Supporting parents to deal with the challenges of raising children

It's tough raising children. When it comes to discipline it can be difficult to know how best to react when a child is misbehaving.

Whether it's the naughty step, taking away privileges and entertainment or talking things through with them, everyone has different methods and philosophies for dealing with children's difficult behaviour.

But we know that, increasingly, families want to adopt ‘positive parenting' techniques for disciplining children such as encouragement, rewarding good behaviour and setting clear boundaries and to move away from aggressive reactions like shouting or smacking.

Welsh government research has shown that in 1998, 88 per cent of adults polled believed that it was sometimes necessary to smack a naughty child. By 2015, this figure had dropped to 24 per cent. Also in 2015,  just  five per cent of parents said they were "comfortable" with the idea of smacking.