There is no doubt that parenting is a tough task. It structures children’s outlook by teaching them learn discipline, obedience, respect and self-esteem.

As parents play a vital role in promoting the child’s growth and development, it is essential to find a parenting style that suits your child’s personality and makes them healthy and happy.

Although parents may differ in the way they raise their children, every parent has the same desire: for their children to be and have the “best”.

Every parent makes an effort to be the best parent and shape their children to be perfect. As their children grow older, however, parents often find that the way they are doing things is not working and start exploring other options.

As they confront the pertinent issues, parents are forced to adapt their perceptions to understand their Kids’ world views. While there is no textbook solution to being a perfect parent, adopting a general parenting style or recognizing what is wrong with your present one can be a major stepping stone to establishing a loving and trusting relationship with your children.

Siblings and friends would be better off playing among themselves than being shuttled between swimming, dancing and music lessons, the research indicates.

Experts believe a lack of free play time is stifling children’s imagination, independence and self-confidence. It can also lead to hyper-activity, they claim.

Kris Murray, a child behavioural specialist, said: “Parents shouldn’t worry about organising their children’s time but instead give them the space and permission to create their own fun.

“Free, unstructured play - such as creating pretend games - allows children to explore the world around them and teaches them to express themselves, developing key skills for adulthood such as decision-making skills and self-confidence.

“Kids have fertile imaginations which should be developed in these formative years to help build the social skills essential for later life.”

The average child now attends at least two after-school classes a week, according to the study, commissioned by Persil for its Every Child Has The Right campaign.

It discovered that four in 10 parents said they had noticed that free play helped their child develop confidence while a third found their children were more focused and better behaved as a result.

Lucy’s story: I ran into Lucy recently, and she appeared to be extremely tensed about something. We sat down over a cup of coffee, which is when she confided to me: her daughter, who had been overweight even as a six year old, was obese now at seventeen, and had just been diagnosed as being a diabetic.

Lucy burst into tears, and told of her frustrated efforts at trying to control her daughter’s weight, with no evident results.

Obesity, an alarming problem today

Obesity is today an alarming problem among teenagers of the world, and one hears more and more cases of teen obesity today than ever before. If you are the parent of an obese teen and would like a few tips on how to handle this serious problem, then read on.

What causes obesity? First and foremost, remember that obesity starts during early childhood, and can be the result of poor eating habits, lack of exercise, family history of obesity, endocrinal conditions, stress in the child’s life, emotional problems like depression and low self esteem.

The complications arising from obesity are many, like diabetes, blood pressure, respiratory problems and heart disease.

Most of us agree on the need to teach sexual awareness to our children. The thing is, most of them seem pretty aware already.

Teens with raging hormones can’t seem to get sex off the brain, needing little more than a suggestive picture, commercial, pair of dirty socks or acne gel to spark the awareness.

Kids also are constantly exposed to sex by the media. With the birth of Jamie-Lynn Spears’s daughter, Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, pregnancy pacts in schools and movies like “Juno,” teen pregnancies seem normal.

Whether the pacts or movies are real or fodder for gossip, the fact remains that kids are surrounded by sex and possibly getting mixed messages.

Talking to your kids about sex again, for the first time, or in a new way is more important now than ever. The U.S. teen pregnancy rates have risen for the first time in years, three in 10 girls become pregnant before age 20, and 47 percent of high school students have had sex.

When initially stressing out over how to begin your sex chat, consider what message you are trying to send.

Perhaps you prefer to teach abstinence, or safe sex and contraception, or the right time to become sexually active.

You feel like it was just yesterday when your teenager begged you to take him out for ice cream, and asked for your help in one of the small precious moments of life.

How and when did all this change, you wonder, where did that little angel go, leaving this rebellious strong headed obstinate teenager in his place?

Not only is your child now speaking an entirely new language, he no longer wants you around or even need you to be around him.

You feel like you have been shunted out of his life unceremoniously; you are no longer his ‘hero’, you are more of a thorn in his side and for no fault of yours.

Do not despair, all is not lost! This is a typical teenage behavior, and is a plea for independence, and it is up to you to find ways and means for the bond between your child and you to remain as strong as it ever was.

What do you do? Try this, for example. Start a conversation with something neutral: “How do you like that new movie?” There is no scope for controversy and argument with such an opening, and the trick is to remain positive, even when you feel frustrated and about to lose your temper with your teen.

Many parents overlook their child’s unhealthy weight because they believe it is normal, research suggests.

Data on 2,100 Australian children found 40% of parents with an overweight or underweight child had not spotted this.

Among children, the underweight were more likely to think of themselves as average than the overweight.

The University of Melbourne researchers said parents would not act to help their children gain or lose weight if they did not see the problem.

Child obesity is thought to be increasing fast in many countries, and experts are hunting for effective ways to intervene, both at school, and home. The Australian research shows just how hard it could be to challenge parents’ perceptions of their children.

The Melbourne researchers analysed the 2,100 children using both Body Mass Index and waist circumference, to try to establish which fell into the “underweight”, “overweight” and “average” groups.

They then compared these results with the recorded perceptions of their parents. In total 43% of parents of overweight or underweight children placed their child in the “average” bracket.

For overweight children alone, this rose to nearly half. Remarkably, a very small percentage of parents had even more extreme views, assessing an overweight child as underweight, or vice versa.

When you look for a new job, or for a new house don’t you invest a lot of your time and energy towards the search?

Choosing the perfect pre-school for your child is almost as important, if not more, because this is the place where your child will spend a chunk of her time during her crucial formative years.

The environment must be a nurturing one and the staff must be loving and affectionate towards children in general.

Here’s what you can do: Check out your local newspaper or the Internet, or better, ask your friends, relatives, neighbors, and remember that unless these people are really very pleased with their experience, they wouldn’t recommend it to another.

Talk to them and find out how their child fared in the pre-school they used, and if there were any problems with it.

Once you have zeroed in on a few, find out how much it would cost you. Also, measure the distance from home to school, and find out if it is practical or feasible for you to take your child to a distant pre-school, when there may be another one closer.

The one bright side to our country’s current economic meltdown is that it is forcing parents to sit down and discuss money matters with their kids.

Have you had the talk with your kids yet?

You might have if you recently cancelled a planned family vacation in order to pay the mortgage or if you disconnected the cable in order to pay for food.

Our nation’s current economic crisis has forced millions of parents from coast-to-coast to look for ways to cut household costs and in most cases those decisions impact even the youngest members of the family.

For example, if your child is used to having three juices to choose from on a daily basis and now all you can offer him is water or if he was used to being driven to soccer practice each day and now you are forcing him to ride his bike there, he’s going to want to know what’s going on.

Child psychologists say it’s important to talk to your children about the current state of our economy and address the financial decisions you are making that impact them, but in a way that won’t frighten or panic kids.

Your teenaged daughter has just answered you rudely, when all you did was ask her where she was off to, wearing the skimpy clothes.

You are trying your best to control your temper, because you do not want to make things worse than they are already, but you really don’t know what to do, and you wouldn’t mind a few tips to help you deal with this typically teenaged behavior.

Read on, you will find helpful hints on the behavioral problems of a teenager.

Adolescence, turbulence! Adolescence [Adolescence behavior] is a period of time in your child’s life when she goes through rapid changes, both physically and mentally, and she doesn’t understand them herself.

Furthermore, she has her newly developed ‘image’ to maintain with her peers, and this is also the time when her friends become more important to her than her family and you.

This is a part of separating and individualizing, crucial aspects of a teenager’s life, and it is your duty to stand by her, no matter what, even if you feel hurt and rejected and would like to do the same to him.

Up to one in 10 children fall into ongoing patterns of abuse and victimization by peers starting almost as soon as they are old enough to begin socializing with others, a new study suggests.

The report found that aggressive infants, and those from low-income families or exposed to harsh parenting styles, were more likely to be consistently victimized.

“The consequences associated with high and chronic victimization are manifold and include depression, loneliness, low self-esteem, physical health problems, social withdrawal, alcohol and/or drug use, school absence and avoidance, decrease in school performance, self-harm and suicidal ideation [thoughts and behaviors],” wrote the researchers, a team from the University of Alabama.

The abuse from school-age peers could be in the form of physical attacks, harsh words and social aggression, according to the report.

The researchers studied 1,970 children — about half boys — born in Montreal between October 1997 and July 1998.

The team followed them for more than seven years, receiving information from the children’s mothers about victimization, family adversity, parenting styles, physical aggression, hyperactivity, and internalizing symptoms.

During the final follow-up, at age 7, the children and their teachers reported on victimization by classmates.