Picture this: it’s 2 a.m., and you’re wide awake, standing in your living room with a baby monitor in one hand and a half-eaten cookie in the other.…
Dealing with challenging behaviour from 6, 7 and 8 year olds is hard work, and can be very emotionally draining on parents. Here’s 4 key tips for managing…
Hi Diane, I have a very strong willed 4 year old girl. We seem to bang heads at just about every request I give her. I have tried…
Dear Diane, Help! We have been trying to potty train our daughter. We have put her in undies and have told her where to go wees etc and…
I get lots of questions about toilet training children and with some children, it can be a really challenging business. Recently, I received this email from a desperate…
I often get questions about helping children through their parents’ separation and I recently received this question: Even when the parents are on the same page and are…
A reader recently wrote asking help with getting children out of bed in the morning… here’s how to do it!
I was teaching a parenting seminar a few weeks ago and showing parents how to insist that their children do as they are told. A parent asked, “But isn’t…
The Christchurch mosque shootings have shaken most of us to the core. There is just a general disbelief that anything like this could have happened in New Zealand……
Thank you to all the lovely people who have sent me “real” questions about their daily lives as parents. I will answer them in the order they arrived.
As parents, we often find ourselves with two competing parenting “ethics” and these are the source of a parenting dilemma that means we are uncertain of “which way to…
Last month I talked about the idea that, to quote Margaret Nelson-Agee, “Until you have two competing ethics, you don’t have an ethical dilemma.” As parents, we often…
Happy New Year! Once again the media abounds with articles about sun and safety. A recent one began: “Parents warned about sun’s danger.” It began with a reminder…
Vernon and I have had a special privilege these holidays. It is to spend a length of time in our one-roomed beach-house in sometimes less-than-summer weather with our…
Today I am going to sound like a “Grumpy Grandma.” I am going to tell you all about 4 common labels that disempower parents. These really annoy me because…
Are you seeking effective parenting methods for raising your kids? Family therapist and renowned author Diane Levy provides 5 key strategies to improve child attitude and behaviour —…
It never ceases to amaze me how often a certain wisdom has been known for a long time and then, Hey Presto!, along comes a scientific discovery that…
The issues of chores and pocket money and whether there should be linkage between the two have always vexed parents. Vernon and I tried many and varied ways…
I am interested in your knowing that, if the law continues to inform you that you may not smack your child (or, at the very least, ought not to…
Super Granny Diane Levy talks to Kerry Burridge about her books and her work with families.
Sometimes, when I give a seminar that involves teaching our children to do as they are told, a question comes up early on. I have just got as far…
About seventeen years ago, I read a book which impressed me greatly and turned upside down my thinking about how to raise children. The book was called “The…
I often get calls from parents worried about their children’s self-esteem. They may have seen their teen drop out of situations, which they can usually cope with, or heard…
By now our children are well entrenched into their new school year. Having coped with the anxiety of the first few days, the tiredness of the first few…
Barbara Coloroso in her delightful and insightful book, “Kids are Worth It” talks about three styles of parenting: Jellyfish parenting, Brick-wall parenting and Backbone parenting. Another version of…
When I had my first baby, thirty-five years ago, there were two questions that about-to-be mothers were asking themselves and each other. (Yes. I know that I said…
One of the questions we are often asked as parents is “What after school activities do your children do?” Maybe it is just the “mother thing”. Since the…
Many of us hark back to a distant memory. It may be of our family, it may be of someone else’s family, it may be of a mythical…
I know that many of us dread the kindy and school holidays. Weeks without a break from the kids. For me, I always see it from a different…
Years ago I went to a business seminar by Andrew Smith of APT (Accelerated Planning Technique). He based his planning method on the idea that every large project…