Parenting

• What To Do When Your Teen Chooses Bad Friends

  One reason that parents can’t separate their child from a bad friend is that the friend often has a stronger relationship. When a child is young, his parents are the major influence in his life. As children enter adolescence a change occurs. A natural part of growing up is breaking away from parents and making bonds with peers.

• Finding Answers To Underachievement

  Finding answers to a child’s underachievement is often a difficult and complex process. Let intuition be your guide, knowing when and how to ask the right questions. Here are 7 steps to help guide you.

• Reducing Sibling Rivalry

  Our siblings are usually the people we know longest in this life, but it’s striking how many people have distant, even hostile relations with their brothers and sisters. Family tensions related to sibling rivalries wear on parents individually, and sometimes can challenge their marriage – so it’s important to tackle them in steady, systematic ways.

• Five Tips For Dads: Reading And Bonding With Babies And Toddlers

  Reading has been such a joy for me as a father, both one-on-one and with my four girls together. From the first days, reading out loud has been our chance to have our own quality time. Now, as the young twins turn 5, references to phrases, characters and funny scenes from books are our family jokes!

• Valentines And Values

  In spite of the cookies, punch, temporary suspension of school work, and the festive atmosphere of this atypical school day, Betsy, a third grader in a suburban Michigan elementary school, was not having a good day. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she is 30 pounds overweight and just opened her fifth valentine containing a picture of a pig.

• Advanced Parental Age

  A year-and-half ago, I wrote a column called “To Three or Not to Three.” In it, I aired out the debate my wife and I had about having a third child. Wendy felt that she wouldn’t be complete without kid number three. I was pretty much done at two and feared, among other worries, that I’d be stretched too thin if we went from “man-to-man defense” to “zone.”

• No TV

  Dear Mr. Dad: Help! My kids are hopeless television addicts. All they want to do is sit in front of the tube-even on the most gorgeous days. What can I do to break this habit?

• Soothing Your Crying Baby!

  One of the hardest things about being a parent of a newborn is dealing with a crying baby. As parents, the last thing we want to hear is our baby crying. But one of the amazing aspects about how God created these little ones is that He gave them the ability to communicate with us when they need something.