Seven-year-old Emily is continually nervous and her anxiety is keeping her from enjoying summer camp, sleepovers with friends, and after-school activities. Her parents don’t know what to do, and even her therapist is worried that Emily’s anxiety is starting to define too much her integral sense of self. Treating anxiety in kids takes a creative, often playful approach, says Lynn Lyons, author of Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents.

On top of losing faith in a secure future, mothers and fathers deal with everyday dilemmas that make a joke of traditional parenting rules and childrearing practices.

Almost nothing evokes more fear and dread in parents today than the omnipresent specter of social cruelty and bullying in schools.

The days of children being seen and not heard are long gone. Now, however, kids and teens are increasingly expressing themselves through extensive online social networks, which open them up to new spheres of influence that challenge parental authority in an unprecedented way.

Sex makes babies. So it is ironic that the child, the embodiment of the couple's love, so often threatens the very romance that brought that child into being. Sex, which set the entire enterprise in motion, is often abandoned once children enter the picture. Why does parenthood so often deliver such a fatal blow?

As a graduate student, I'd done individual counseling before, and had worked with parents and kids, but had never worked with a couple. Thirty minutes into the first session, when I was lost in the midst of a meandering series of questions, the husband leaned forward and said, "I don't think you know what you are doing." Alas, he was right. Naked came the new couples therapist.