Q: What’s the most effective way to give timeouts?

I use the 1-2-3 method from the book, 1-2-3 Magic by Thomas W. Phelan. When you want a behaviour to stop and asking doesn’t work, you count s-l-o-w-l-y to three. If your child is still poking the dog in the eye with a fork, they’re sent for a timeout. The place doesn’t matter (except that it’s safe and relatively non-interesting), since the punishment is the attention deprivation. The length of time is based on the child’s age (one minute for each year), and there are two rules for parents: no emotion, no talking. But, one caveat: While timeouts are recommended by the Canadian Paediatric Society, Vancouver developmental psychologist and child expert Gordon Neufeld has called on parents to ditch timeouts because, he argues, they jeopardize parent-child attachment.

Q: How do I cope with the resentment that will come when I am too busy and overtired for my baby?

Get babysitting help, and get out. Unless your mental state is rooted in some deep-seated psychological issue, there’s no case of parental derangement that can’t be cured by an hour alone in the park with a good magazine.

Q: How do I deal with “playground politics”?

It’s like the UN out there—treaties, truces, trades and the occasional communication breakdown. As long as push doesn’t literally come to shove, my advice is to butt out. Allow your kids to try working out their own multilateral agreements. It shows them that you feel they’re capable of dealing with problems on their own. But if you simply can’t resist stepping in, at least be diplomatic—there is nothing more annoying than a parent who thinks their kid is always right. And speaking of annoying parents, if you can’t get along with another mommy or daddy at the play park, do what you’d do in the grown-up world: Walk away.