Kids.Social Development: Teaching Your Child on Sharing

It is important to expose your child to empathy and sharing as early as possible in their early childhood years.

The utmost way is be your child’s role model as children learn by imitating those who are important to them.

When you shower your child and others with love and care, your child can feel them and want to show the same loving kindness to others.

Understand Your Child’s Social Development

Understanding your child’s social development is important because your child will go through a process of developmental immaturity.

Usually, a child is ready to share with and care for others when he/she turns 3. During this time, friends will be more important than material things to them.

Thus, it is a normal behaviour if they are reluctant to share their favourite toy with a friend when they are younger.

The Concept “Sharing is Caring”

How can you instil in your child the love of sharing and caring for others?

It all starts at home. Your books, your food, your drinks, even your time – all of these can be shared with your child and at the same time, encourage your child to share with you their belongings.

Start teaching them about ownership and the importance of asking before borrowing things from others. Show them that it is important to take good care of the things they borrowed. When your child comes across someone who is reluctant to borrow, let your child learn to respect the decisions.

When your child loses interest in sharing or reluctant to share, talk nicely to them or better still, show them the act of kindness. Praise them when they share and care for others as a way to motivate the good behaviour.

Kids.Music: Bringing Out The Best of Children’s Musical Talent (2)

In “Kids.Music: Bringing Out TheBest of Children’s Musical Talent (1)”, we shared on starting music lessons in children.

Now, another question may come across your mind – “How to ensure that your child is getting the best out of the music lessons?”

As we may experience from now and then, starting a new project or learning a new skill is not as difficult as remaining persevere and having fun along the journey. How can we instil fun learning in children then?

Learning a musical instrument is not to be taken lightly because the right strategies and effort will determine the level of understanding of the skills, thus determining how well your child can play a musical instrument.

Let your child start with “slow practice”, that is to practice playing the song below the required speed. “Slow practice” enables the muscles and the motor nerves of the fingers to relax and react more quickly to the musical notes. This will then strengthen the fingers and the coordination required to play a musical instrument (from eye to brain to finger to ear).

Let your child listen to audio or watch a video of the song performed by professionals so as to increase his/her interest in the song he/she is learning.

Further to this, do give encouragement to your child more often during this “slow practice” process because your child may lose patience and interest in playing. Your child may not realize that mastering a musical instrument requires constant practice and a lot of patience. As the saying goes, “ten years of practice for a minute on the stage”.

Once your child is able to get the fingers moving smoothly on the instrument, your child can gradually increase the speed and put in more emotions in the performance. With this, your child will play the song more smoothly.

A smooth performance will definitely help your child to gain confidence in performing the music. With the increased confidence, your child will feel motivated to keep learning and continue the lessons to a more advanced level.

Read more on the benefits of music exposure: Kids. Music: Let’s Have Fun While Growing Up

Kids.Music: Bringing Out The Best of Children’s Musical Talent (1)

You realize that your child has developed a keen interest in music. The question is “When shall your child start music lessons?”

According to studies at the University of California, children who started music lessons at age 3 experience increase in brainpower. In fact, this is the age when the brain circuits for learning music mature. Further to this, many prolific musicians and composers started their music lessons at a very young age, some as young as 2 years old. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself, one of the most prolific composers of the Classical Era started playing the piano at age 4.

Many piano teachers have a different perspective though. They suggest that it will be better for the children to start music lessons at age 5 because by then, their hands are bigger and they are more capable in sitting still and concentrating on the lessons.

However, what’s more important is that your child enjoys music and playing musical instrument. Nothing beats the musical passion your child possesses when it comes to developing their music skills and getting the best out of the music lessons.

The next question that may come across your mind is “Which instrument to start with?” Many recommended the piano because piano skills are easier to grasp than those of guitar or violin. This is due to its less tricky finger movements.

You can also opt to send your child to early music programmes, which are easy to come by nowadays. These programmes focus on fostering a love of music, rhythm and self-expression, thus developing music appreciation in your child which can be very useful when your child picks up a musical instrument later on.

All in all, whether it is formal music lessons or music appreciation lessons, your child will benefit tremendously from the music exposure, which has been discussed in "Kids.Music:Let’s Have Fun While Growing Up".

Up next - how to get the best out of the music lessons? What are the best practices? The strategies will be revealed in our upcoming article “Kids.Music:Bringing Out The Best of Children’s Musical Talent (2)”.

Till then, enjoy the music and happy World Music Day (falls on 21 June 2013).

Kids.Physical Development: Is My Kid Developing a Stuttering Problem?

Does your child stumble over words when speaking?

From the moment your child learns to speak till 5 years old, your child’s brain is in the process of rapid development. It is natural that your child tends to stumble over words, facing some difficulties in speaking fluently.

This stumbling over words is different from a true stuttering problem, which affects a small percentage of children (5%). Stuttering happens when the child’s brainpower outstrips verbal dexterity. How can you differentiate this difficulty from stuttering then?

Here are few examples of stuttering problem:

Dragging out the first sound in a word	“ssssorry”
Repeating a sound	“Sh-sh-she nice!”
When your child opens the mouth to speak, he/she may get stuck before any sound comes out. He / She may experience tension in the jaw or cheeks, look away or clench fist from the tension, blink repeatedly, grimace, or stomp her foot from the frustration.

According to Patricia McAleer-Hamaguchi, a paediatric speech-language pathologist, a mild stuttering problem at age 3-4 may not seem to be a huge concern as most kids will outgrow it without any intervention by age 5 or 6. 

However, if the kid is really struggling or the condition has not improved in 3-6 months, you may want to consider talking to the doctor or paediatrician for an evaluation.

Be Inspired: Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know by Meg Meeker

Book title:

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

Author:

Meg Meeker, M.D.

Dr. Meg Meeker, a teen health expert has found that the most important person in a young girl’s life is her father. This discovery is supported by data and clinical experience.

In this book, she will reveal:

How to strengthen father-daughter relationship

What are the essential characteristics and virtues of strong fathers and how to develop them

How daughters take cues from their fathers on basically everything – from smoking and drinking to self-esteem and moodiness

Why girls want father to place restrictions on them despite complaining about it

Why being a hero to daughter is important

How a father can communicate with his daughter in different stages of the daughter’s life

Why daughters depend on their father to guide them into adulthood

What is the biggest mistake a father can make and its effects

How a father’s faith can influence his daughter

The true stories of “prodigal daughters” and how their fathers helped to bring them back

An excerpt from the book:

“Your daughter needs the best of who you are: your strength, your courage, your intelligence, and your fearlessness. She needs your empathy, assertiveness, and self-confidence. She needs you.

When she’s in your company, your daughter tries harder to excel. When you teach her, she learns more rapidly. When you guide her, she gains confidence. If you fully understood just how profoundly you can influence your daughter’s life, you would be terrified, over-whelmed, or both. Boyfriends, brothers, even husbands can’t shape her character the way you do. You will influence her entire life because she gives you an authority she gives no other man.”

Chapter 1	You Are the Most Important Man in Her Life
Chapter 2	She Needs a Hero
Chapter 3	You Are Her First Love
Chapter 4	Teach Her Humility
Chapter 5	Protect Her, Depend Her
Chapter 6	Pragmatism and Grit: Two of Your Greatest Assets
Chapter 7	Be the Man You Want Her to Marry
Chapter 8	Teach Her Who God Is
Chapter 9	Teach Her to Fight
Chapter 10	Keep Her Connected

Kids.Play n Learn: Green from Childhood

Today (5 June 2013) is United Nation’s World Environment Day.

In our previous article, we brought everyone into the world of what constitutes an effective environmental education. Continuing from where we left off, here is an activity you can do with kids.

Teaching kids about planting

Step 1	Look inside a seed.
Step 2	Identify the parts of the plant. Explain where seeds come from and how they grow.
Step 3	Have kids create a chart of parts of the plant and label the seed coat, root, leaves and so on.
Step 4	Encourage kids to explore and become seed detectives.
Step 5	Show them how to identify, collect and save their own seeds.
Step 6	Discuss the growing requirements – oxygen, soil, light, water.
Step 7	Discuss on the contribution of plants to humankind and the environment.