Parenting Resources

“We will not accept anything less than 85% from you in the finals”… “You’ve been learning for 2 years, why didn’t you win the first prize?”… “We want you to become a doctor, you’d better get good marks in science”… “I can’t believe you forgot your lines on the stage. It was so embarrassing for us.”… How many times have …

After months of looking forward to her birth, your baby is finally with you. But you also feel it’s high time you got back into your pre-pregnancy clothes. Hold on! Now you are breastfeeding and the baby depends on you for all her nutrition and growth. It is your responsibility to ensure that you take healthy and nutritious food. For …

For about a million moms ‘out there’, the most dreaded time of the day is mealtime. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, the litany starts: Mom — Come and eat. Kid — What’s made? Mom — Rice, dal, beans, salad, curd. Kid — Yuck. I’m not hungry. Mom — What? You just said you were starving. Kid — If it’s dal and beans, I’m not hungry. How about …

The old wives tale about cheerful women delivering healthy babies seems to be true. The American Psychological Association has announced research showing that optimism can reduce the chance of delivering low birth weight or pre-term babies for medically high-risk pregnant women. Psychologist Marci Lobel and her colleagues examined 129 pregnant women between 20 and 43 years old who were considered …

Now the baby’s growth is not as fast as in the first year, so the food requirements too do not increase much and are almost the same as in the first year, i.e., about 1000 calories. The baby can now try a variety of foods like sweets, ice-cream, nuts, roasted gram, popcorn, wafers and household snacks. Be sure not give …

Pregnancy is one of the most exciting times in a woman’s life. Yet, being pregnant is a worry­filled time too. To be certain you’ve done everything right and to make sure that your baby gets a healthy start, it is imperative to know about what you should eat and how much weight you should gain. Nutrients are divided between you …

Between two and five years, many children develop all kinds of food fads for many of which the parents themselves may be responsible. Very often the mother thinks that a particular food is good for the child and she insists on the child having it. The child becomes equally adamant and refuses to eat whenever forced to do so. Not …

The bottle can also be a bond between the mother and the baby. The mother can hold the baby in her lap and the closeness can be as satisfying as it is while breast feeding. The trouble arises when the mother thinks that since she is not breast feeding the baby someone else can do the bottle feeding as well. …

“Papa, why did you tell a lie to uncle?”, “Mummy, why can’t we live with Dada and Dadi?”, “Why can’t I have a party for my birthday at the Pizza Joint?”, “Where is Papa going?” – the thousand and one questions from the mouths of growing children can drive any parent to distraction. Often we ignore the questions because we …

It was two-and-a-half months since the baby was born. I had not stepped out of home after childbirth. That was not because I was ill or was inept at handling the new-found responsibility of parenting. It was because I could not imagine feeding in public, let alone do it. I often wondered how women managed to do it in buses, …