Home-made Kids

Book excerpt: Each stage in a child's development has its own ups and downs, and its focus. We often wonder whether our children will ever pass the 'terrible tens' or the monosyllabic fourteens! Our role is to bring them to maturity, and some degree of independence, by their eighteenth birthday. There are many subtly different shades of management that apply to each stage, during this eighteen-year journey. It is one of the greatest tasks with which the human being is confronted. It is genuinely life altering. We are all products of our parents, yet few, if any of us, have any training in parenting. Former Daily Mail columnist Peter Gilchrist takes us through the trials and tribulations that can occur when our children are growing up, and offers invaluable advice on how to deal with the trickiest of situations.