Parenting

He is 22 years old and has deep black eyes. He is tall and very confident. Why wouldn’t he be? He is doing satisfactorily in college, works to support himself and makes the most of his free time with his friends.

As Christian parents, the most important legacy we want to leave our children is faith in God.

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. 

Kayley lies on the floor, throwing a tantrum because she only has pink flashing-heel shoes and she wants a blue pair to match her new jeans. John sits on the floor, happily playing with a few blocks of wood. His dad found them lying in the street, brought them home and sanded them smooth. Yesterday he stacked them up to build a castle....

Raising a child is not easy at all. Raising someone else’s child is even harder. But raising six children who are not your own, giving up your life, sounds crazy to most of us.

I grew up on an unpaved, quaint side street in Ploiești, Romania. After school or during summer vacations my neighbours, M. and C., and I were an inseparable trio. We were almost always outdoors. If it wasn't too hot or raining, you could find us in one of our backyards.

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.

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.

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

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

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

In the book, "Sisyphus: Or the Limits of Education," first published in German in 1925 by Siegfried Bemfeld, it is stated that education is limited by the personalities of the adults who take care of the children or students, the personalities of the educated, and the social environment in which the educational act takes place.

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

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...

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...