From dinner time conversation skills to the lost art of the thank-you note, today’s parents are returning to old-fashioned, time-tested values.  In developing gratitude, good manners, and every other life skill, children look to parents to lead the way. Here’s how you can do just that — no matter how young your brood is:

Safety issues rightly concern parents during the trick-or-treat season.  Physical safety, that is.  But families should plan just as carefully for the emotional safety of their young ones at this time of year.

Here’s how to make the experience less intimidating, and help your child enjoy Halloween on her own terms:

Loving, and being loved, develops like any other life skills your baby will master over the course of the next 2 decades: She’ll first practice on you.

Unlike talking, testing boundaries, or taming her impulses — falling in love won’t wait.  It’s the first thing she needs to be able to do.

It’s always a little surprising when we realize how wild our babies really are.

I don’t mean the “prefers to go barefoot” version of untamed. Not even the rather cute “my child really likes nuts and berries” kind of wild.

Nope, I mean the poop-whenevah-wherevah-you-want wildness. The snatch or be snatched toy ethics, and the take a nap any-dang-where mode of savagery. Survival of the stubbornest, child bite child.

You’ve seen playgroup. It’s a jungle in there.