Parents have an important job. Raising kids is both rewarding and challenging. You're likely to get a lot of advice along the way, from doctors, family, friends, and even strangers. But every parent and child is unique. Being sensitive and responsive to your kids can help you build positive, healthy relationships together.

This can be especially critical for infants, toddlers and children. Strong emotional bonds from the beginning through sensitive, responsive, and consistent is important. If your children fear you, they cannot trust you. If they don't trust you, they cannot learn from you.

Some points to ponder:

• There are no bad children. There are bad choices. There are bad moments. There are bad days. There are bad situations. But there are no bad children. Period.

• Every day, in a hundred small ways our children ask, "Do you hear me? Do you see me? Do I matter” Are we sensitive to their needs?

• Discipline is helping a child solve a problem. Punishment is making a child suffer for having a problem. To raise problem solvers, focus on solutions not retribution.

• The simplest and most effective way to prevent resistance, defiance, and rebellion in our children is to treat them with the same kindness, courtesy, and respect that we naturally give to adults.

• Don't forget to bring your funny bone along on your parenting journey. Humor is a universal language that topples walls, connects hearts, and open the door to communication and cooperation.

The point of parenting isn’t to have all the answers before we start out but instead to figure it out on the go as our children grow, because as they do, so will we. One day, they’ll walk in your shoes. So make sure they're pointed in the right direction.

My personal favourite on positive parenting is the quote by the prophet Kahlil Gibran:  

Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you, but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

"You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the make upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness.
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable". ―

- Dr. Sulata Shenoy