Before my daughter learned to speak she learned to sign, and the first sign she mastered was “more”. More meant more — as in, “Give me more milk before I scream-cry in 5-4-3-2-1...” — but for her, it also meant “again”. Sing that song again. Push the toy cash register button again. Make that funny sound with your armpit again, again, again.

For a car seat to work properly in the instance of an accident, your child must be, well, in the thing. The shoulder straps must be in the correct position and snug on their body.

On the parenting podcast What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood, co-host Amy Wilson told a childhood story about how she loved to poop in a nappy “until a pretty ripe old age”. She knew she shouldn’t do it, and her mum and dad knew she knew, but their efforts to get her to stop weren’t working. And so they finally took her to see a doctor.

Through the ages, parents have tried various tactics for getting kids to eat more vegetables — baking them into brownies, blending them into smoothies and brainwashing them with songs. But there may be a simpler way to get some green stuff in your child's diet — no trickery required. Simply serve frozen veggies. A few kid-favourites: frozen peas, frozen corn and frozen edamame.

I have a massive stack of parenting books on my desk. Some of them tell me I'm doing an awesome job raising my kid (those books, I dog-ear and pet lovingly). Others tell me I'm screwing everything up, from bed time to screen time. I devour them all, for my job, but also because there's part of me that keeps looking for that thing to cling to.

On Slate's parenting podcast "Mum and Dad Are Fighting", the hosts debated a tough question: After a divorce, should you spend time together as a family if a child requests it?

Becoming a parent of any kind requires planning, preparation, and a whole lot of flexibility along the way. But when that child comes to you with a past you have few details about, trauma you didn’t inflict, and zero socks or underwear, it turns your world on its side.

As an introvert who is married to an introvert, I assumed that our son would, of course, be an introvert.

Reading with your kids is important. We all know this. If you're like me, you dive into book after book with abandon.

Is it OK to put a boy and a girl in the bathtub together? What should you do if a classmate from your kid’s preschool comes over for a play date and you find the two of them “playing doctor” from the waist down? And what if your child asks to examine your private parts and that makes you feel weird?

There's a common misconception about dyslexia - that it involves "backward reading" or "mirror reading". Reversing letters isn't always a sign of dyslexia, and a lot of little kids who don't have the disorder write their letters backwards, too.

Jolie Kerr is a cleaning expert, advice columnist, and author of the New York Times bestselling book, My Boyfriend Barfed In My Handbag ... And Other Things You Can't Ask Martha. Her flagship column, "Ask a Clean Person", debuted in 2011. Here on Lifehacker, we've launched a new iteration of it, focusing on parenting and all the messes it brings. 

If there's a person who knows a thing or two about falling, it's Jessie Graff. But for the American Ninja Warrior phenom, the important part is getting back up. Through a new video series called Stunt Sitter, Graff teaches self-described "helicopter" parents how to let kids take risks and even - gasp - fail. We asked Graff what mums and dads can do to raise children who are resilient, confident and tough, both physically and mentally.

Coin cell or "button" batteries are small, shiny, and feel tingly on the tongue. If you're a toddler, that puts them into the category of "belongs in my mouth". But a swallowed button battery can begin burning a hole through a kid's oesophagus in hours, causing pain, severe injury, and sometimes complications leading to death.

It's time to put the little one to bed. What do you do? Put on an audiobook, read them a bedtime story with fun pictures, or turn on some cartoons? A new study suggests the old standby of an illustrated bedtime story is best for developing your children's brain.

Kids and electronics usually don't mix. I have more than one broken headphone jack and a missing iPod thanks to my siblings. With my family visiting this week, my younger sister will be looking for something controller-shaped to play with and promptly demolish. So I'm prepping my living room's game controllers for the reckoning with some Sugru, the silicone and rubber adhesive putty that lets you customise basically everything you own.

There are some who receive the title of "Fun Aunt/Uncle " with every child they hang out with. And there are others who feel awkward around little kids ("Um, what is she thinking and why is she looking at me like that?"). I am here to help the latter group.

Sue Matthews' world was shaken when daughter Taylor was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 11. For the next five years, the family of five would be caught in a whirlwind of treatment plans, surgeries, biopsy results and medical terms they couldn't pronounce. Yet while so much was uncertain, Matthews discovered that their day-to-day experience was still in their control.

My seven-year-old daughter has gotten into some straight-up terrible TV shows of late. While I'm glad one of them is a magical-girl show like Sailor Moon, which organically extends her genre palette, it's absolutely awful. I long for simpler times - times when I'd watch Peppa Pig with her.