Right Brain development is essential for 0~3 years old

Recently i had been reading the book about the right brain development for kids especially at the age of 0~3, and the method is called Shicida method. All this while I know that right brain is very powerful if we can properly used it but i dont know what is the best method to train the right brain. I have gotten lots of tips and way to help developing my daughter's right brain after reading the book by professor Shicida from Japan.

According to him, we are born with smaller right brain compare to left brain. So it is essential to develop the right brain at the age of 0~3 so that the size of the 2 brain can get balanced. Right brain is much more powerful than the right brain. It has the "camera"type of memory which can captured lots of information at a glimpse and record it at the right brain for future processing. The way it works are very much different from the left brain. For left brain, it needs to understand the information, analysis it then only it can be register at the left brain, but for right brain, it doesnt need to process and understand the information before capturing it. Which is so through over my observation on my daughter and me memorizing the klasik chinese teaching called "Di Tzi Gui". Recently i bought her the CD of it and played to her whenever she is sitting inside the car. After just 4/5days of continuous doing so, she can read to me the 4 sentences of the first paragraph of the Di Tzi Gui. However, for me, i was trying so hard but i couldn't remember it until i read it word by word and understand the meaning of it, then only i can memorized which proven that I'm the typical left brain person.

I think most of us are left brain educated and so our IQ cant really go that far. Nowadays since people has discovered the powerful of the right brain, it has then become important to change our education method to our kids which more focus on the right brain development at younger age. In the book, it shared some of the way to help developing the right brain and i'll share with all in the next post. Till then, have a good day!

One of my favorite - How to Talk So Kids Can Learn

I had just finished reading this awesome book by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish, How to Talk So Kids Can Learn. This book is similar to the previous one - How to Talk so Kids will Listen but with lots of different Q&A from parents and teachers, as well as the success stories from them. I loved those real life example and seeing how each of the parents trying hard to overcome their problem with their kids. It was not easy, and it may not necessary gets better over the night, but with the perseverance and lot of  loves from the parents, things will start to improve. Those example give me the strength and motivation especially when i felt helpless or impatient to my daughter's misbehaviour. I knew that i was not alone and that if other parents can do it, I can too.

What strike me to think the most in this entire book was the author's believe that both praise and criticism are not doing good to the kids. I was openmouthed when reading this chapter as you do but after understanding what the author trying to bring out, i fully agreed. Think about ourselves. If your friend or colleague always say to you, hey you looks great today, or you look pretty with your dress...would you sometime suspicious that they are not that sincere? After all you have been wearing the same old dress that you wore for years. Now come back to our children. We like to say good job, well done to them, but did we wonder what would they really think? They might feel happy for the first few times but after a while, they might asked you to stop it. So, is that mean we shouldn't praise even they did a really great job? Well, according to the author, we should describe what we see, what we hear or how we feel instead. Ex, instead of just saying you look great, maybe we can say, hey you put on eyeliner and eyeshadow today, and it makes your eye even bigger and more attractive...How does that sounds to you? Same should be applied to our children. It is not easy to describe compare to just giving a short compliment like well done, you are such a smart boy, you have got talent. Nevertheless, as a parents,  we should always remind ourselves and practice it. And i think not only to the kids, we should applied the same theory to our family, friends and colleague too...

Review of How to Talk so Kids will listen

Just finished reading the book by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish, "How to talk so kids will listen & listen so kids will talk". This book is really a parenting bible. It has excellent example written and also presented through graphic for easy understanding and memorized. The book share with us how to cope with our children's negative feelings and express our own feeling be it a good or negative own in a proper way without being hurtful. It also discuss about how to use alternative way to replace punishment. Example we can offer the kids two option to choose from rather than scolding and spanking them when they are misbehave. Let them experience the consequences of their wrong did themselves instead of using punishment that will create the feeling of revenge. I especially like the method shared by the authors on how to encourage autonomy. As our goal to help our children be independent and one day be able to function on their own without us, it really needs a lot of effort from us. We may need to let our kids make their own choices, don't  ask too many questions sometimes, don't rush to answer their questions but rather ask for their opinion or encourage them to get help outside. We may also want to show respect a the child's struggle as things may seem easy to us could be very difficult to them who are doing it at the first time. And last but not least, never take away hope. Although sometime things may seem impossible to us but we should killed their hope straight away, just let them have the fantasy of what they are thinking and doing. This could motivate them to achieve what seems to be impossible to us.
This is really a good book that we as a parent should refer back whenever there is necessary because it is full of practical and real example that we can learn from.

Review of "Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child"

Parents should know that not only IQ but EQ is becoming more and more important in raising their kids. This has been an essential key to a successful life of a kids. The book- Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman is about how parents can help coaching their children so that they can manage their own emotion wisely. In this book, the author teaches us that it is important to recognized your child's emotion and accept it. This mean it is okay for kids to feel sad, angry and fear. However, it is not okay for the child to behave out of control like throughing and breaking things when they are angry. According to the authors, there are Five Key Steps for Emotional Coaching.

1. Being aware of the child's emotions
2. Recognizing the emotion as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching (We may use to think that  it is better if our child don't show any bad emotions but actually this is not true. As a Chinese saying, a crisis may seen as an opportunity)
3. Listening empathetically and validating the child's feelings (This has to be done in sincere. Your kids may feel bad if you do it in a wrong way. ex."Yes honey, i know you are sad, ok, you can go to bed now")
4. Helping the child verbally label the emotions
5. Setting the limits while helping the child problem-solve (Setting limit is very important especially if it involved legal issue, eg fighting with his friends)

The author shared many different stratagies on how to deal with different emotional situations and at different stage of the childhood. One thing captured my attention the most is the "Crucial Role of Father"as mention in one of the chapter. The author reveals that how father play and interact with the child is totally different from mother. This has further influence in child's peer relationship and achievement at school which mother can't replace it.
Overall, i found that this is a good book whcih has provided me a guidance on how to deal with my kids's emotional in a better way for sure!

Raising an optimistic child

Few week ago, i wrote about raising up a happy child, and today i want to share the review of the book that i had read recently called - The Optimistic Child by Martin E. P Seligman. This book reveal that the cause to the recent years spike in depression was pessimism. As such, the author shows parents as well as teachers and coaches how to teach children the skills of optimism that can help them combat depression, achieve more on the playing field and at school, and improve their physical health. The author create the model call ABCDE which stand for Adversity, Beliefs, Consequences, Disputation and Energization. The first ABC model explain why and how the depression came from and the last DE provide us an alternative and solution to become more optimistic. To let you have an idea what it means by ABCDE model, let see the example below :

Your child came back home angry and throwing his basketball to the living room and sit angrily at the caoch. The converstaion between you and your kid :
You :        Hi honey, are you ok?
your kid : John and other don't want to play with me, they say i am a lousy teamate.(Adversity)
You :       Oh, that's not true, i saw you playing before and you are great!

your kid : No, i am not, i am suck! I have never be good in any sports! (his Belief)
               I will never play basketball again and i hate myself for being such a lousy player! (Consequences)
You :       Well, maybe you are not so good in basketball but you play tennis well, aren't you?
your kid : (think for a while)..Yeah, maybe you are right, mom. I beat John a few times playing tennis, i guess there are other games that I can master, just that i may need time to learn up basketball. (Disputation -the argument make to counter your belief)
Thanks mom, i feel better now and i shall take a bath before doing my homework!
 (Energization - the emotional and behavioral consequences of the disputation)

As you can see from the example above, ABC is normal to happen everyday in our kids'life. However the D and E part maynot be as easy as mentioned in the example above and this is where our role as parent come in. We need to provide guidance and coaches to our kids so that they can always think of the disputation which can then change their mindset and behavioral. In this book, the author teaches us how to provide these guidance to our kids as well as the 5 steps problem solving method.
Although i don't like the part where there is many lenghty explaination on the result of the research data, overall it is still a good book to read through that provide me many useful tips and guidance in raising an optimistci child.

What is Waldorf Education?

"Waldorf Education, as define by  wikipedia is a humanistic approach to pedagogy based upon the educational philosophy of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. Learning is interdisciplinary, integrating practical, artistic, and conceptual elements. The approach emphasizes the role of the imagination in learning, developing thinking that includes a creative as well as an analytic component. The educational philosophy's overarching goals are to provide young people the basis on which to develop into free, morally responsible and integrated individuals, and to help every child fulfill his or her unique destiny, the existence of which anthroposophy posits."
Being a first time mother, I guess it's normal to feel excited but at the same time nervous. We may worry how to become a good mother. One of the way to overcome this feeling is to read a lot of parenting books. Recently a friend of mine has borrowed me a book entitled- Beyond the Rainbow Bridge : Nurturing our children from birth to seven. After finished reading it, I was so happy that i fianlly found a way to raise a healthy child that suit me, the Waldrof way. All this while, I don't agree to put children too earlier into "educational learning" but would rather prefer to develop their innovation through creative play. Waldorf education emphasized on the importance of creative play, the necessity of daily routine, and the merits of creative discipline. A playstand, some cotton cloths, stuffed dolls, some baskets filled with clothespins, crystals, etc. are the natural toys that children need rather than the video games, TV and sophisticated toys. It was so true, eg my girl prefer to play with her hankerchief comapre to the sophisticated toys that we bought for her.
In the book, it also teaches us the importancy to create their daily routine like for example, afternoon nap is a must, evening is the outdoor playtime and at night is the bedtime story telling. I am also a well organized person and that is why i do agree to the concept of Waldorf Education. However the challenging part is no TV for kids. I think this might be too difficult for all of us to achive but i think we should just limit them to 1 or 2 hour a day. :)