EDUCATION CORRESPONDENT
MIDDLE-CLASS parents are being offered classes in how to cope with the tantrums and mood-swings of their teenage children.
A six-week course in East Renfrewshire aims to give parents hints and tips on tackling and containing youthful rebellion.

Nicola Hanvey, the course tutor, said a key aspect was to remember that everyone was young once.

She said: "Parents come feeling they are struggling with their teenager's behaviour.

"But, during the session, they reflect back on their own teenage behaviour and it surprises them that it is fairly similar to what their children are doing now."

During the first few sessions, the "students" are talked through the job of parenting a teenager and through typical situations encountered.

Then teenage behaviour is divided into three categories:

• Teenage irresponsibility when youngsters seem to be rebellious but in fact are just distracted and absent-minded.

• Teenage development the moody and uncommunicative behaviour associated with hormonal and physical changes.

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On the first anniversary of Madeleine McCann's disappearance last week, I paid a visit to the official Find Madeleine website, where I read statements by her doctor parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, and clicked on the Madeleine Online Store, where you can buy a "Look for Madeleine" yellow wristband or a "Don't You Forget About Me" T-shirt with the now familiar image of the adorable blond little British girl.

We all know the facts in what a spokesman for the incredibly well-organized McCann family has called the "biggest human-interest story ever": Madeleine disappeared from a vacation villa in an Algarve resort in Portugal last May, days before her fourth birthday, while her parents were famously off having dinner with friends, "not 50 yards away," Mr. McCann said in a recent documentary.

For leaving Madeleine and her two younger siblings alone while they partied, albeit periodically checking on them, the McCanns were pilloried worldwide, becoming a poster couple for "bad parents."

That was only the start: They were then named as suspects by the Portuguese police, but there has been no evidence to support this. The McCanns recently won a settlement from a British newspaper group for suggesting they were implicated in their daughter's death.

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one of the nation's most respected independent publishers of business intelligence research about 86 percent of Americans will be celebrating Mother's Day on May 11 this year, with children expected to spend more than $18 billion on spoiling their mothers.

And while gift ideas from toasters to towel sets are filling the catalogues, IBISWorld analysts say greeting cards and flowers will remain the primary gifts of choice this Mother's Day, followed by gift certificates, jewelry, pamper packs, and a well earned break from the kitchen.

Top Mother's Day Gift Picks

Flowers A traditional favorite, Americans are expected to spend $2.61 billion on a bunch of blooms for mom this Mother's Day. In addition to carnations, chrysanthemums, and lilies, other popular choices will include orchids, roses, and Spring-time tulips.

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Kathy McGrenera doesn't object to standardized tests on principle, but she's so upset with the use of test results to rank schools that she pulled her daughter from this year's annual Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA).She also worked with another North Vancouver parent, Marta Mierzwinska, to organize a mini-protest at Larson elementary that resulted in eight Grade 4 students skipping several hours of school over six days to avoid the FSA's reading, writing and math tests -- the only standardized tests in B.C. elementary schools.

It was their way of signalling frustration with the Fraser Institute's annual report card on elementary schools, which uses the FSA to rank schools. They insist FSA is an inadequate measure of their school's performance and is taken far too seriously by many parents.

"Larson scores low on those rankings, but Larson is an excellent school," McGrenera said. "If people take these rankings as a serious reflection of how good a school is, that's problematic to me because I think that's inaccurate."

Larson's ranking isn't that bad. On average, the school has scored seven out of 10 on the last five report cards and held that mark this year, although its position slipped to 333 from its average of 275 due to better performance by other schools.

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Premier Morris Iemma described this morning's  fatal boat crash on Sydney Harbour  as "every parent's worst nightmare".

Five people - four women and a man aged in their late teens and early 20s - died after a fishing trawler and a 23 foot half-cabin cruiser with 14 people on board collided off Bradleys Head at 2.40am.

Mr Iemma said police were still identifying the victims, and that not all direct relatives had been notified yet.

Six, possibly seven, of the injured had been released from hospital, he said.

Mr Iemma urged "two heroes", members of the public who had helped with the rescue, to come forward.

"You are heroes and we thank you for your courage," he said.

The two people were understood to have been fishing at the time.

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A group of little kids pushed around a donation jar in a baby stroller, raising $200 in their "Pennies for Kassidy" fund drive. An Air Force unit from California just sent a $2,000 check, and neighbors are constantly bringing over food and clothes.

Residents of two tiny Nevada towns are rallying around Kassidy Miller, the daughter of two Fort Lewis soldiers who were fatally shot inside their Parkland, Pierce County, rental home early last month. They want to make sure the baby, who turned 8 months old Monday, is taken care of now, with diapers and formula, and when the time comes, with college tuition.

"She really has become the community's child," said Jennifer Fredrickson, who with a girlfriend is planning a Saturday fundraiser at a bar in Minden, Nev. "If one vicious person can do this to her, then an entire community can rally around her and make her realize there's good in the world."

Kassidy's parents Staff Sgt. Timothy Miller, 27, and Sgt. Randi Miller, 25, both Army medics who served in Iraq were killed March 1, allegedly by a fellow soldier, Spc. Ivette Gonzalez Davila. Davila, 22, is accused of fatally shooting the couple, dousing their bodies with acid and kidnapping Kassidy.

After Davila reportedly told another soldier about the killings the next day, the soldier called authorities and the baby, then 6 months old, was found unharmed at a Fort Lewis barracks.

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A friend once told me that parents should endeavour to act like butlers never hovering, but always close by in case their child needs them.

At the time, I was a doting new mother, and I found his view of parenthood cold and detached. The very thought of a traditional and ever-aloof British butler gave me shivers. To me, my friend's suggestion was paramount to neglect.

Now, with a decade of experience under my belt, I see the value in his words and the point he was trying to make the premise being that children are people, not projects to be managed. In order for them to become themselves, my friend was suggesting, kids need the space to develop apart from the constant presence of their moms and dads.

I was reminded of the butler metaphor after reading the latest book by Alberta-born writer Carl Honore, Under Pressure: Rescuing Childhood From the Culture of Hyper-Parenting (Knopf Canada, $32).

Honore, author of the acclaimed In Praise of Slow, is now based in London. In a telephone interview from Portland, Ore. where he was on a book tour, he tells me he wrote this book because he felt like he'd lost his way as a parent of two small children. He found himself, like other parents of his generation, anxious with worry that even a shred of his children's potential might go untapped.

"I'd lost my compass. It started as a personal thing. Then I was trying to understand what was going on in my own life. Then as a writer, I was curious about what was happening to other parents in other places," Honore says.

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I am a parent of two children who attend Captain Webb School in Dawley. I, as a parent, would like more done to improve road safety in Pool Hill Road.

Every morning impatient drivers are just mounting the kerbs along what is a narrow road. Drivers don’t care about the children and adults walking along the footpaths.

Many drivers have just missed my children’s ankles as they have been too impatient to wait and have mounted the kerb.

I have seen a taxi driver swearing because people wouldn’t move out of the way and he couldn’t get past, as my children were walking on the footpath. He wanted us to move.

What example is this to children? Drivers should be patient.

I feel that Pool Hill should be made into a one way system for everyone’s safety, especially on the school run.

I hope other parents of children at Captain Webb in Dawley feel the same. I am willing to get a petition up to make it safe for our children going to school.

A California mother sued Nalge Nunc International Corp, claiming the company knew, but downplayed risks, that a toxic substance in its popular Nalgene plastic sports bottles could leach into the bottles' contents and sicken consumers.

The case, filed on Tuesday, is believed to be the first consumer class action over the use of Bisphenol A, or BPA, in plastic sports bottles since Canada moved to ban baby bottles containing the substance and the U.S. government expressed concern over its safety last week.

Nalge Nunc, a unit of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc, said on Friday it will phase out production of its Outdoor line of polycarbonate containers that include BPA over the next several months.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc also said on Friday it will pull baby bottles and other products made with BPA from its Canada stores immediately and phase the items out of its U.S. stores next year.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, accuses Nalge Nunc of continuing to assert that BPA is safe long after dozens of studies linked the substance to hormone disruptions, infertility, early puberty, and cancer.

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The study, which links higher energy intake around conception to the birth of sons, provides the first explanation of why the number of boy babies is in decline in the west, suggesting it is the result of women consuming low fat foods and skipping breakfast, among other things.

The research shows a higher calorie intake around the time of conception can shift the odds of having a son from ten to 11 boys in every 20 births. The effect was such that the more women ate, the more likely she was to have a boy.

As well as consuming more calories, women who had sons were more likely to have eaten a higher quantity and wider range of nutrients, including potassium, calcium and vitamins C, E and B12.

In other words, women who want a son should eat a generous bowl of cereal for breakfast, munch bananas, use more salt and boost their overall daily calories by 400 calories - the equivalent of a meal.

Although the DNA in sperm determines sex, it seems that in the never ending battle of the sexes mothers can favour the development of one sex of infant rather than another, a faculty that nature uses to fine tune the sex ratio in Stone Age days to suit times of feast and famine, says the team from the Universities of Exeter and Oxford.

To reveal how you are what your mother eats, the team focused on 721 first-time pregnant mothers in the UK, who did not know the sex of their unborn child and were asked to provide records of their eating habits before and during the early stages of pregnancy.

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