As you and your children settle into the new school year with new schedules and new activities, it can all be quite overwhelming. Your role as family manager has just stepped into high gear -- planning, organizing, directing, monitoring, and motivating are in the forefront as you help your children adjust to everything this school year brings. So how can you get everything done and not lose your marbles?

Some moms on the playground just don't know when to leave well enough alone. Rude, crude and socially unacceptable. Don't get caught saying the wrong thing in the schoolyard this year by adhering to these Things Not to Say to Another Mom.

My boys were keeping score over everything and it drove me crazy. I was officially on strike. This meant I would be doing nothing. If they wanted food, they would have to prepare it, if they needed clean clothes, they would have to wash them. If they needed something at the store, they would have to walk to the store to get it. They would put themselves to bed. There would be no fun outings until the strike was over.

Moms everywhere -- it's back to school time! Here's a little checklist for everyone to review. It's not supposed to make you feel like you have more to do -- it will hopefully reassure you that you've got most things nailed. There are just a few things you need for day one, some ideas to ease your child into a new environment and some handy mom items.

My kids are extremely outgoing and love initiating new activities. I, on the other hand, have a shorter attention span since becoming a mom. Below is a list of seven things the hubby and I initiated that have turned our "please, for the love of Jebediah, chill out!!!" attitude into genuine laughter and a [slightly] more relaxed atmosphere.

If you are a parent today in the western world, you have joined a very special club. A club of parents cast adrift, drowning in self-doubt while dodging waves of pyscho-babble lurching at them from every direction. It's easy to throw blame around but what is the main question we all want the answer to? "How do I help my child unfold to be their very best in today's world?"

So you walked in on your young kid and a friend "playing doctor." What do you do? First of all, these kids are not perverse -- they're curious. Their motivation in what we consider their sex play is not sexual in adult terms. They want to see and possibly touch, but their aim is to learn the similarities and differences in their anatomies. So. how should you handle the situation?

A dear stay-at-home mama friend of mine recently reflected on the idea of being "present," which got me thinking: am I present and in the moment with our children? And if so, is that really necessary? To be present in every moment? In order to find out, I challenged myself to be present all day, as a sort of experiment. I was present when I ruined my favourite shirt, when the kids were crying, when water spilled all over the kitchen. P.R.E.S.E.N.T.

Don't let popular myths sway you. Your child doesn't care if you are male or female, so long as you are there to provide food and comfort and protection. Everything else is just learning and, believe me guys, women don't have some secret users-manual for children. Just like us, women start off in the dark and learn as they go, on their own and from family and friends.

How many people are lucky enough to have had not just one great dad, but two? I was! One for my first 16 years, Harry, my birth Father. Another, Stanley, my wife's dad then became mine for the last six years of his life. Your child wants nothing more than to feel appreciated and trusted to rise above the mistakes and be successful. This is what I see everyday in the dads around me.

The Mommy Wars flared up again last month in time for Mother's Day, thanks to that insta-infamous Time magazine cover of the pretty blonde provocatively breastfeeding her almost-four-year-old beside the inflammatory headline: "Are You Mom Enough?" It talked about attachment parenting, but mostly in the context of mothers.

Oh birds and the bees... When the kids start asking questions about sexuality, how do you respond? How much or how little does a parent actually explain to their younger kids when they're asked the more challenging questions? Here are some good answers to tell your child about sexuality...

I wish I wasn't writing this from experience, but my toddler came down with croup in Cuba last week and I learned some things that I wanted to share to spare any of you the same distress. From knowing the location of the nearest clinic, to who to call from the hospital, here are some tips.

How do we inspire our children in such an ever changing, unknown world? Simply put, by sharing our passions with them. I have seen first hand that the chances we take, the times we challenge ourselves and the things we incorporate into our lives, that make our lives richer as much as having kids, are our greatest weapons against an unknown future.

It arrives. The phone call you've been dreading. It's your child's (pick a subject) teacher, or the vice-principal and they're calling to tell you t...

The truth is we are all superheroes waiting to discover the special gift we were given to make our mark in the world. For some reason, what we start off with is often the exact opposite of our superpower. These opposites are our own form of Kryptonite. We have to rise above our Kryptonite.

Having kids means having playdates -- events for which there are no guidelines, and a lot of potential problems. Here are some basic rules for making it through a playdate with your bases covered, the little ones happy and best of all: your sanity.

Well, there is the unpleasant memory of the last time you went out into the "real world" and it didn't "work". If "work" was the bag you had used to pick up crud, your experience would be the stuff that's stays on the ground where the crud was. (Not a good place unless you are a crud-worm).

We bear our children at the feet of mountains. Not literally. I mean, some people might. Personally, I'm still on the fence about giving birth any f...

I could chalk it up to the terrible twos or almost threes. Toddlerhood is an emotional time. But here were a handful of kids, all around Max's age, and he was the only one freaking his freak. Today's lesson in Toddlerville: Have more hissy fits, get more stuff. Damn it.

So, you've asked your teen for the 400th time to do whatever. (It's not like he/she's actually heard what you said -- your voice blends in with the...

With exam time coming up once again , you may be raring to go. But seriously, you may feel like someone just kicked you out of a plane without a pa...