Here are some links that we've shared on our Facebook page these past several weeks.
Why do some people learn faster? - ""The problem with praising kids for their innate intelligence — the “smart” compliment — is that it misrepresents the psychological reality of education. It encourages kids to avoid the most useful kind of learning activities, which is when we learn from our mistakes."
Child psychologist stresses the importance of play
Hearing Bilingual: How Babies Sort Out Language
Parents Urged Again to Limit TV for Youngest
The Guardian's Recommended reads: ages 0–4
What children’s drawings would look like if it were painted realistically
The Right To Breastfeed: An Open Letter to the SM Supermalls Management
Duplo playground. A great online game for pre-schoolers. Features are added every few months.
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Here are links to some parenting-related articles we've recently shared on our Facebook page:
What if the secret to success is failure? - how experiencing failure can help children
How To Help Your Child's Brain Grow Up Strong
DepEd draws up tougher policies vs bullying, violence in schools
Four surefire ways to send messages to your children
Dear moms and dads, it's been a difficult day - letter from the mom of a bullied kid
Ten things you don't know about teens and social networking - "You wouldn’t let your toddler cross the street without holding your hand, so don’t hand them your iPhone to play with for the first time without starting a simple discussion about the appropriate use of technology."
Are you buying toys that stunt your child's brain?
How to get preschoolers excited about helping around the house
Playing on a tablet as therapy
Four ways iPads are changing the lives of people with disabilities
How to talk to little girls - "This week ABC News reported that nearly half of all three- to six-year-old girls worry about being fat."
Six tips for teaching a child to deal with anger
Motherly love - some controversial and thought-provoking studies
How are your generation iY children?
You don't do much all day, do you? - a stay-at-home mom speaks out
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One parenting strategy I got from How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk was the idea of writing down instructions for children in order to encourage their cooperation.
I decided to try it with my son's bedtime routine. Since he'd been a baby, we had tried, unsuccessfully, to establish a fixed bedtime routine for him. It was driving us nuts, because he would sometimes stay up playing until midnight!
Finally, I called my 2.9 year old son to my side one day, and told him, "Let's make a list of all the things you do before you go to sleep." I asked him to remember the things he did before bedtime, and I wrote the following list: (1) take a bath, (2) brush teeth, (3) pray, (4) read a book, (5) turn off the light, (6) sleep. Because he can't read yet, beside each number, I drew a little drawing to help him remember what the item says. We read through the list a few times until I was sure that he understood what each drawing referred to.
Then we started putting the list into action. Every night, at around 9:15 PM, I remind him to start wrapping up whatever he is doing because, "In fifteen minutes, we're going to start doing the list." Then at 9:30 PM, I take the paper out, show it to him, and ask him what the first item on the list is. After we're done with each item, I ask him what the next item is, and so forth.
Since we instituted the list, bedtime has been a breeze. My son loves doing the bedtime list; he gets excited about it, and takes it very seriously. Most of the time, he is more than willing to drop whatever he is doing to do "the list," and he often double-checks the list to make sure he's doing everything in the correct order.
He also sees the list as a tool to help him get to sleep. Once, he was having trouble falling asleep for his nap, and he asked me if he could look at the list. I happily obliged, and though it wasn't bath time yet, we did the last four items on the list, to help him fall asleep.
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Last week I bought the book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, and Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. The content of the book reminded me of one of the major points that my husband and I took away from our Discovery Weekend experience, before we got married.
Discovery Weekend, a marriage preparation seminar, taught us all those years ago about the value of listening to and empathizing with your partner's feelings, and how crucial it is, too, to express your own feelings to your partner in a clear way. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen builds on the same philosophy, but applied to child-rearing.
The book doesn't simply preach the value of empathizing with children, it gives practical tips on how to go about it. Throughout the book are comic strips demonstrating how a conversation with your child can go sour if you replace empathy with lecturing, ignoring, or criticizing. It shows how simple strategies, like writing notes to your child, offering them a choice, or giving them a chance to make amends, can be far more productive and empathetic alternatives to punishment, when you are trying to engage their cooperation. The book itself is written as a workbook, with activities that invite readers to put themselves in their children's shoes.
Social norms encourage us to be empathetic with adults, but sadly, the same social pressure doesn't exist for the way we talk to children. It becomes easier to dismiss children's feelings because of our positions of authority. The book offers powerful tools for becoming a more caring, empathetic adult when dealing with any child, not just one's own. Just a few days after reading it, I've already become a lot more conscious of the way that I talk to my son, especially when he's upset or when he doesn't want to cooperate with me.
I bought the book from Amazon, and I'm not sure if it's available here in the Philippines, but if you do chance upon copies in our bookstores, I urge you to get one, whether your child is two or twenty.
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For a few weeks, I was worried that my son was getting addicted to videos. He was going through a Lightning McQueen phase, and he would insist on watching Cars over and over again.
I've read all the studies dissuading parents from allowing young children to watch too much TV, but though we would try to encourage him to look through his Lightning McQueen books instead, my son would have none of it. "I want to watch Lightning McQueen video!" my 2-and-half-year-old would insist.
But then we brought out his wooden blocks.
He's had his blocks for a long time, and he has played with them on and off, but I guess two-and-a-half was the perfect age for him to get reacquainted with them. Over the last two weeks, he has almost ignored his Lightning McQueen videos, because his attention has been consumed by his blocks.
I am amazed by how blocks bring out his creativity. Without any prompting from me, he declared one afternoon that he was going to make a train. Over the next 20 minutes, in rapt concentration, he patiently constructed his train, working from the image of a train that he had in his head and the parts of the train he had learned from a book. And when he was done, again without any prompting from me, he enumerated for me the parts of his train: the four box cars, a front engine and a rear engine, smoke (or "fire" as he called it), and wheels. And when he was done, he applauded himself and pretended to sit on his train so he could ride it.
A few days later, when we brought out his blocks, he glanced at the identical eight long wooden bars that were on top of his train wagon. Then he said to me, "Mama, I show you how to make a piano!" One at a time, he laid out the wooden bars on the floor beside each other, so that they looked like a piano keyboard. And when he was finished, he looked up at me with excitement and began to "play" his piano and sing along. I on the other hand, made a set of drums and joined in, a mother-and-son musical band.
My husband and I brought out his Matchbox toy cars once and showed him that he could pretend that the blocks formed a road, and it was like a light went on in his head. His new project was to build the perfect flyover for his toy cars. He gathered together the triangular blocks and manipulated them in different ways, trying to balance them so they would form a ramp. When he succeeded, he happily pushed his Matchbox car up the ramp, saying "Look, a flyover!"
As you can probably tell, my son is now a huge fan of blocks, and so am I. I'm glad he inherited his father's rather than my creativity: "house" is about as imaginative as I get, whereas he and my husband think of dozens of things to do with the blocks. Blocks are probably among the oldest toys in the world, but they will forever be among the best. Share
Over the weekend, I've answered three queries about washing cloth diapers. It seems that a lot of parents are confused about different washing instructions for different brands. "Why does Brand A say I can soak my diapers, but Brand B says that I shouldn't?"
To determine whether you can soak your cloth diapers, check what fabric your diaper is made of. If your cloth diaper has a shell made of laminated polyutherane (PUL), it shouldn't be soaked for a long time. Most waterproof shells and pocket diapers have PUL in them, as do some cloth training pants. Soaking them for a long time can lead to quicker wear and tear of the PUL: with worn out PUL, the laminate starts to bubble or slowly separate from the fabric. So if you do intend to soak them, keep your soaking to around an hour: definitely not overnight.
Diapers that are made entirely of cloth, however, with no laminate, can be soaked. Diaper inserts, contour diapers, prefolds, fitted diapers: all of these can be soaked with no problem.
With all diapers, make sure that you don't use a harsh detergent or a detergent with additives. Harsh detergents not only lean to faster wear and tear of the PUL; they also make diapers less absorbent over time.
"Oh no, it's too late; the PUL in my cloth diapers is starting to bubble!"
What if you've already been soaking your cloth diapers for some months, and the PUL in the waterproof shell is starting to bubble or come apart? Don't worry; there is still a way to save your diapers. If you have a dryer, throw them in the dryer and the heat from the dryer may reseal the laminate. If you don't have a dryer, try a hairdryer instead.
"I've been using a harsh detergent and my diapers have become less absorbent."
There's an easy solution to this as well. Cloth diaper users describe it as "stripping" their diapers when they subject their diapers to a process to remove additives and residue that have made their diapers less absorbent. One easy way to strip diapers is to wash them in plain dishwashing liquid (the kind without lotion or other additives). Dishwashing liquid is effective at removing oily residue from dishes, and it can do the same for your diapers as well. Another way is to rinse the diapers in hot water.
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Please note that these bits of advice are not meant to replace diaper manufacturers' washing instructions. Make sure that you read manufacturers' washing instructions; not following them could void the warranty that most manufacturers have for the diapers they make.
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