Herbs, spices and other natural ingredients used in traditional Indian cooking not only help us prepare tasty and healthful food, but they are also helpful in treating minor medical conditions such as cuts and bruises.
Most of us can recall our mothers and grandmothers using them as a sort of first-aid. They are safe enough to be used until [Read more…]
Most of us like to think we are without faults, but the honest truth is each of us has our own share of shortcomings. Recognising and acknowledging them is a first step in the way of overcoming them. There is always room for improvement. A bunch of small but significant refinements, taken up one at a time can make a big difference to our lives.
As Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher, says… [Read more…]
Young children often resort to making excuses that are as innovative as they are funny. Like this little girl who complained to her parents one morning that her head hurt badly, alarming them a great deal. That was until they realized that the child was actually pointing at her tummy! It turned out that she did not want to go to school for the day and quickly cooked up an excuse!
[Read more…]
The number of Indian students choosing to pursue higher education abroad has seen an upward trend in recent years. Our student community is beginning to gravitate more and more towards foreign universities than our own.
The decision does not come entirely as a surprise when you consider not one Indian university ranks among the top 200 universities in the world. What ails Indian education system and in which areas do foreign universities score over their Indian counterparts?
Our education system mainly suffers from:
Taking care of newborn babies in any season is a specialized job, but more so in summer. Let us examine the reasons behind summer being a difficult month for baby care and how to deal effectively with it.
The weather gods are not on your side during these cruel months where the heat is relentless in most parts of the country.
The demand for power is so high that it is not uncommon to experience power outages for prolonged periods, resulting in rising tempers and a heightened sense of irritability.
But cool down, with a bit of planning for both mother and the baby, the summer months can pass off smoothly.
First the mothers. Switch over to cotton clothes that can keep you cool. Drink plenty of water and avoid fried food which can make you thirsty very fast. Go for fresh fruit and boiled vegetables. Green salads are your best friend during summer. But make sure you don’t catch a cold which you might then end up passing on to the baby.
There are essentially five things for baby care during summer months:
Disclaimer
The aim of the article is to be informative in a general way. Always seek expert medical advice from your doctor or pediatrician.
Summer holidays are almost here. What’s your plan to keep your kids gainfully employed?
Modern gadgets like video games and playstations have their place. But they get monotonous after a while and they do nothing to get your child to think, which is critical to the allround development of your child.
Why not do something different this vacation? Why not introduce them to the wonderful world of books!
Reading promotes critical thinking in children. Moreover, reading books is an activity that is being increasingly recommended by social scientists and doctors for its ability to entertain and educate children.
We understand that this is something you have always wanted to do but did not know when and where to start.
To answer the query when, let’s say any time is a good time. To answer the query where, we’ve made it easy for you – we’ve just put together a collection of children’s books.
This wonderful collection offers you such classics as the Jungle Book and Alice in Wonderland to get your child started.
Dinosaur Encyclopedia will make your child the class expert on dinosaurs in no time at all.
Gulliver’s travels, Treasure Island, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and David Copperfield are some of the other fantastic offerings in our list.
Explore the entire collection of Top 100 Books for Children.
And don’t forget to borrow the book from your children once they move on to the next one, it will be a beautiful journey down the memory lane for you too!
Grab a book from the collection and a bag of popcorn and curl up on your favourite settee for the adventure of a lifetime!
Click here to order a book from our collection of “Top 100 Books for Children”.
Ever tried taking a pre-dawn shower on a cold winter day? If you survived the sheer terror of the first few moments, it is reasonable to assume that you went on to complete a refreshing shower that alerted your every sense but left you a little shaken for the experience. Brutal but enjoyable – once you absorbed the initial shock and took the numbing cold in your stride.
The first year and sometimes the first day are usually a precursor to the size and shape of things to come in the future. That probably explains why our first date, our first day at our first job, and of course, our first baby gave us the heebie-jeebies. Fear of the unknown is always overwhelming.
Motherhood in the first year, with due respect to all mothers out there, is a little like the bathing experience described above – survive the initial experience and you will love the rest immensely. The first year of motherhood is relentless in its demands on the mother. If all new mothers were to be offered a choice between a million tax free dollars and a good night’s sleep, almost all of them would opt for the latter option without a moment’s hesitation. Sleep, or lack of it, is the single most recurring topic of conversation involving a household that has just had a baby.
Parenting in the first year can be difficult, but it need not be as scary a task as people often make it out to be. If you are a new mother weary of the equivalent of first-few moments-under-the-cold shower-in-winter moments of motherhood, here are some tips for you:
It will get progressively better from the first year onwards. The baby will begin to understand her surroundings and recognise her parents. She will begin to derive comfort from their presence and physical proximity. She will also begin to sleep better, and at regular hours. That is probably the best indication that you have done a great job with your baby and earned yourself a pat on the back. Or should we say the right to get some shut eye when you are supposed to!
Taming the Monsters : Helping Children Deal with Their Fears
Most of us had an all-consuming fear of something or even someone as children, which we either kept a secret for the fear of being made fun of, or exposed ourselves by overreacting when faced with our secret phobia unexpectedly. Needless to say, we earned ourselves a lifetime of ridicule, apart from being the subject of pranks, and the butt of jokes.
The phobia could be as simple as a fear of cockroaches or as sinister as that of ghosts and demons. Most children somehow come to believe those evil characters lurk under their beds, waiting for the right opportunity to pounce on them. Elders, in their bid to discipline children, sometimes play a role unwittingly in implanting some of the fears in young minds.
As we grow older, we learn to differentiate facts from fiction. We are no longer afraid, or at least not to the same degree, as we were of nightly visitors and imaginary foes. But, some people never quite manage to overcome their phobia of insects and other creepy-crawlies even as adults.
Usually, childhood fears and anxieties are not very serious in nature. But intervention becomes necessary if it affects children’s normal lifestyle. Children undergo different kind of anxieties at various stages in their life. Let us examine the phobias, and worries children endure growing up.
What are the tell-tale signs of a child troubled by fears? It can manifest itself in various ways. Older children are reticent about their fears and may not always be forthcoming, either because they do not fully understand the situation or fear being ridiculed or made fun of. Look out for signs like thumb sucking, nail chewing, trembling, and being edgy and jumpy.
Here’s what parents can do to reassure the child:
Disclaimer:
The aim of the article is to be informative in a general way. Always seek expert medical advice.
Consider the following things and how important they are in your life.
The above pointers are largely broad generalizations, but I’m sure you understand the gist of it.
It dawned on me this flu season that it was time I wrote a post on the commonest medication we all purchase over the pharmacist’s counter – cough syrups. I know most parents don’t take a child to see the paediatrician for a simple cold and they give the “usual” medications themselves. There are however a majority of people who go around saying that these medicines don’t work and worse that they “hold the cough”,’ “aggravate the cough” and do more harm than good. [Read more…]