Every parent beams with joy and pride whenever his or her child reads a sentence successfully.

Little Sue-Ann, a 3-year old, has just brought home her first reader from kindergarten. She proudly reads aloud to her parent and the next thing you know, her beaming parent asks Sue-Ann how to spell a particular word. Obviously Sue-Ann’s reply will be, “I don’t know.” That poor 3-year old is feeling a little sad and discouraged for not being to “spell” and without being spared, the parent questions her child again, “How come you don’t know?”

Screaming, crying, kicking, and biting…

That’s exactly what my 2-year old does. How true when people coined the term “terrible two’s!"

Whenever I go against K’s will, he will throw tantrums like crazy.

For example, he wants to eat something but being turned down. Or he wants to stay longer in the bathroom but being cut short.

I will be the best person to ask if you want to know the true meaning of terrible two’s.

When he has temper tantrums, nothing can stop him. Not even when his request is fulfilled.

This has become worse after our trip recently.

Before things get out of hand, I’d better look out for some solutions.

A good argument with your spouse could be just what the doctor ordered.

Preliminary results from a survey of married couples suggest that disputing husbands and wives who hold in their anger die earlier than expressive couples.

"When couples get together, one of their main jobs is reconciliation about conflict," said researcher Ernest Harburg, professor emeritus with the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Psychology Department. "Usually nobody is trained to do this. If they have good parents, they can imitate, that's fine, but usually the couple is ignorant about the process of resolving conflict."

So while conflict is inevitable, the critical matter is how couples resolve it.

"The key matter is, when the conflict happens, how do you resolve it?" Harburg said. "When you don't, if you bury your anger, and you brood on it and you resent the other person or the attacker, and you don't try to resolve the problem, then you're in trouble."

The findings add to past research showing that the release of anger can be healthy. For instance, one study revealed when people are angry they tend to make better decisions, perhaps because this emotion triggers the brain to ignore irrelevant cues and focus on the meat of the matter. Individuals who express anger might also have a sense of control and optimism over a situation, according to another past study.

Full report: Spouses Who Fight Live Longer

1.   Keep a record book as well as your bankbook

My daddy and mommy took me and my sister for a vacation in Kota Kinabalu (adults call it KK), Sabah, Malaysia. It was my first time on a plane.

To try to jot down this wonderful (sometimes scary) experience, I have written a chronicle of events of the trip.

With music pumping in the background, the kids in Terry Wade's physical education class are in constant motion, going from sit-ups to jumping jacks to curls with light weights.

After their 45-minute session, the sixth-graders who are sweating the most, or as Wade calls it, "burning butter," get stickers.

"My main goal and emphasis is getting these kids up and moving," said Wade, who teaches at Northrich Elementary in the Richardson school district in suburban Dallas. "It's 'Can this kid do this for a lifetime?' I don't care how good they are. I care if they're having fun."

Instead of team sports, Wade and other physical education teachers across the country are focusing more on individual activities that students can incorporate into their lives long after their school days are over.

Experts say the shift also helps gym teachers include children who are struggling with their weight. With individual activities, overweight students can work at their own pace, and not be left on the sidelines. And they can take part in lower impact activities like weightlifting, yoga or martial arts.

Full report: PE: Focus on Exercise, Not Team Sports

Have you ever wondered if banks have a tendency to approve credit cards and loans for one sex more than the other? If you are married (or plan to be) I will share with you five vital keys every married person should know before signing any credit application.

As parents, we fear the worst for our children. We see an imperfect world, where strangers and circumstances can discourage, frighten, harm, or endanger our little ones. But kids need not be plagued with thoughts of a dangerous world, and parents shouldn’t feel the need to create a protective bubble around them. The best defense is to empower kids with a boost of confidence and how-to-deal skills when facing possible dangers.

What is Self-Esteem?

Every night in this quiet western Indian city, 15 pregnant women prepare for sleep in the spacious house they share, ascending the stairs in a procession of ballooned bellies, to bedrooms that become a landscape of soft hills.

A team of maids, cooks and doctors looks after the women, whose pregnancies would be unusual anywhere else but are common here. The young mothers of Anand, a place famous for its milk, are pregnant with the children of infertile couples from around the world.

The small clinic at Kaival Hospital matches infertile couples with local women, cares for the women during pregnancy and delivery, and counsels them afterward. Anand's surrogate mothers, pioneers in the growing field of outsourced pregnancies, have given birth to roughly 40 babies.

More than 50 women in this city are now pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Taiwan, Britain and beyond. The women earn more than many would make in 15 years. But the program raises a host of uncomfortable questions that touch on morals and modern science, exploitation and globalization, and that most natural of desires: to have a family.

Full report: World Outsources Pregnancies to India

I just spoke to a neighbor. He’s a father of two teenaged sons. He told me that his sons play truant and it’s so serious that the headmaster sent him a letter informing him of his sons’ misconduct in school.

I asked him, “If you could turn back the time, what would you have done differently?"

Without a doubt, he pointed out communication is the key to preventing this and other related child discipline problems.

I told myself I don’t want to face this problem 10 years from now when my kids grow up into teens.

To achieve this, getting your child to share his day is crucial. It can make a huge difference in your kids’ life and yours too.

I have written about my son’s developments in other two posts: 20-month old and 19-month .

As I said before, not to show off anything nor to compare. It’s more for my own record as of what K can do so that I can refer to it when the need arises. It’s for fun more than anything else.

FACT: Nearly two-thirds of college students have at least one credit card in their name.

What does it tell you as a parent? Your child is going to have at least one credit card – sooner or later.

So why not prepare him the best ways to use credit cards before he leaves for college.

Here’s what you can do:

No time to exercise since you have a baby?

Get a baby jogging stroller or baby jogger and you can have the best of both worlds: you can exercise and your baby can have fresh air.

Baby jogging strollers come in many styles, colors, and prices. Some great brands are Baby Trend, Baby Jogger, InStep, Schwinn, Bob, Dreamer Design, Tike Tech, and Phil & Ted.

Following are the bestsellers and remember to check out in the reviews what others have to say about a particular model. You don’t want to end up buying what you don’t need.

As the gunman was about to open fire, 7-year-old Alexis Goggins lunged from the back seat of the SUV and threw herself across her mom, crying, "Don't hurt my mother!"

Six bullets from the 9 mm handgun slammed into Alexis, one piercing her right eye. Two slugs hit her mother.

Alexis' mother pulled through. But two weeks later, Alexis lies in critical condition, blind in one eye. And to her classmates and many people in this city so depressingly familiar with violence, the little girl is a hero.

"She was trying to save me,'' her mother, Seliethia Parker, 30, told The Associated Press on Monday. "My baby is just an angel to her mother. I thought as the mother, I'd be saving my child. I never thought my daughter would be saving me.''

Alexis has undergone three operations since the shooting, and her mother sits by her bedside at Children's Hospital of Michigan.

As for the mother, she was seriously wounded, with one slug grazing her head and the other entering her chest and stopping just short of an artery. But she was released from the hospital just a few days later.

Full report: Child Shot Protecting Mom Hailed a Hero