In a child’s formative years play is a vital part of communication and learning. Making the most out of this important time for your child encourages the development of core physical, intellectual and social skills from as early as possible which gives them the best start in life. This developmental stage is defined as the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and is a recognised structure of learning from birth to five years of age. There is now an easy way to ensure your child is learning the EYFS way: by shopping for educational toys from DiscoverMe at http://www.discovermetoys.co.uk/.

Anyway a meltdown is not a tantrum the is well best way to describe it as a tornado. This tornado comes without warning , there is no reasoning of why it happens or how it starts. There is nothing you can do except ride it out and wait for it to calm down. This can be a few minutes to a few hours. Do you get the picture.

I have learnt that with autistic children you should always expect the unexpected and last night was a classic example.

Even with child number two it amazes me how quickly our babies grow up into toddlers and from toddlers into little people! When we had our second child I wanted to make sure that we had memories of those stages in other ways than just pictures.

When my beautiful daughter Sophia was born, I was surprised to see that she had a full head of hair. By the time she was a month old, her hair had grown so long that she constantly had hair in her eyes. I headed to my local shopping centre and bought her some small hair clips so I could clip her hair away from her eyes. However, I spent the next week clipping her hair back off her face as the clips would slide out due to her having such fine baby hair.

After reviewing Duncan's latest publication Baby's Here Who Does What? Family and Parenting magazine were intrigued to find out more about Duncan and his thoughts behind his work and whether the parenting world really is dominated by Mums....

Introducing the new dreamgenii® Billy Winky children’s bed-time sleep pillow

From the makers of the award winning dreamgenii® pregnancy support & feeding pillow comes a fantastic new children’s bed-time pillow designed to help your little one enjoy a magical night’s sleep – meaning a magical, uninterrupted night’s sleep for mum and dad too.

As the editor of family and parenting magazine I was delighted to be asked to review the latest Postman Pat DVD, so myself and my 2 year old son Charley spent a quiet afternoon watching a sneak preview of Postman Pat's escapades in his new position of 'special delivery service!' which will hit the shelves from August 9th 2010.

The ‘Just So Festival’ is the dream child of two couples who’ve spent years visiting traditional festivals with their children and finding much of the entertainment to be off-limits… so they’ve set up a camping weekend in 65 acres of unspoilt Staffordshire woodland where everything - from traditional fairground to artificial beach, from gypsy bands to top name authors - is aimed at giving children and their parents a fantastic and magical experience.

With just eight weeks to go before the Just So Festival welcomes hundreds of families to its woodland home in the beautiful Staffordshire countryside, the organisers are delighted to announce the very latest attraction to enchant the children: four of the fantastic SuperLambBananas that were the centrepiece of Liverpool’s year as Capital of Culture. Home Bargains - proud of its Liverpool heritage – were a sponsor of the Superlambananas project and bought 16 Superlambananas in support of the Lord Mayor of Liverpool's Charity Appeal in 2008. They are are now being kind enough to send some on holiday to the Just So Festival.

To coincide with child safety week, (21st-27th June 2010) One of our network of magazines, MyLocalElectrician, has released a number of really helpful articles on all manners of Electrical safety in the home.

Generally considered to be the third most important day in the gifting calendar after Christmas and Mother’s Day, Father’s Day is a once a year opportunity for children to say thank you to their dads. It also creates a dilemma for mums who are often called upon to provide the inspiration, if not the answer, to the question ‘what would he like’?