Is baby crying because she’s hungry, upset or tired?

You can do a lot to prevent sibling fights by helping your children learn to get along and guiding them towards better ways of resolving conflict. Lay the groundwork with our eight essential tips.

Good family relationships help your children feel secure and loved. They help you feel good too. You can build good relationships in your family with quality time, communication, teamwork and appreciation.

Self-esteem is feeling good about yourself. Good self-esteem helps children try new things, take healthy risks and solve problems. It gives them a solid foundation for their learning and development.

Key points Self-regulation is the ability to understand and manage your own behaviour and reactions. Self-regulation is important for development. For example, it helps children with learning and social skills. Self-regulation develops most in the toddler and preschooler years. It continues to develop into adulthood. Help your child develop self-regulation through talking about feelings and role-modelling.

Key points Sexual behaviour is a mostly typical and healthy part of your child’s development. Preschoolers might touch, look at and talk about bodies. Your approach to preschooler sexual behaviour depends on your values. But staying calm is very important.

Planned ignoring is when you take your attention away from your child for a little while when your child behaves badly. This can be a useful child behaviour tool and needn’t feel like rejection. However, this should not be done if you are feeling angry or frustrated with your child. This should be used within a secure, loving relationship. Also, no technique is a magic way to help children behave well, each child is unique and also developing and changing.

Key points: When your child behaves well, give him lots of positive attention. This makes the behaviour more likely in future. Positive attention for behaviour means catching your child being good and praising them. Positive attention also helps your child feel secure and loved. It’s good for your relationship with your child.

Distraction is a simple way to manage children’s behaviour. Distraction can help you avoid situations that might result in difficult behaviour. Don’t use distraction if your child is very upset or has hurt someone. Help your child learn ways to distract herself, as she gets older

Key points Your child’s environment can influence his behaviour. If you change your child’s environment, you can often change your child’s behaviour. You can change the physical environment, the timing of activities, and your requests and instructions.