Ours was a loving, nurturing household, but, at the same time, my parents' goal was to make all their children self-sufficient.

Educated parents find more time to spend with their children by reducing time dedicated to home-based activities that involve little interaction with children.

I think it's more and more important to spend time with your children, because it seems to be harder and harder for them to succeed as their parents have succeeded.

Parents want their children to excel, callers to a victims' hot line want help, and sick people want to get well. Offering aids is like providing an alarm clock: it may help people get to an appointment on time, but no one is forcing them to use it.

My parents had us very young. We lived in a modest house. We built forts, we hiked, we went camping and they wanted us to be independent. It's how children grew up in the 1940s and 50s: outside all the time, playing in the dirt, riding your bike around.

Previously, young children had to be shown by their parents how to use a mouse or a remote, and the connection between what they were doing with their hand and what was happening on the screen took some time to grasp. But with the iPad, the connection is obvious, even to toddlers.

If your child seems to click with another kid in the class, try to set up a time for you to meet at a park after school and get to know their parent. Seeing you be outgoing with the parents of other children will encourage your child to be open and active in their friendships, too!

Successive generations of middle-class parents used to foist their own favourite books on their children. But some time in the late Eighties it began to wane - not because children had lost interest in adorable animals but because most of it was available on useful, pacifying video.

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