Family

Gentle parenting—how did this seemingly wholesome phrase come to elicit such strong negative reactions as contempt, sarcasm, and condescension?

Children who fall prey to bullying cannot save themselves, just as the children who have become accustomed to bullying others will not give up this behaviour without outside intervention. As the phenomenon of bullying spreads, with harmful consequences on children's development, the need to know and apply strategies to combat it is becoming more pressing.

Throughout her life, Ellen White wrote extensively on the subject of religious education for children. This material is a selection of her writings.

"Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.” (Dr John Trainer) Sometimes I pass my grandparents' house, which...

Today's mothers are faced with difficult decisions: breastfeeding or formula feeding, having a career or being a stay-at-home parent, modern or traditional education—and silent pressure from the fear that any choice they make is a mistake. This constant doubt weighs more heavily on them than the choices themselves.

Children have big feelings. Even worse, children have big feelings over what seem to be rather inconsequential things.

Describing the breakup of her marriage after the birth of her children, journalist Nora Ephron writes that a child is a grenade for the couple’s relationship. After the explosion, when the dust settles, “your marriage is different from what it was. Not better, necessarily; not worse, necessarily; but different.” [1].

There is a saying that describes one’s life partner as being most appreciated during two life stages: before marriage and after the funeral. Unfortunately, proverbs and sayings hint at a reality which is also faithfully rendered by statistics showing that love wears off pretty soon in many marriages. But maybe this is part of the problem—the fact that we overburden love, treating it...

Some houses allow you to read the owners' story on their walls and through their windows. Although it happens less and less often, the most beautiful houses are built by those who mean to live in them. Cara Brookins and her children know very well how every beam or window in their house was put up, because they built it together.

We often do it without even thinking. Labelling our children as shy, cheeky, fussy or even smart. In the right context, calling our children these things is innocent enough. It even helps explain certain types of behaviour. 

Grandparents who play an active role in the lives of their grandchildren enjoy a range of health and well-being benefits—including, according to research, a longer and happier life.

Children play, that’s obvious, but did you know it’s also “work”?

Is it possible, as single parents, to instil in our children a love for God and for the church?

How much do we know about love? Enough to understand that love is not an obligation—we cannot love by force, nor be loved in this way.

“When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window,” poet Ogden Nash once said, encapsulating one of the most common sources of intergenerational conflict—the role grandparents play in the upbringing of their grandchildren.