The Art of Parenting

Learning

Actions give immense power to the words spoken.

talk about simple things around, the fan, washing machine, light, AC, sky, grass etc

Show the kid how the fan moves

what colour the grass is in

what colour the sky is in

show her the water hose in the garden and tell her what it is used for.

more than just blabbering and repeating rhymes, songs, ABCs, focus on conceptual learning.

Associate a rhyme with a story, make a story for every rhyme, enact whats going on in that story. Make sure every single line is broken into small and simple words that the child can understand. Think from your child’s persperctive.

There is no more a batti ratti kind of learning in competitive world. Everything is conceptual. Everything that happens around needs to be probed and understood.

Teach the kid not just A for apple B for ball, but, the power of questioning.

Tell the child to ask you about anything around you and you will be surprised that she makes it a habit of enquiring about every single thing that improves her thinking ability.

You no more have to keep showing objects to the kid and repeating its name. The kid herself will keep asking you what this is what that is and also show you how it is moving without even asking.

Feeding

Your aim should be to teach the child about various tastes of food but not just dumping the food and seeing that her stomach is full.

Do not ever force feed. Teach the child to learn to eat. If its not working right on the first day, it works right on the nth day. Important point to note is, IT WORKS RIGHT.

Do not always focus on diverting her to TV channels, the park, birds, etc and feeding her as and when she opens her mouth by accident only to realize that she’s being tricked into eating.

Be honest. Show her the food. Offer her whatever she is interested in and how much ever she takes in. She knows how much food her tummy can handle. A child can never overeat. So, do not keep diverting and dumping food.

Playing

There is only one sutra - get down on the floor and shake a leg along with your kid. She is going to love it to the core.

Interacting

Dealing with kids requires lot of patience. Never lose your control. Do not yell, shout at your child. Do not show violence. Because whatever emotion you carry is immediately transmitted to your child. If it is a happy emotion, you would love it when your child smiles, laughs and cuddles you back. And, if it is violent emotion, you obviously hate it when you child reacts with the same violence by tantrums, yell and shouts. Because you hate it and you were already upset with your child's behavior, your ego is hurt that your child is yelling at you and you lose your cool and you yell more and your child yells back and this is a viscous circle that ends with your child crying and you losing your mental balance with heavy head and heavy heart. Do you think the child feels good about this? No, in fact, even you do not feel good emotionally. You could have avoided if you had taken a step back and not shouted at your child in the first place.

Find creative ways to calm a fussy child, not just yelling and shouting.

Find happiness in simple things

Always think from your child's perspective. Think about all that she is learning when she is doing something that you don't accept (unless it is a socially unacceptable behavior, of course). But, refrain from yelling at simple messy things that the child does.

Like, when she wants to put her little hand in rice while eating, let her - she wants to feel the texture of what she is eating, she wants to take that little step of trying to hold the food particle with her fingers and at some stage, put in mouth which is a good thing. Do not yell. You may not like such mess, but, some day, she will learn to eat clean. Until then, let her learn. Do not tend to stop her from discovering those little things around.

Is she messing in the kitchen picking up spoons, bowls utensils and throwing in a corner? Do not yell. She is learning how to hold things and observing what sound one specific item makes when it is left free. Always think from child's perspective. You may be knowing that reversing a glass of water makes all the water spill over the floor. But your child, she doesn't even know that there is something called gravity that makes all objects fall to ground. When she wants to put her hand in the glass and play, let her do, she wants to know how water feels like, she needs to learn that water is something that cannot be firmly held in hand and she needs to experience that water will flow down when glass is reversed. Or for that matter, she needs to learn that on throwing any object, Gravity would ultimately make it land on the ground. Until she learns all these seemingly little things, let her try, let her play, let her mess around. Feel her joy and you will understand how she feels.

The BIG bank of child's brain

Young children from their birth to age of 5-6 years are very sharp. It is proved that 90% of brain development happens in these initial years of one's life. So, what exactly is development of brain?

Brain is said to be developing or increasing its power when there are more and more neurons being formed and even more and more neural connections taking place. And this happens very rapidly at the young age of 0-6 years.

In this period, a child is always willing to learn something new. It is like they have very immense thirst for knowledge and it has to be quenched in a loving manner.

Children in this age group are beaming with energy, always want new toys or games to play with, want innovative or unique things to play with because they always want to learn something new. It is the upbringing of child that matters most in this phase. The more a child is taught, the more she learns and the more she questions and more is the desire to learn that is what is important. So, the thing that plays an important role is the method the caretaker implements to teach the child. It plays a major role in child's learning, her immediate behaviour and even her personality in the coming years of life.

Always be mindful of how you are talking and what you are saying to the child. Teach,but, in a loving fashion. Associate play with learning. Or rather, associate every activity of child with learning. Enact, make expressions, jump, dance do whatever you feel like, become a child when you are with one.

(This post will continuously be updated as and when I get time to pen down all that in my mind and those I implement in my child's life. Thanks for checking.)