Family

The relationship between a parent and their child is one of the most significant in their lives, with its primary role being education.

“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.

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

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.

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.

How can we encourage the elderly during this time? How can we help them understand that we don't want to lose them and that, although it's hard for them, we didn't abandon them. I have an elderly mother and, honestly, it would help me a lot. Can you write for me?

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

Dependence tends to have negative connotations—we may be addicted to sugar, the internet or gambling. Other times we are dependent on people or relationships, in which case the line between positive and negative is no longer easy to draw.

“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.

We love stories, and Hollywood knows how to dramatise them. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that Hollywood is first and foremost an industry driven by ratings and profits. Children are more vulnerable and more likely than adults to pick up identity models from the film world.

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.

I once heard on the radio a recommendation to help us understand the elderly: to attach some weights to our backs, hands and feet, put some blurred glasses on our noses, cotton wool in our ears, and then go to the market...

In the whole array of virtues that a stepparent must possess in order to succeed in raising a well-rounded child whose world has been shattered by the separation of his or her parents, courage is only mentioned in passing. Yet courage is the foundation of a construction that promises to be challenging from the outset, say those who have plunged into the role...

Parents have a crucial role in managing their children's digital behaviour, as well as preventing and detecting addiction. Their success depends on their own relationship with digital devices.

In a world of rising toxic masculinity, here are some basic foundations we can provide to ensure our sons grow up to be men who make us proud.