by the same social mechanisms as adults. These come with age - a little later for boys than girls!

MySpace And Your Kids
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] The Internet is a new medium for marginalised young people to hang out in and connect with each other. There is no shortage of content online about self-harm but the medium itself does not cause self-harm. Youth sub-cultures thrive online and Emo (short for emotional), perhaps the most perverse and potentially dangerous sub-culture has a strong presence on MySpace.

Put Kids In Good Moods Naturally
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] My mother didn't realise it all those years ago when she insisted I got plenty of sleep - that I started the day with a healthy breakfast - and that I walked two kilometers to school, she was actually giving me a serotonin high. Her words of encouragement as I walked out the front door didn't hurt either. She didn't know she was altering my brain chemicals by doing what came naturally.

Getting Children To Help Without Paying Them A Cent
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] There is no doubt that busy modern parents need their children to help at home just as parents of past generations did. But increasingly parents are paying their children to help which teaches kids to think 'what's in this for me?' Let's look at some simple alternatives to getting children to help out at home, without being paid.

Discipline - To Spank or Not To Spank
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] In all parts of the world the smacking or spanking debate polarises parents. But 'to spank or not to spank' is simplistic and misses the point about discpline.

Are You a Person, Partner or Parent First?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Most parents put their children's needs before their own and their partner's needs. We have been trained to think in these ways. But this thinking is not good for kids; it is not good for sustainable relationships and it is certainly not healthy for an individual. We need to revolutionize the way we think of the parent, partner and person relationship.

Bringing Out The Best In Boys
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Raising and educating boys is still a hot topic in Australia, the United States and other parts of the world. It appears that those adults who do best raising and teaching boys have a significant understanding and appreciation of what makes boys tick. When you know the key drivers and motivators for boys you can help them achieve wonders.

Get Your Children To Listen To You - Every Time You Speak
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] If you want your children to take notice of you and really hear you then you need to take into account the little things that make a big difference. Little things like moving into their proximal space, which is different to invading their personal space. Little things like picking the timing to communicate. Little things like...

Establishing Good Sleep Patterns in Children
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Sleep experts stress that while adults may not have control over biology we can assist by helping children and teens establish good sleep patterns. It has been noted that children who develop good sleep patterns tend to carry these into adolescence. If you are parent of young children struggling to get them to sleep or battling kids who want to stay up longer then some knowledge of good sleep habits maybe useful.

Sewing The Seeds For Success
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Children seldom misquote their parents. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what we shouldn't have said! Our words as well as our focus are powerful indeed. Be aware of the language we use when interacting with kids and hone in like a laser beam on the positive characteristics that they have that will help them be successful.

7 Parenting Strategies That Cause Sibling Rivalry
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Sibling rivalry comes with the parenting territory. Sibling rivalry, however, is not necessarily a fait accompli. It doesn’t have to happen, or at least to the extent that it has a negative impact on children and family-life. Parenting practices do play their part. Frustratingly, it is easier to inflame rivalry than it is to reduce rivalry.

Five Biggest Mistakes Parents Make With Confidence-Boosting
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Parents always have the right intentions when they boost their children's confidence but sometimes their esteem-boosting efforts backfire and have the reverse effect. Here are the five biggest mistakes parents make when boosting kids' confidence and what they can do to avoid them

10 Keys to Children's High Self-esteem
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Parents and teachers need a range of skills and strategies to help children develop a healthy self-esteem and maintain it even when events conspire to really challenge them. Self-esteem building is important as the way a child perceives him or herself is far more important in determining future outcomes than pure ability and academic competence.

Is Your Child Addicted to Routine?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] While most kids go "woo hoo" as they race out the school gate to begin holidays others respond "uh-o" as they realise they have not only lost the familiar (and friendly) faces of their teachers, but the reassurance provided by their clockwork-like daily routine. School bells and timetables are solace for some children as they take the guesswork out of life

Make It Easy For Your Kids To Be Responsible
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Some children need some help to develop responsibility rather than being left to their own devices. The As a parent you need to make it easy for some children to be responsible for their own well-being. This requires us to move into teacher mode, which can be a challenge at those busiest times of the day.

Wise Ways To Use Pocket-Money
[Finance] Giving pocket-money is an excellent way to develop independence in children and young people. Children should receive pocket-money as their small share of the family wealth just as they should share the workload at home. Read about five ideas to help you use pocket-money to develop independence and also a sense of generosity in your children.

Why Parents should feel like Atilla the Hun (sometimes)
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] If you are a parent, grandparent, teacher or a caring professional, who at times, feels that you are five steps to the right of Attila the Hun in young people eye’s, hang in there. Your current discomfort maybe a small price to pay for a teenager’s future well being.

Helping Students With Homework
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] There has been considerable disagreement over the last decade about the value of homework for primary aged children. Most educators agree that reading is the most valuable homework that a child can do and should become a daily habit for children. But how can you make a child do homework if they don't want to?

Praise With Impact
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Praise considerably impacts on children's confidence and self-esteem but it needs to be given with care and precision. There are three types of praise that will impact immeasurably on your child's self-esteem and confidence.

Self-confidence Secrets of Bindi Irwin
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] What it is the secret to Bindi Irwin's self-confidence? What can we learn and apply to parenting our own children? There are possibly eight factors working in her favour – three are due to birth and the other five due to the environment.

Overcoming the Bed-wetting Blues
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Staying dry at night is a common problem for many children. Between 15-20% of six year olds regularly wet their beds at night and 7% of ten year olds have bed wetting difficulties. There is little difference between the sexes although there is a slightly higher incidence among boys. Bed wetting knows no social or geographical boundaries. It matters little which side of the tracks a child is born. However it is more important who he is related to as many children who wet the bed have fathers or uncles who did the same.

Raising G-rated Kids in an X-rated World
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Kids today are exposed to too much adult-oriented content too early. In some ways today’s children remind me of slum children in Victorian England, who saw too much but experienced very little. Today’s kids are exposed to too much in terms of adult content and concepts that they may not understand and they don’t have enough positive developmental experiences that involve all their senses(however this is a topic for another day).

Is Your Child Addicted to the NET?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] The much-publicised risk of predators is small compared with excessive use and the consequent isolation. While the research is thin on the ground about the NET and its effects on children and young people it is fair to say that many concerns concentrate around overuse at the expense of offline activities and relationships.

Healthy Self-esteem Thinking
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Most of us have met or worked with very talented people who are held back by low self-esteem or poor self-belief. They talk themselves down or out of success before they have even tackled a task.research shows children with low self-esteem have three poor thinking habits, which are reflected through the way they speak and behave. High self-esteemers have different thinking habits which result in higher levels of satisfaction and achievement.

Toddlers and Teens Have Plenty in Common
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] If you want to learn how to raise a teenager then think back to how you raised your toddler. Developmentally, both groups have a lot in common.

Girls are Growing Up Too Fast
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Girls are dressing and acting older than ever before. They move from toys to boys in the blink of an eye. Not only are girls worried about how they look and dress at an early age many are concerned about their body image, which makes them susceptible to dieting and watching weight in a way that kids shouldn’t have to.

Talking to Kids about Sex
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Talking to children about sex is hard work but it is something parents need to do. There appears to be five traits shared by parents who are able to talk openly about sexual issues with their children.

Help Boys Tap into All Four Emotions
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] It is little wonder that anger is a huge issue for many boys. That is only negative emotion that they can legitimately display where they can keep face in the boy culture. If boys can't show sadness or fear then everything comes out as anger.

Secrets to Superior Language Development
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Although the first six or seven years of life are a critical period for language, this period only declines gradually. Children of all ages can benefit from increased language stimulation – less TV, more conversation and reading.

Sibling Fighting - Teach Our Kids to Resolve Conflict Peacefully
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Sibling fighting tends to come with the parenting territory. It is born from rivalry or competitiveness between siblings and shows itself through mindless arguments, noisy squabbles, physical means, verbal put-downs and even long silences. There are steps parents can take to help children to resolve conflict peacefully and effectively.

Nurturing Your Child's Thinking Skills
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Children spend more time at home than at school yet parents often feel most children’s learning occurs behind the classroom door. Learning is natural and has no boundaries and can happen anywhere. As parents are children's first teachers they can nurture curiosity and enquiry so that they can become learners beyond the classroom.

Super Nanny is a Parent Hazard
[Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] What type of impact does TV's Super Nanny have on parenting? Does it reduce to parenting to pest control and show children in a poor light?

Kids' Pester Power
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] "Mum, can you buy me something?" Any parent knows the how persistent children can be when they have their hearts set on something. But children's nag power has gone to another level as savvy marketers target children's hearts, minds and their parents' wallets.

Seven Tips for Handling Children's Aggressive Behaviours
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Aggressive behaviour in children is definitely on the increase. Here are some thoughts on children’s aggressive behaviour to guide you if it is an issue you face.

Shyness and Showing Off
[Kids-and-Teens] Shyness and showing-off are opposite behaviours but they have a great deal in common. They both receive a great deal of attention and are both behaviours that bother parents. They can also be handled in similar ways.

Five Ways to Combat Peer Pressure on Kids
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] As children move toward adolescence the need to fit in with and identify with a group of peers outside their family becomes even stronger. While the increased influence of peers is a normal part of development they can sometimes use some help to resist the pressure to conform that’s placed on them.

Keeping Kids Away From Electonic Screens
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] The biggest factor affecting children’s play habits is the revolution in sedentary entertainment options- television, computers and video games. There are ways to limit the amount of screens that children watch.

Combatting Children's Pester Power
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Children place a great deal of pressure on each other to acquire the latest fashion item, toy or foodstuff. Invariably, it is parents who are the butt of this pressure as children turn to them to fund their consumer-driven lifestyles.

Raising An Only Child
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Only children are now on the increase. If self-esteem and school achievement were measures of a well-adjusted child most parents would stop at one child as only children do well on those scores.

Do You Expect Too Much From Your Kids?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Do you expect too little or too much of your children? It's a hard one. But getting expectations right is about knowing yourself and knowing your children. Some kids (often later borns) need to be driven so maybe your expectations need to be made known and maybe pretty high. While others, particularly first borns, drive themselves hard anyway and succeed better when parents are a little more laid back about what they expect of their children.

A 5 Step Anger Management Plan for Children
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] There are four ways that kids deal with anger and only one of them is healthy for themselves and others. This article will show you how to help your child handle their anger in constructive, rather than destructive ways.

Helping Kids Handle Rejection and Disappointment
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] In the course of a school day children will meet with a number of challenges and even setbacks. They may struggle with some schoolwork. They may not do well in a test and they may not be picked for a game that they wanted to play. Children grow stronger when they overcome their difficulties.

Does Your Teenager Get Enough Sleep?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] For most teens there is a ‘forbidden sleep zone’ around 9 or 10 o’clock at night. They are alive and alert at these times. Ironically, as their parents move toward middle age their sleep clocks shift forward and they just want to sleep at these times.

Raising Teenagers - 5 Strategies Your Grandparents Knew
[Home-and-Family:Grandparenting] So you have noticed that lecturing young people doesn't work. Their eyes just glaze over as you launch into your very best parenting lecture. You are better off recording your best lectures and handing them a CD for them to listen to!! You need to use a little bit of cunning so you can be heard by your children:

Raising Teens - Five Simple Principles Many Parents Forget
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] It is the small stuff that we do as parents on a daily basis that has the biggest impact on young people. These five simple principles are easy to remember, but easy to forget.

What to Do When Kids Laugh at You When You Remind or Reprimand Them?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] What do you do when you have just delivered your very best parenting line delivered in perfect parent-speak and your kids just stand there giggling? Or worse, they roll around the floor laughing? What's behind this behaviour and how should you react as a parent?

Sibling Fighting
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] What do you do when the sparks of conflict fly at home between brothers and sisters who are supposed to love each other? Singling fights can be noisy, intense ans disturbing but there are strategies you can use to minimise the frequency and intensity of sibling fighting in your home.

Kids Fighting
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] So common is kids fighting that it appears to have become the first commandment of childhood - Thou shalt fight and argue with your brothers and sisters until your parents can stand it no longer. But there are strategies that parents can use that can decrease the frequency and intensity of kids fights.

Five Ways to Help Your Child Cope Positively With Discouraging People
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Nitpickers, fault-finders and verbal bullies can be found in any playground. They exist in many families too. Children must find of ways of dealing with them so that their self-esteem is not harmed. There are strategies parents can use to deflon-coat children against the discouragers that they meet.

Second Borns - Lucky Position or Victims of Bad Timing?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] If the first born for parents is an experiment and groundbreaker the second born is a rival to the first born for your attention, energy and approval. Second borns often try to keep up with the first born so they often crawl and walk at an earlier age. And one thing is certain - they will be differen to your first born, even if they are the same gender.

Why Pet-keeping is Essential for Children's Healthy Development
[Pets] Remember the electronic pet phase that was around a few years back. Kids would cry when their electronic pet died! Now that is not so crazy as pet-keeping is part of growing up. They learn so much about life, about nature and about themselves when they have a pet.

Michael Grose's Easy Tips for Understanding Children's Misbehaviour
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Children misbehave around their mothers and fathers because parents are as predictable in their reactions as washing machine cycles. Improving or shaping children's behaviour is easy if you first can understand the purpose of their misbehaviour and then change your response. There are four types of misbehaviour that you need to know about.

The Five Keys to Using Food Treats Wisely
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Giving kids food treats is not a new concept. Parents have given children food treats for years as a way of showing their appreciation for cooperative behaviour. But are food treats being misused by parents?

10 Commandments for Parenting
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] There is so much advice arounmd these days about how to bring up kids it can be confusing. The following simple, common sense commandmenst helps you cut through the clutter and keep parenting simple and enjoyable.

The Seven Keys of Being a Father
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] We know that fathering is different than mothering but what exactly is it that fathers do? It is a father's job to make sure the next generation not only survives but thrives. This article outlines the seven key tasks for fathers who want to leave their mark on the world.

Is Your Behavioural Change Strategy Working?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] All parents need a strategy to imnprove their children's behaviour when it is less than perfect. Many parents go for big changes and find they hit their heads against a wall. It is better to play around at the margins and go for small changes in their children's behaviour.

Puberty - Get Ready to Play the Puberty Game
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Kids are moving into puberty at an increasingly earlier age and it is catching parents unawares. Be ready for puberty by gaining an undertsanding of what puberty means to your child.

Strong-willed Kids: Raising a Spirited Child
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] As parents we want to channel rather than change our strong-willed children. My wife reminded me that my daughter’s determination was the same quality that I had been admiring on the basketball court about an hour earlier. She was right. I was nearly hoarse cheering my daughter as she ran up and down the court like a terrier. Yet here I was little more than an hour later cursing the same quality that I admired in a different arena. Parents can't have it both ways - a determined child in sport or at school but a lamb at home always docile to her parents' suggestions.

Resilient, Confident Kids - 10 Ways to Promote Resilience in Children
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] In our current consumer-oriented society it can be difficult to provide the type of childhood that promotes long-lasting resilience in children. It is difficult to resist the temptation to over-organise their lives and bubblewarp our kids rather than provide the type of childhood that promotes real resilience.

Student Leadership -Take Your Student Leadership Program to the Next Level
[Kids-and-Teens] Want to take your student leadership training program to the next level? Read how some schools have adopted some simple principles to add punch to their leadership programs and have made everyone stand up and take notice.

The Seven Mistakes to Avoid when Organising Your Student Leadership Program
[Self-Improvement:Leadership] Schools generally give their students leaders a position and even a badge, but many don't give their new leaders an effective training program. Here are seven common mistakes to avoid whether you are designing your first or twenty-first student leadership training program.

Birth Order - Understand How It Affects Your Personality
[Self-Improvement:Leadership] Leaders are born not made! Well you may frown at this notipn particularly if you are a second born and aspire to leadership or more senior management. But each birth order position has its strengths that you can bring to leadership. When you understand your own strengths and preferences you are in a position to maximise those strengths and compensate for any weaknesses either by working differently or surrounding yourself with people with different strengths.

Starting School - What Age Should Children Begin School?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Should children start school early or should parents delay the start of their child's schooling? There are many factors for parents to consider, however it is helpful if parents have a philosophy to guide them when making this difficult decision.

Peer Pressure - Five Ways to Help Teenagers Beat Peer Influence
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Adolescence is a stage when the opinions and thoughts of friends is of prime concern to young people. But parents can help their teenagers be discerning about the opinions of their friends and be less susceptible to negative peer influence.

Time Managment Skills for Children
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Time management is not just for adults. Kids also benefit by putting some basic management techniques into practice. These important skills can stay with kids for life.

Sibling Fighting - Reduce Sibling Rivalry by NOT Keeping Score
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Sibling rivalry is one of the issues that drives most parents insane. It comes with the territory. But some parenting practices encourage rivalry. This article looks at one common practice that drives rivalry between siblings. Does it happen in your family?

Confident Children - Avoid Overparenting
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] You can never love your child too much but you can parent your child too much. When you overparent you run the risk of raising a bubblewrapped kid - a child who is not capable of solving his or her own problems. So how can you recognise overparenting and what can you do if you find yourself parenting too much!!

Raising A High Maintenance Child
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Some kids are easy to raise. Either they have a flexible, easy-going temperaments or their birth order positions suit them. Other children require a great deal of our time, energy and mental resources to raise. What are the keys to raising these high maintenance children successfully and how can you parent them without wearing yourself out?

Study Skills - Help Young People Study Smarter, Not Harder
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Have you done your homework yet? Come on, we need to move on from being parent as nag to parent as caoch and help our young people develop the smart study skills. There is stacks of evidence to show that those students who perform best at school actually manage their study time better and study smarter, not necessarily harder, than their less successful peers.

Raising Boys
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Boys! Boys! Boys! The topic of raising boys is still a big interest to parents. It is no secret that many people struggle when it comes to raising or even teaching boys. Boys are easy to raise and teach as long as you understand the trigger that motivates them.

Positive Parenting - Oops! I Really Lost My Temper With My Kids, What Now?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] All parents lose their temper with their kids at some stage. If it happens once in a while this is not so bad. But it is what we do after we have lost it that really counts...

Family Meetings Are Now On The Agenda
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] One simple way to get cooperation from children and reduce the incidence of sibling fighting is to introduce family meetings. Meetings sound like hard work, but my research shows how effective they can be to unify families and reduce petty but annoying rivalries.

Super Nanny - A User's Guide to Watching Super Nanny
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Super Nanny has captured the imaginations of many viewers with her down-to earth approach to dealing with parenting issues. While she offers good solid, child-rearing advice not every strategy stacks up for every parent. This article suggests eight questions to keep in mind as you watch Super Nanny to help you with your own parenting and also help you understand the principles behind some of the strategies.

Why Mother's Day is Important For Children
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] We know that Mother's Day is important for mothers, but it is important for children too. Have you ever noticed how children will celebrate Mother's Day and other events in the same way every year. That's due to the fact that such rituals are the coathooks upon which children hang their family memories.

Mother's Day Tribute
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] We hear so much about the term parenting these days that it is easy to forget that mothering and fathering are distinctly different activities. Parenting is the managerial, left-brain activity while mothering and fathering are far more instinctive and emotive. Parenting has built-in redundancy while mothering is forever.

Thriving As A Family When You Live In The Fast lane
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] It is extraordinary times that we find ourselves in. Change is now an entrenched way of life. Most of us don't blink when new piece of technology comes out. Living successfully is now about keeping up, staying ahead or staying on top of things. It is hard work.

Influencing Adolescents - Guided Democracy
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] You need to smart to be able influence adolescents. You need to be able to stand back a little, hold your tongue and wait your turn to speak.

Gifted Children - Getting the Balance Right
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] One of the challenges for parents with a gifted child is to encourage them to develop a range of interest outside the academic sphere that not only rounds them out but stops them from being isolated from their peers. Gifted children are a diverse group of kids who are talented in specific areas such as mathematics, language, sport or music. Some gifted kids are mutli-talented excelling in a variety of areas.

Parenting: Discipline
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Discipline is a necessary part of parenting yet it makes most parents feel uncomfortable. Some of those old disciplinary phrases such as ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’, ‘teach them a lesson’ or ‘set children straight’ are enough to send shivers up the spine of any reasonable-minded parent.

Let's Not Hurry Children Through Childhood
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Many children feel the same stress that adults feel. In a culture that values success they can easily be pressured to grow up to quickly. It appears that the pressure for children to perform is perhaps strongest in the United States.

Bedtime and Sleep Habits
[Health-and-Fitness:Sleep-Snoring] Bedtime and children’s sleep habits can cause nightmares - for parents, that is! Often at the end of a long day all you want is a little peace and time for yourself. After all, you have probably devoted the entire to the service of children in some form.

Are Parents Trying Too Hard?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] One of the implications of the current trend toward smaller families is that we now have a generation of parents who are willing to go to enormous lengths to give their children a good start in life.

Clean Kid Syndrome - Does Your Child Suffer from it?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] A nationwide Newspoll survey revealed that the average kid is spending at most, just 10 percent of their free time playing outdoors at home. Alarmingly one in 20 parents (5%) admits when their kids are at home they NEVER play outdoors. Instead the majority of Australian kids are spending far more time indoors, watching television, playing computer games or playing with toys.

Children's Friendships Made Easy
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Developing and maintaining friendships is a dynamic process. Most children experience some type of rejection from their peers throughout childhood. One study found that even popular children were rejected about one quarter of the time when they approached children in school.

Meet The Twixters!
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Infancy, childhood, adolescence and then on to adulthood. Those are the tradition stages that parents need to consider, right? Not exactly. There is a new kids on the child development block and he is here to stay. This kid, known as a Twixter, will challenge every parent to rethink the way he or she raises kids.

The Secrets To Improving Children's Behaviour
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] There is no doubt that it is children's irritating behaviours such as whining, nagging and tantrums that can wear parents out. Read four simple strategies that you can use to change these behaviours forever without resorting to fears, tears or put-downs.

Five Ways To Build Super-Strong Relationships With Your Children
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] In this fast-paced world building a relationship with a child or teenager can be a huge challenge. It is easy to be locked out of the communication loop with a child if you are using the wrong cues. This article will provide you with ideas to help you get on the same communication wavelength as your child.

Is Your Child Becoming A Praise Junkie?
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Can parents praise children too much? For years parenting experts have claimed that praise is important for children's self-esteem so parents have immersed children in words of praise. But too much priase can demotivate children rather than motivate them to extend themselves and take risks.

Why Consistency Is The Key To Raising Well-behaved Kids
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Managing children's behaviour is easy if you have well-behaved kids. But what approach do you use if your children are less than perfect or they just have a difficult temperament. Consistency is the key to raising well-behaved kids.

Teach Your Children How To Resolve Conflict Without Using Anger Or Power
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Does sibling fighting and arguing drive you insane? Teach your children this foolproof, simple conflict resolution strategy that they can use when they have prblems with their siblings or with peers at school.

Teach Children The Skills Of Optimism
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Optimistic thinking is a skill that all children can learn. But what are the basics of optimism and what are the first steps to teaching it? This article gives an outline of optimism and gives four simple strategies to help you promote optimism in children.

10 Steps To Prepare You For Life With Children
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] If you or your partner are about to have a child you maybe wondering just what you are in for. You know it will be a life-changing experience, but do you really know what you have gotten yourself into? This light-hearted article will take you through a 10 step program that will prepare you far better than any pre natal program can ever do for the real trials and tribulations of parenthood.

Using Pocket-money To Promote Independence In Kids
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Kids these days always seem to want more, more, more. One way to reduce their demands on you is to provide pocket-money on a regular basis so that they can take control of their own spending. This article provides practical ideas and advice to help you deal with pocket-money in a constructive way.

Beating Homework Horrors Forever
[Kids-and-Teens] As a parent does the very sound of the word 'homework' send shivers up and down your spine? Over 60 per cent of parents are bothered by their children's homework habits at some stage. This practical article gives 10 strategies that will help parents beat the homework horrors forever.

7 Part Plan To Beating Childhood Obesity
[Health-and-Fitness:Childhood-Obesity-Prevention] Childhood obesity is rife in developed countries such as the United States and Australia. This practical article gives seven strategies that parents can implement immediately to maximise the quality of their children's lives.

Why First Borns Fuss, Seconds Are Resilient and Last Borns Like To Laugh
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] Ever wondered why one child in the family is terrific and another is a terrorist? Or why is quiet and academic and another is loud and a sportsnut? Read the secrets to understanding family politics and how you can best raise children in each birth order position in your family.

15 New Year's and Holiday Resolutions For Parents
[Home-and-Family:Parenting] So you have made New Year's resolutions for work or your personal life but how about some resolutions to help you become a better parent. Whether you have toddlers, teens or children aged between, these 15 resolutions will fast-track you on the road to becoming an oustanding parent.