Luckily, baby showers never go out of style. Instead of hosting a plain old party, here’s a guide to throwing a baby shower the family won’t forget. It all starts with a creative theme…

We all want to help our kids become caring, courageous, positive and principled people. But in today’s hectic, information-overdosed world, there seem to be a thousand influences on them that we are not always happy about. And when they don’t act like the kind of people we hoped they would be, we often feel out of control, out of ideas and worried about how to turn things around.

All too often, the result of this high pressure climate is that parenting becomes a democracy, where children are offered too many choices, too few consequences and become the centre of power in their family. Parents cycle through phases of feeling helpless, getting angry, feeling guilty, trying to compensate for having gotten angry, only to lose power once again.