A parent and child expert with Care for the Family has urged parents to accept their children as they are.

In the autumn issue of the charity's magazine Family, Rob Parson, who lectures regularly to mums and dads on the issues and challenges they face as parents, challenged parents to accept their children as they are.

|QUOTE|Parson highlighted focussed on one of the greatest pressure on children in today's society: their appearance.

"We all crave to be accepted, and somebody has convinced us that what we look like and what we achieve are the things that make us acceptable," he wrote.

"One of the greatest pressures on children in modern society is the way they look. Children aren't stupid; they know that ugly girls don't get on the front covers of teen magazines, or unattractive boys on the inside pages."

He also expressed his grief over parents who injure the self-esteem of their children by making derogatory comments - even when meant in a humorous way - about the physical appearance of their children.

Parson stressed to parents that "somehow we have to let our children know that we love them anyway".

He also urged parents to be sensitive to the burden they can put on their children by pushing for academic achievement.

"One of the most testing aspects of parenthood is to balance motivating our children to reach their potential, without instilling in them the belief that our love for them is conditional on how they perform," he said.

Parson also urged parents "not to put on them [their children] the burden of being someone they cannot be".

"But we do our children a wonderful service if we send them into that world with an unshakeable belief that there is at least one person who, irrespective of their grades, weight or athletic genius, loves and accepts them unconditionally, said Parson.

"Most of us, as adults are still searching for somebody to love us like that," he added.

Parson's appeal to parents comes as the Archbishop of Canterbury warned of a childhood crisis in Britain as he expressed concern over increasing mental illness among children.

In an interview with the BBC, Dr Rowan Williams said that the increasing mental illness was because children today are starved of love and affection by their parents and are growing up in a climate of fear.

"There is a widespread unease about what is happening," Dr Williams told BBC radio. "We have to go to the roots of the difficulty, and that ... has to do with a shared unwillingness in our culture to let children be children for long enough."

And just last week The Children's Society launched a national inquiry into the state of childhood in Britain - the first independent inquiry of its kind and a prompt response to concerns expressed by leading child professionals and academics in a letter in The Telegraph that modern life is leading to more depression among children.