Art of Parenting

Annapoorni Balan Principlal IUEF SECRETARY GENERAL for Pooma Educational Trust. An UN Volunteers.

From talking and reading to infants to making values clear (best done in conversations around the dinner table), parents exert enormous influence over their children's development. They are, however, not the only influences, especially after children enter school. It's especially important that parents give children a good start, but it's also important for parents to recognize that kids come into the world with their own temperaments, and it's the parents' job to provide an interface with the world that eventually prepares a child for complete independence. In a rapidly changing world, parenting seems subject to fads and changing styles, and parenting in some ways has become a competitive sport.

Parenting practices around the world share three major goals:
1. Ensuring children’s health and safety, 2. preparing children for life as productive adults and transmitting cultural values.
3. A high-quality parent-child relationship is critical for healthy development.

What You Can Do

Changing Diet and Exercise for Kids
When it comes to establishing healthy habits, you can teach children how to Act Boldly to Change Diet and Exercise (A.B.C.D.E.)

Facing the School Dropout Dilemma,
this article seeks to complement and supplement the APA resolution on school dropout prevention with data from more recent research on child development, early childhood education, and social and emotional learning that helps to define the school dropout dilemma.

Confronting childhood obesity
Tips and resources for parents about helping their children make better decisions about what they eat to prevent childhood obesity.

Communication tips for parents
Parenting is hard work, but there are things you can do to maintain a good connection with your children and keep the lines of communication open.

Single parenting and today's family
Life in a single parent household — though common — can be quite stressful for the adult and the children.

Parenting the trendy teens

The teen years pose some of the most difficult challenges for families. Teenagers, dealing with hormone changes and an ever-complex world, may feel that no one can understand their feelings, especially parents. As a result, the teen may feel angry, alone and confused while facing complicated issues about identity, peers, sexual behavior, drinking and drugs.

Parents and Caregivers are Essential to Children’s Healthy Development.
Parents and caregivers make sure children are healthy and safe, equip them with the skills and resources to succeed as adults, and transmit basic cultural values to them.

Parenting

Ensure yourself that you can care on the following
Staying connected: A guide for parents on raising an adolescent daughter
Take a look at this informative: puberty, peer groups, self-esteem, sexuality, mood swings, rebellion, and much more

There is such a thing as overparenting, and aiming for perfection in parenting might be a fool's mission. Too much parenting cripples children as they move into adulthood and renders them unable to cope with the merest setbacks. There is also such a thing as too-little parenting, and research establishes that lack of parental engagement often leads to poor behavioral outcomes in children, in part because it encourages the young to be too reliant on peer culture.

Ironically, harsh or authoritarian styles of parenting can have the same effect.