Westbrook, ME  While summer vacation is a time kids look forward to all year, it can be a time of high stress for parents. Children are home with plenty of time on their hands, which can lead to fighting with siblings, power struggles with parents, and defiant behavior. EmpoweringParents.com recently published two articles by James Lehman, MSW that help parents deal with the more challenging aspects of summer break. “Temper, Temper: How to Keep Your Cool When Kids Push Your Buttons” and “Sick of Backtalk? Here’s How to Stop it” have both set records for the magazine in terms of popularity and the number of times each was emailed to friends.

Elisabeth Wilkins is the Editor of EmpoweringParents.com. “Our Backtalk article was emailed to more than 500 people in 24 hours—a new record for us. Parents are writing in and saying, ‘Who says summer vacation is supposed to be fun?’ While summer break can be relaxing for many, when you’re in the middle of a months-long power struggle with your kids, it can be a challenge to maintain sanity. In Empowering Parents, we feature articles that give hands-on help to families by including effective techniques they can put into practice right away. We’ve become a safe place for parents to go to on the web to find answers to their questions about the toughest behaviors kids exhibit, from backtalk to temper tantrums, sibling rivalry to teens who are violent in the home. Parents come to us to find answers, and to find other people in the same situation with whom they can talk.”

The formula seems to be working, because in the one and half years the award-winning magazine has been online, it already has more then 135,000 readers.

Empowering Parents currently features a weekly newsletter, a blog that parents can join by becoming “Parent Bloggers,” online articles by child behavior experts, and interactive polls. Wilkins added that the next step for the site is to “get our forum going this month. This will encourage parents who are already reaching out to one another through insightful comments after each article and blog posts to talk with each other in greater depth about their particular parenting challenges.”

Empowering Parents is produced by Legacy Publishing Company and was created to provide useful problem-solving techniques for parents and children. Legacy Publishing is the company behind The Total Transformation and Total Focus Programs--two unique products that have been used by thousands of parents, teachers, coaches and other mentors of children to improve communication and modify problematic behaviors.