Parenting is…

Bed time routine is lauded by experts as a solution to all sleep problems. Set up a routine, put the baby on a schedule, be firm and consistent; never allow the baby to manipulate you - and you won’t have problems with your infant or toddler, not even through the school years. I don’t believe it’s a sound advice. Often, it is an insult to exhausted parents whose little one seems to defy the idea each time they settle in and feel like *now* they’ve got the sleep thing figured out. I’d like to share with my fellow parents my thinking on bedtime routine.

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Parenting and patience go hand-in-hand, common knowledge says. I say, successful parenting has little to do with patience and if it did, I would be a dramatic failure. If you are the impatient type, check out a better strategy for dealing with toddler problems. If patience is your main virtue, see if you can still improve on it!

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Potty training is one of the most controversial, conflict-ridden and anxiety-filled topic in parenting. It probably takes second place only to sleep issues. After researching the variety of potty training methods, I have settled on a simple and fast approach, which made sense to me.

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Bedtime routine is the most important ingredient in peaceful struggle-free sleep for your child. Baby massage, reading books and listening to music are the most commonly recommended ideas for your child’s sleep time. Here is my take on bed time stories, created by mom (or dad)! It’s fun and easy and it make a dramatic difference in your sleep efforts.

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Sleep problems are one of the most commonly discussed topics in parenting. Sleeping through the night is a major issue half of all parents with children over four months old continue struggling with. Even those lucky moms and dads with peacefully sleeping babies often find it difficult to get them to sleep. Parenting experts are divided. Parenting advice abounds, but caregivers find that it only seems to work for everyone else’s kids, not theirs. I’d like to share a practical solution for getting your child to fall asleep on his own the gentle way. It did wonders for me and I hope you can benefit from it whether your child is nine months or five years old, sleeping through the night or still waking frequently.

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Creative parenting is often the easiest on our wallets. What do you do to have fun with your toddler? I found that taking him out each morning has made a huge difference to our naps. Sure, I can take him to the playground again and again. But there is so much he wants to see, so much stuff that’s truly exciting to a little mind!

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A strong relationship with the person we married is ultimately the most important bond, upon which we build a family. Over the last few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my relationship with my husband. What do I need, what am I missing, how are things going? And finally I pieced it all together.

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Watching television is one of those parenting taboos. Parents are cautioned against kids programming and it is a sign of an irresponsible parent if a chile is allowed to watch regular programs. Is baby tv viewing really so bad? I found wonderful programs, which make a huge positive difference in our lives.

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Teaching good manners is one of the tenets of parenting. Yet, many parents exercise notably poor manners in achieving this goal. My husband and I have chosen to teach politeness by example only and it’s working miracles!

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Positive discipline is a well-known parenting approach today. There are scores of books on the subject but implementing the idea requires a lot of thought and figuring it out. What do you really do in any given situation? Positive consequences is an important part of the approach and are differentiated from punishment. After much creative thinking, I am beginning to understand how it all works.

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