Holidays are a joyous and memorable occasion that we share with our friends and family. We keep the tradition of giving by exchanging gifts and spending quality time together.
However, for many families, the struggle for survival does not change with the arrival of festivities. Sharing or exchanging gifts is not a possibility. We could acknowledge the blessings we have by giving back to people from disadvantaged background, at the same time keeping the spirit of giving alive. [Read more…]
It is that time of the year when there are infections abound in the air. Your little one inevitably catches it either at school or day-care. Runny noses, wheezing, hacking coughs and god forbid, a temperature!
While a certain amount of sickness is inevitable, a few household precautions and remedies can help prevent these infections or allay the symptoms.
[Read more…]
We all have been given a mission to be spiritual companions to our children, grandchildren, and young friends. There are many blessings to be shared across the generations. We also can do more to respect and cherish children’s spirituality. How do we express it? Through creativity, sharing experiences, narrating stories, questions and much more. [Read more…]
In our bid to get our children more outdoor play, we must also safeguard them against seemingly harmless outdoors. This article is does not intend to prevent you from sending your child outdoors to play, but to ensure that when you do so, proper safety precautions are undertaken to everybody has a good time.
What is your child’s typical day like? I bet it includes loads of activities that involve art, craft,sports and study. Have you ever considered mud? I find children, even the very young ones, are always fascinated by mud. But our current lifestyle can elicit responses like, “Eww, not the mud, honey. It’s dirty” or “There are germs in there, you don’t want them on your hands!” [Read more…]
Children love stories. All of our childhood, we thrived on bed-time stories from The Mahabharata,The Bible, Akbar Birbal and the Panchatantra. Sadly, technology has overtaken story books. Severalkids of today are just interested in thumbing through an I-Pad story by themselves, where visuals arefed into their brains. There is little space for imagination. There is no wonder or excitement of whatis coming next!
Bed-time stories help cultivate a bond with the story teller, it helps form a bed-time routine and nurture a child’s imagination and the capability to follow threads of conversation. Picking out a story is a rather difficult task than one would have imagined. There is violence and wickedness in so many story books we reviewed.
An important point, to bear in mind while choosing bed-time stories for children, is to weed out violence. We need to be more aware of the story books we choose for our children.
Today, many people live in fear. Boys and girls are caught up in this negative way of thinking becausethe stories they hear are filled with violence and terrorism that destroy human relationships. This negativity creeps into even bed-time stories meant for innocent children.
A brand new book, The Rainbow Chronicles: A Bedtime Story for a New Day offers a positive alternative. Dads and sons, moms and daughters can read this book and make the story grow into something beautiful.
The story is based upon a world where old and young people believe in sharing and caring for each other. It sets positive example by portraying adults as role models who inspire young people to live joy-filled, positive lives. In this story, Wilby, the protagonist sets out to find the end of the Rainbow before it is too late. This stories help build faith, prayers, and effort of young people to spread the love of Humanity, like petals of the dark-purple tulips, so that future generations will wake up to a better day.
Each of us is invited to welcome the virtues of love, sweet nature and empathy. No matter what belief system, physical appearance, gender, age, family background, race, or ethnic heritage, whether married or single, I encourage you to make a difference for good in the way you and your
family touch the lives of others through loving actions.
So, what is coming next? More dinosaurs or more flowers? A desert or a garden? In many ways, it’s up to you! Make sure to buy, read and act on this book. May you bring the Rainbow’s End home to yourself, your family, neighbourhood, and community, your place of worship, and yes, to the ends of our earth. May you strive to help others write The Rainbow Chronicles in their lives. May the breath of the Almighty, the Holy Spirit, always whisper love within you and through you.
If you want to teach the right behavior to your children as part of your behavior management plan, you must identify and ensure that your children have some chores to do on a regular basis. This is because chores make children understand that they need to share the household work as a member of the family along with others. Making your children carry out some specific chores every day is also helpful in teaching them the importance of taking up responsibilities.
Children who do their daily chores with a lot of discipline learn as to how they can become responsible adults. Most adults are required to do several chores on a day to day basis in order to take care of the responsibilities they have. It is, therefore absolutely essential that children learn to do some of the chores at a young age so that they will not experience any difficulties when they have to take up more responsibilities as they grow up and become adults. Actually, children as old as 4 years can be given daily chores to do and you can add on more complex chores as and when grow older.
Chores That Can Be Given To Preschoolers
If you have preschool children, you can always give them simple chores that require them to pick up and keep things back in their respective places after they finish using them. To give you an example, the chores that you ask your preschool children to do include picking up toys and keeping them back in their proper places after their playtime each and every day. Preschoolers can also start to learn as to how they can pick up their room so that it remains tidy and how to put the dishes away after they finish eating a meal. If you teach as well as show them how to do these chores, they will learn to take up the responsibility for the messes that they themselves create.
It has been observed that young children respond better if you make use of a sticker chart to help them remember to do the daily chores that they are expected to do. This is because preschoolers generally would not have developed the capability to read. Therefore, it is a better idea to use a chart with pictures stuck on it to remind them about chores they are supposed to do. As and when they complete a chore, you can present a sticker to your child. Young children can be motivated to do their chores by giving stickers as incentives. However, you may have to provide better rewards in order to motivate older children to do their chores.
Chores That Can Be Give To School-going Children
As children grow up and start going to school, the complexity of the chores that they have to do need to increase and they should be trained to take up more responsibilities as well. The children of school-going age should be encouraged to continue doing the chore of keeping things back in their proper places as they were trained to do as preschoolers. This concept is best explained with the help of an example. You can teach your children to keep their backpacks and shoes at the places allotted for keeping them when they return home from their schools.
You can give new or additional chores your children who have already started going to school. For example, you can ask them to take care of one of the pets that you have at home. It is a great way to train them to take up more responsibilities.
As you start giving your children more complex chores to do, it is absolutely important on your part to teach and equip them to effectively complete their jobs. As an example, if you expect your child to put away his/her clothes, you should tell him/her as to where the clothes have to be kept. Moreover, you should also discuss with them as to what your expectations are so that they can do the job well. Finally, you should remember to praise them whenever they put in the effort and encourage them to continue to do the chore. However, you must never expect them to be perfect in doing their daily chores.
Pulling Hair! Hitting! Biting! It’s even possible that your child showed a fit of rage and lashed out or even hurt someone. Your child may have been bothered by some other aggressive child. If you’ve experienced these issues or situations, you’ve finally joined the crowd. Almost every parent struggles with helping and understanding the child when he hurts someone else. Most parents don’t even understand the underlying cause when their children are hit by others.
It can be a big shock when your sweet son or daughter suddenly throws something at someone or bites a new baby in the family. If you’re worried and need some help, you can learn a lot with the following guiding principles for relieving your child’s aggression. This will allow you to enjoy and relax with his siblings and friends.
Helping Your Child Relieve Aggression
First of all, it is very important for you to understand that children never want to attack others. Most children just want to have some fun, feel loved and focus on their safety. Almost every child plays well when he feels connected. However, in some situations, children may completely lose their sense of connection. This can make them feel frightened, isolated or tensed.
When this happens, children may experience an emotional emergency, and lash out at other children or even adults. It is important to understand that children never intend to be cunning or mean. Most of the time, a child does not have any control over acts of aggression.
When a child feels safe enough to show his feelings, he would never hurt anyone intentionally. Children always feel a special bond with their caregiver or parents. Thus, when they feel attacked, they run to the nearest dear and loved one for attention and help. Most children start crying and try to release the knot of grief and fear they strongly feel. The person who listens to the child fall apart can give the perfect gift of love and care to allow him to heal from certain feelings which could be making life harder. When a child does not feel safe anymore, he may signal for help by relieving aggression in some form.
Reasons for Being Aggressive
A child who lashes out just feels sad, alone and frightened. However, this child does not look very frightened when he’s about to push, hit or bite. But his fears are always the underlying problem. His feelings are controlling his every action. Fear and threat robs a little child of his ability to feel that he also cares about others.
In such a situation, a child’s trusting nature is always crusted with a lot of different feelings. A child may be thinking that no one understands him or cares about him. If you pay some close attention, you will realize that such a feeling can easily drain a child’s face of sparkle and flexibility in the few seconds before he lashes out at someone.
A child may experience these feelings of isolation. It won’t matter how close and loving the child’s parents are at other times. They will have to be considerate in this particular situation. There are even some children who are just occasionally aggressive and frightened. Other children feel a constant abiding sense of desperation and fear which comes from specific circumstances beyond any individual’s control. A lot of children acquire different kinds of fears and threats from medical treatments, difficult birth, unhappiness around them, family tensions and absence of loved ones from their lives. According to most psychologists, even a short period of frightening time in a child’s past can easily create hard feelings and aggression.
Caregivers and parents need to understand that they have tremendous power to help an aggressive child. It is also important to understand that a child’s aggression can’t ever be erased by simple enforcing your logical reasoning, punishments, timeouts or other such acts.
Similarly, some unnecessary incentives to control behavior may create intense feelings within your child’s heart. The underlying problem is the lack of connection a child feels with his loved ones. When you’re able to help a child see this connection, he will feel safe and secure. This will allow him to discuss his issues with you rather than just lashing out. Being considerate is the best way to help children with aggression.
Perhaps the greatest challenge for a working mom is finding that elusive balance between work and home. Where exactly does work end and home life begin? Should you allow your family time to be compromised by last minute urgent work? Do you even have that choice?
In one of our earlier articles we had spoken about the predicament of an Indian working woman. She is a wife, a mother, a daughter and a sister, but the fact that she has a career too is just incidental. It shouldn’t interfere with her domestic life. That’s the general idea that her family has. Or sometimes even she could think the same. And this could make matters worse because she will frequently find herself in a situation where she doesn’t like her job but has to do it in order to support her family.
Today we impart some pearls of wisdom to all you mothers out there who want to have a perfect work and home balance. You can’t literally have it all. But baby steps will surely see you a long way through.
The first step is to acknowledge the fact that you will always be playing multiple roles. Acceptance is the key to a happy time taking all those responsibilities through.
There will be role models that you would want to follow. Women who have seemingly managed to master it all. But refrain from doing that. Your situation can never be compared to another.
It is in a woman’s nature to look for guidance and acceptance from friends, family and society. Indian culture allows for family to be around for help. Accept help whenever needed. Invest in a day-care without any pangs of guilt tugging at your heart. You are doing your best, always remember that.
Spending at least an hour of gadget free time with your child everyday has shown to make the bond stronger. When you are home, be there physically, as well as mentally. It is easy to let your mind wander to unfinished business, but training yourself not to go down that road will help you in the long run.
And lastly, listen to your inner voice. Your natural maternal instincts will always help you make the right decision for your family.
Do things that make you happy, and do it with your family too. But keep some time aside just for you. Doing things that you loved doing before domesticity set in will make you relaxed and happy.
When I wrote my article on ‘how to boost your child’s immunity’ for the September issue of ParentEdge, I was surprised at the number of health care professionals talking about adequate sleep, not just during illness but otherwise as well. Also routine for meals and sleep time was stressed a lot. In the past few months I came across a few articles in ‘The Hindu’ — ‘we sleep to clean our brains’ , ‘sleep deprived teenagers may be at risk of long term damage to the wiring of the brain’. To add to my growing concern and curiosity, recently a friend gave me a book on parenting (Nurture Shock, Bronson and Merryman) which has a chapter titled the ‘The Lost Hour’. That’s when I decided I really need to blog on ‘sleep’ because as parents, many of us may not be giving ‘sleep’ the attention it actually deserves!
Highlights from this enlightening chapter – ‘the lost hour’
There is research to show that around the world children are getting an hour less to sleep than what they got thirty years ago! Well it may seem rather inconsequential but apparently this is affecting IQ points, causing moodiness, depression, and also in some cases fuelling ADHD and binge eating! Things that we definitely cannot ignore!
Of course we all are aware of what is fuelling this lost hour – televisions (24/7 and hundreds of channels), computer time, and mobiles in bedrooms and of course academic pressure in schools is as taxing or worse! Now sleep scientists are saying inadequate sleep could cause permanent damage as a child’s brain continues to develop till the age of 21 and much of the work happens when the child is asleep!
In an interesting study done with 4th and 6th graders where children got instructions to go to bed earlier or later by 30 minutes for three days, results on standard computerised test used to rate a child’s performance and ability to maintain attention in class, showed that losing one hour of sleep is equivalent to losing 2 years of cognitive maturation i.e. the sixth graders performed like fourth graders! Other studies are finding similar results and even late weekend bedtimes for preschoolers can affect standard IQ test results by 7 points. So there seems to be a correlation between sleep and school performance!
So what is happening actually?
When children do not get sufficient sleep, they are tired, the neurons, lose their plasticity and ability to form new connections required to encrypt memory. So this could mean –difficulty in improving vocabulary, memorising tables, history dates ..!
The brain needs a constant supply of glucose to function and with sleep loss, the body’s ability to obtain glucose from the blood gets affected. This in turn hampers the functioning of the frontal part of the brain which is responsible for ‘executive function’. So tired children have difficulty in studying and probably find tasks like watching television or playing mindless games easier!
The sleep pattern for children is different from adults – children spend 40% of their sleep time in deep slumber without dreams and during this stage their brains are shifting what they have learnt during the day to efficient storage regions! Actually the more they learn during the day, the more they need to sleep at night!!
Another interesting finding is that positive memories get processed in the deep slumber stage, so lack of it means a child will retain/remember more of the bad memories than the nice ones 
Finally there is a link between sleep deprivation and obesity. This happens as hunger stimulating hormones are activated more than the one that suppress appetite. Also there is an increase in the level of stress hormone, which is known to stimulate fat accumulation. Hormones required for breaking down fat are secreted in the beginning of sleep and if sleep is disrupted the process does not work!
Clearly SLEEP MATTERS especially for children! We may be trying to address concerns in all other areas but ignoring this important need! So don’t try to add one more activity that you think might help your child –get her to bed early you may do her brain a favour!
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So how much is enough?
3-6 year olds need 10-12 hours of sleep, children in the age group of 7–12 years need 10- 11 hours and 12-18 year olds need 8-9 hours of sleep.
ZZZZ………………
Re-published with permission from the blog of ParentEdge, a bi-monthly parenting magazine that aims to expose parents to global trends in learning and partner with them in the intellectual enrichment of their children. This blog was written by Meera Srinivasan, health and nutrition specialist on the ParentEdge editorial panel.