Family

It’s important to grant our kids their independence, but would they know what to do in an uncomfortable, tricky or dangerous situation?

Adolescence is not a series to watch with your teenage child, but it is a series that may cause mature viewers to re-evaluate their relationship with their own children, as well as their relationship with their parents.

Henry Ford is believed to have said: “Sometimes a mistake can be all it takes to make a valuable achievement.” Apparently paradoxical, the statement says a lot about us and what we consider at any given moment to be “a mistake.”

It is said that it takes a village to raise a child. It's folk wisdom acknowledging that the development of a person requires the contribution of the whole community. What value does the community add, especially when the community in question is the scientific one?

To err is human. “The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no ideas”, Albert Einstein said.

Our children are forced to adapt to a world we did not want for them. As many mothers who attend coaching sessions say, the theme of war is one of the most difficult for them to address in discussions with their children, as they feel responsible for finding the balance between the child’s emotional security and their exposure to the reality around them.

Being a parent means, among other things, engaging in agonising negotiations to keep the supermarket aisles relatively quiet and the shopping trolley from overflowing with sweets. Some are successfully concluded. Others, a real failure. Although we are very adept at recognising a spoiled child on the street, we have a much harder time spotting the signs in our own children. After all, what...

At the age of 27, for the first time in my life, I worried that time was passing too fast. For the next few years, the speed with which most of my friends were getting married was the next source of concern.

A photograph of a father holding his sick little boy is simply an example of parental affection, right? But it can provoke a virulent reaction when it's posted on Facebook and the protagonists are naked under the refreshing spray of water in the shower.

“We all feel stronger if we are part of a tapestry. One thread alone is weak, but, woven into something larger, surrounded by other threads, it is more difficult to unravel,” says family therapist Stefan Walters, summarising the benefits of understanding the history of the family we come from.

Both specialist research and common experience tell us how complicated it is when children reach adolescence. Dr Bryan Craig helps us to understand the reasons for this and how to turn the crisis into an opportunity for growth.

"The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice" (Peggy O'Mara).

FTM here. My LO has been EBF since birth. Now she’s eight months. My MIL thinks she should be on purees, but I want to try BLW.”

Early exposure to technology helps children accumulate information quickly, opening up new ways for them to understand the world. At the same time, however, the online environment can put many of its most vulnerable users at risk.

If the death of our parents is a blow which makes “the very fabric of life…buckle and cave in,” the ageing of our parents resembles a classroom where we learn to give more than we are used to receiving.