It is not easy to be a parent. You must find the right techniques that work for your child, and learn as many bringing up a child skills as possible. The more you work at learning how to be a better parent, the more effective your child-rearing skills will become.

Make some space on your kitchen counter, set your child on a towel and run water over his hair and scalp. This can help alleviate the fear of being dunked and their dislike of water in their face.

Parents with teenagers should try to abstain from forcing their own preferences for college; letting the child decide what to do will make the teenager both happy, and responsible for their own mistake, if they believe it is one later on. When teens feel they are being overly controlled, they tend to go in the opposite direction, sometimes out of rebellion.

Every parent needs an occasional break for their children. Get a member of your family to babysit them, even if he or she can only watch them for a couple hours. Stress can get the better of parents who constantly care for their kids, and this results in increased tension in the household.

Don’t smoke indoors if children live in the house. It is actually a good idea to quit smoking altogether, especially if you have children. Exposure to secondhand smoke is almost as risky as the act of smoking itself. Children who are exposed to second-hand smoke on a regular basis are at greater risk for developing respiratory illnesses, asthma and cancer.

No two children are alike. Successful approaches you developed to parent one child may have no effect at all on your next one. Punishments and rewards are included in this too. Regardless, remember how you approached problems in the past, so you can evade issues in the future.

Setting concise ground rules for behavior that are enforced with polite
phrases can work well at harmonizing your family. Saying “Touch gently” gets better results than “No hitting” does.

Switch out what toys your toddlers play with on occasion so they refrain from getting bored with a particular set. Toddlers typically lose interest in a toy within a few days unless it is a beloved favorite. By rotating toys, your child will see them as new and exciting again when you reintroduce them. This will save you from having to buy more and more toys.

Bring along things your child is familiar with from home when you are traveling with them. Vacations are supposed to be fun, but a young child may view them as a disruption of his world. If your child has a treasured toy, stuffed animal or blanket to comfort him, he can more easily make the transition to an unfamiliar location.

This article has hopefully given you some tips and advice on the subject of raising a child. It might make you a better and more effective parent. Though the answers might not all be available to you, the tools to find them are.