Family

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.

“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.

Happy couples are not spared from marital conflict, but the crucial thing is that they have simple but effective tools to strengthen their relationship in a way that does not allow the conflict to destroy the emotional connection between them.

Sometimes, parents end up not having any free time during the day. Why is relaxation not easy for parents?

One of the biggest challenges facing both parents and teachers is to help children stay motivated so that they can keep focus, persevere when they are struggling, move forward, and finish what they have begun.

My one-year-old son eyes the chickpea-filled bowl suspiciously. He tentatively pokes a stubby finger into the bowl and starts stirring the legumes around. I’m pretty sure it isn’t my imagination when, seconds later, his hazel eyes light up and his little pink lips curve ever-so-slightly upwards.

I’m a walking contradiction when it comes to technology. I spend far too much time on the internet—some productive, such as paying bills, researching for my work and reading the news, but mostly wasted time on one-too-many funny cat videos—but I’m still using a Nokia E71 mobile phone bought in 2009. (Don’t laugh! It did win Mobile Choice’s phone of the year in...

Many families who feared that the new coronavirus would affect their health ended up dreading its effect on something seemingly even more difficult to protect: the well-being of their relationship.

“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.

Even after the World Health Organization replaced the term social distancing with physical distancing, people are still feeling the effects of social distancing.

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

Lucy is an 8-year-old girl who has a range of interests broader than that of an ordinary adult. She is enrolled in an international school, where classes are taught in French by native speakers. Her classmates are children of expats from different cultures, which amuses her nanny, who, when picking her up from school, says that she "took her from the children's UN."

How do we create fun and memorable experiences on road trips, where “Are we there yet?” isn’t whined out loud every few seconds?

While it can be healthy to be aware of other people’s judgement—we can adjust our behaviour to become more pro-social—sensitivity to the perception of judgement can get out of hand. In worst case scenarios, children can become depressed, anxious and avoid settings in which judgement is anticipated. Here are some strategies to help, as shared by clinical psychologist Katie Kjelsaas.

There was a time when the word parenting would cause me to either roll my eyes or shrug. It was a time when seven hours of sleep a night, instead of at least eight, had the destabilizing potential of a hurricane, a time when the clear voices of children in the park would compel me to grab a book and read under my...