Right brain development

I'm back to talk about what are some of the methods used for right brain development for kids following the first article release about why right brain development is so important for young kids.
The very key method used is flashing the flash card/dot card in the speed of .5 to 1sec to the kids. It's not meant for children to understand the content, but rather to try activate the right brain. As we know, right brain work differently from left brain. It can process fast and lots of information at one time which left brain cannot. Thus when we trying to inputs kids with lots of information at short time, the left brain will stop working and pass the job to right brain. Hence, this method is an excellent way to help activate the right brain.
Second most important method i felt is letting the kids listening more often to the songs, poem, classic Chinese teaching and so on, or read to them. Again, in this process, what we want is to develop the right brain which works with sounds better than text and not emphasize on the understanding of the content.
Next is playing some fun memory games or puzzle with the kids. One of the game i like to play with my daughter is to show her 10 picture cards, asked her to memorize it them flipped to the back and start calling out the picture's name one by one. If she get it right, I'll give her some cards as the reward. She played well especially when there is competition with Daddy :)
Of course there are more method that I haven't discover and will be glad to hear from you guys :)

Anyway,one thing not to forget is, the foundation to all this are still loving, healthy child. Don't even talk about brain development without a healthy body, soul and mind, isnt it?

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!

Showing my daughter a life of a plant

We have gotten this free toy from enfagrow milk powder and I decided to give my daughter a simple experience of plant growth cycle. So i get 4 mung bean from my mom and put it inside the test tube provided by the toy set. I put 2 beans inside one tube with some cotton and water so that i will slowly growth into the bean sprout. The growth process are fast and in the 2nd days we can already seeing some significant growth. Kai Shuen seems amazed by this discovery and she keep checking on it everday.On day 4, one of the bean sprout has grown so tall compare to the rest and I was astonished by what Kai Shuen said. She said to me"Wah, mom this bean is great, she grow so tall compare to the rest, the rest are not good" She seems to adore by the one that growing so strong and tall and praise it. So I took the opportunity to ask her, which one she wanted to be like, and she answer - the tall one...haha..she always like to win, no matter what. I guess it is human nature to like victory, winning over other. It can be good or bad and I hope she will grow up to learn wining through the right way...:) Anyway, it's just a small exercise/experience, but i feel great that i try my effort to let her exposure to the nature life cycle. Should do it more often in future!

Unforgettable experience

I had never encounter such a scary but funny experience before. Yesterday my daughter wanted to take her story book from the bedroom upstair and she asked me to accompany her to the room. I was lazy to walk upstair and hence asked her to go up by herself. After a few minutes later, i heard her yielding me from the room, so I went up to check it out. To my surprise, she was locked inside the room. She was not able to open the door, whcih i suspect she has locked it accidentally. The locked is somehow unreliable and my mom has encounter similar issue before (it was my nephew's bedroom actually). My sister-in-law quickly rush to get the room key while i tried to comfort her by talking to her. Luckily she was calm and not crying, thanks god for that! However the key can't open the door, it was stucked somehow. I become more and more nervous. How are we suppose to get her out??? We try to climb out to the balcony from the room next to it and see if we can get into her room,  but you know what, the window's grill was locked and the key was inside the room itself!! Oh no, what to do next? While we were out of ideas, suddenly my dad opened the door with the key....Thank god, we rescused her finally :) What a scary but funny experience we have had...

Learn counting through play

We know that the effective way for kids to learn new thing is through play, but not all time we are able to think of a creative way to do so. Fortunately I came across this creative idea and finally successful to teach my daughter how to count things. She has been able to count 1-10 for quite some times but she just can't tell you exactly what is the sum/total after counting. Example, she can count the numbers of aplpes in the book, 1, 2 and 3, but then when you ask how many are there, she couldn't tell you it is 3. Recently I bought her some Big red bean to play "masak-masak" or the cooking games. She loves it so much. And out of sudden, i came out with this idea to put some read bean on the floor and ask her to count while picking it up and putting it in a tray. She was kind of happy to do so and when it is done, i'll ask how many read bean is there in the tray. After a few attempt/playing, she was able to tell the sum/total finally. So i guess this is a good example where I find kids can learn better and easier through play. The thing is, we parent really have to be creative and patient helping then to learn through play...gambateh all parents :)

My girl has stopped pacifier

My girl has finally stopped her pacifier at the age of 2.5 years old. She was very much intact with her pacifier that i once thought it may be so difficult for her to weaning it off. So I never really come across the idea of taking away her pacifier from her until one day i was told so by my neighbor. She advise me to give it a try cause my daughter is already 2 and a half years old (most people get rid of pacifier at 2). Thanks to her reminder, I told me daughter at that night that she was big girl now and she should not taking her pacifier anymore. I ask her if she is ok for me to through her pacifier away and suprisingly, she agreed. So during her bed time, she told me that she is big girl d, and she dont need pacifier anymore. I cant tell how much I was astonished by her response but i believe that she will come back to me for her pacifier sometimes. True enough she wake up around 5am in the morning crying for her pacifier, but i told her that i had throw it away, although i didn't. I offered her to drink milk instead and after that she felt in sleep again. Some miracle happens, that morning request was the last time and she has been without her pacifier for 4 days. I couldn't believe that it turned out to be so easy than I thought.
This incident has given me some new thought/experience that sometimes thing we thought is difficult, it may turn out to be easy; so why we spent our energize worrying about it? Just do it! :)

It's not easy to stop or break kids' bad habit

Look a my daughter's photo below. What can you imaging she was doing? Playing hide and seek? Sad and crying? Trying to get our attention? NO! She was actually pooing :( Funny isn't it? She developed the habit to stand and poo. Sometimes she even need to find her "usual" spot before she can poo. Whenever she feel like pooing, she will ask us to wear her the diapers, as she can't do it with her pant. We tried to break this bad habit of her but doesn't seems to success after few months. We tried whatever we can to let her sit on the potty by bribe her with the things she likes. That only can make her sit on the potty for a while but she wont focus on doing her big business. If we keep forcing her, she can keep her stool 2 days without letting it out and started to complain about stomachace. So we have to give in finally. Can't seems to do much now except keep telling her that other kids are pooing in the potty and show her those pictures....It's really not easy to stop or break the bad habits of kids, what's more adults, right? :(

Can female get color blindness?

Recently I thought my daughter to differentiate and name some of the basic color using her Lego blocks. It has been quite a few months teaching, but she doesnt seems to be able to call out the right color still. It worried me a bit whether she has color blindness or not (I'm the typical worried mother type :)), so I was asking around other parents. To my surprise, one mother told me that doctor said woman wont get color blindness. However after i do some research online, this statement is not 100% true, just that the possibility to get color blindess in woman is very low.
From wikipedia:
The genes that produce photopigments are carried on the X chromosome; if some of these genes are missing or damaged, color blindness will be expressed in males with a higher probability than in females because males only have one X chromosome (in females, a good gene on only one of the two X chromosomes is enough to yield the needed photopigments).

Anyway, back to my daughter's case. I further my research online and some expert said that thought kids can differentiate/grouping the color at the age of 18 months, but may only name the color at age of 3 only. My daughter is just 2.5 years old, so i guess I need to be patient and give her sometime. :)

Goods and bads sending your kids to day care center

Today is my daughter's 4th day of school. I encountered different feeling each day when i went to fetch her back from the day care center. First day was a bit worried how would she adapting to the new environment. Second and third days were happy because she waved goodbye to me and seems happy to go to the center, but today I was sad because she told me she don't want to go to the school and crying out loud again.. Guess this is what every parents have to go through if sending their children to the day care center?
Personally, i felt that there are pros and cons sending your children to the day care, especially when they are still very small. The advantages are likely to be that they can learn more things, and they learn it much faster. I'm thrilled that my daughter said "thank you" to me when i helped her to pick up her toy just now. This is definitely a good thing that she has learnt from the school. They can also learn to eat by themselves instead of asking mommy and daddy to feed them at home. Furthermore, I was also hoping that she can be potty trained soon with the influence from other kids who were potty trained. On the other hand, there are also things that I don't like about. Firstly, teachers may not aware that the kid has poop, so it might not be cleaned up until half an hour later or even longer. This has cause rash on my daughter's private part. Secondly, they can't seems to do much on those children that were crying and I don't see them wiping the child's tear and nasal fluid. Finally, as the ratio of teacher to child is 1:5, sometimes teacher may overlook on those kids' misbehavior like biting the crayon or hitting other children.
Well, thing always has its goods and bads, I guess we just need to learn how to cope with it, isn't that so?

My daughter going through Terrible twos Syndrome

My daughter is going to be two years old this September but right now we have observed that she start to change. She used to listen to me and my mom, when we said "No", most of the times she will follow. It was more easy to switch her attention when she request for something that we can't provide her. But this is not the case right NOW! My litttle angel has turn to little monster. Whenever her request is not fullfill, she will scream and sometimes even lay down on the floor and crying out loud. And when we said "No"to her misbehaviour, she seems to ignore us and sometimes even do it more! Sounds familiar to you? I shared here some of the tips how to handle it and pls, pls do share with me your "success story"too on how to control your terrible twos year toddler.

Tips 1# After realising that I can't control her by saying No, I use other ways. Depending on the situation, i will try to offer her another alternative. Example if she want to tear her story book, i will bring her some paper and teach her how to make an aeroplane out of it. Or sometimes i will just ignore her misbehaviour and spark her curiousity by telling her that I'm going to do something that she would be interested in, like playing the balls or eating biscuit and fruits. With that, she might stop and forget what she is currently doing and join me for the play.

Tips 2# Find something for her to do that will spent her extra energy. Let her walk or run outside the safe compound, or bring her to playground, I notice that once she stay too long time in the house, she starts to get frustrated. She loves to do household work together too like hanging or folding clothes.

Tips 3# Sometimes when she really make me angry, i will told her that Mommy is angry and I dont want to talk and play with her. She will feel guilty and trying to make me talk to her by calling me and hug me. I will then take this opportunity to teach her what is the right thing to do and what is a NOT. Although she might make the same mistake again next time, but at least one that moment, she will stop doing what is not right.

I hope she will go through this terrible twos syndrome soon. Pls do share with me your ways to cope with it.

Am my child have eye problem?

I like to call this photo A "Before-After". The first one look messy and big face, the second one looks more oval-face and sweet :)

Anyway, i felt that my daughter's eye are pointing inward. Some people said that this is normal for children and they will be fine when they grow up, but others seem to have concern. I didn't have a chance to bring her to the pediatrician yet, but what do you guys think? Pls leave me a comment, thanks.

Before

After

Children know when parents are angry

Kids are very smart. They know exactly the time where parents get really angry. When children sense that, they will tend to tone down and be a little nicer. This happen to my child too, who is more than 1.5 years old. When I get really angry, I will told her how and why I felt so. Then I will normally keep quiet for a while, giving her the "cold treatment". She seems to understand that what she did actually annoyed me. She will then call me and try to smile to me. If I don't response to her, she will keep doing that and up to a point crying out loud. So prior to reaching that stage, I will response and ask her to promise not to repeat her misbehaviour that has upset me. She normally will say YES and then smile to me. When i smile back, she feel relief and will happily get back to play. How sweet, isn't it? :)

My daughter prefer her dad than me!

I felt a bit sad when i realised that my girl prefer to play with her dad more than me :( She would normally scream happily when her dad is back from work and immediately want him to carry her and play with her. However when i returned home from work yesterday, she just look at me but didn't rush to me at all, how sad! When we play with her, she likes to throw the things that she is holding and asked us to collect it for her. I normally refuse to do so but her father will. And i normally just watch her how she play rather than playing together with her like what her father did. I guess this had make him a prefer choice as a playmate over me. But when come to bathing her or putting her to sleep, she will only choose me. I guess that's why both father and mother play a different but equally important role in children's development.
Agreed?

Expert in playing slide

Children love playground, including my daughter. It is a great way to burn some of their boundless energy. She likes the slide particulary. Yesterday she has a chance to play on the small, indoor slide. The climbing steps has no side rails so i thought she might have problem climbing up. So I help her by putting her on top of the slide instead of letting her climbing the steps. After a few times of plays, I though I should encourage her to try to climb the platform by herself. To my surprised, she was able to climb it on the first time and it looks so effortless (shown in the video below). I suddenly realised that my daughter has grown up so fast, that she can now handle many challenging tasks (well, at least it looks challenging to me :)). And as a parent, our job is not to overly protect them, instead we should encourage them to try and take up those challenges. She did falls once but I told her that's allright, and she quickly stand up and continue the climbing. I feel great having the chance to coach and guide my kid through plays. It's indeed a wonderful experience for me as I had learnt so much throughout these process too.

Child safety in the car

Babies, toddler and children by right must be restrained in the car using a bassinet, child car seat or booster seat. Unfortunately, I saw many parent here in Penang doesn't let their kids sit on a proper car seat. My friend's daughter, who is just 2years old plus, was allowed to sit freely alone at the back seat. When I asked why don't she let her daughter sit inside a proper car seat, she replied that her daughter don't want too. Another scenario make me shock was a Malay mother sitting at the front passenger seat open the window and let her son playing with it while the car is moving. I feel so uncomfortable just by watching it but the mother seems so relax. Even though you are there to take care of your child but accident do happen! Accident can happen anytime and it is the best way to prevent your kids from injuries during a crash by putting them in the car seat. In my opinion, i think that if it is for your children's own good, we should really discipline them rather than just let them do whatever they like. We must try many different methods until they fell comfortable sitting in the car seat. I know...i know sometime it is hard when they keep crying at the back while you are driving. However for the sake of your child's safety, please do whatever you can! I trust that you will succeed at the end of the day and your effort is really worth it!

Watch out for too many "No's"

Reading is one of the best ways to learn new thing. Few days ago i read about why parents shouldn't always say "No" to their children. Some kids experience a blunt "No"as a call to arms, a direct attack upom their autonomy. They may over-react by scream, have tantrums, call names and get sullen. However, as a parent, we shouldn't give in and say YES to everything because this will potentially spoiled our children. So what should we do? The author of the book has inspired me with some helpful alternative that allow parent to be firm without initing a confrontation. Try it out and let me know if it works for you too :-)

1. Give infromation (and leave out the No)
Instead of saying No to the kids, we may choose to tell them the fact or reason why they can't do so and they will get the meaning. eg,
child :  Can I go to the playground now?
Instead of saying no you can't, you can say : we're having dinner in five minutes. With this info, the child might tell herself that "I guess i can't go now"

2. Accept feelings :
In most cases, resistance is lessened when parents understand who a kid feel.
child: I don't want to go home, i still want to play
Instead of : No, we have to go back now! Accept your kid's feeling by saying: "I understand you are having fun and you were want to stay longer"(As you take him by the hand to go) It's hard for you to leave a place that you enjoy playing so much!

3. Describe the problem :
Child : Mom, can you stay in the class with me.
Instead of saying : No, i can't. Describe the problem : " I would love to stay with you, but mommy need to go to work, mommy have a very important meeting to attend to.

4. Substitute a "Yes" for a "No"whenever possible:

using the example from no.1, you may answer the child : "Yes, we can go to the playground right after the dinner."

5. Give yourself time to think
Child : Can I sleep over at Gary's house?
Instead of : No, you had slept there last week; Give yourself a chance to think : "Let me think about it" *this will let the child feel that his request will be seriously considered and the parent have time to think through the kid's feeling.

What's your important goal of rearing a child?

Did you ever think of what are your goals in rearing a kid? I just read about this and it strikes me. "One of the important goals as parents is to help our children separate from us, to help them become independent individuals who will one day be able to function on their own without us.We're urged not to think of our children as little carbon copies of us or extensions of ourselves, but as unique human beings with different taste, different feelings, different desires, different dream." I has never came accross  this goal but it makes a lot of sense to me after reading it. Most of the time, we always wanted to protect our kids, to offer them the best we could, to help them out when they have problems and so on. I think it is not wrong to do so, but just don't overdo it. I saw many parents still spoon feed their children who are 5 years old and above. The reason why they do so is because either the kids will mess up the place or it is going to be slow and they might be late for school. We should always try to strike for a balance in our life, espcially when come to rearing a child. We may think that what we are doing now is to help them out, but did we really think that these acts of us could harm them in the future?

How to put kids to sleep in their own bed

My daughter used to sleep with me in my bed since she was 8months old. Now that she is 18 months old, I always thought of training her to sleep back in her own bed. Last Friday I was watching Nanny 911 show and suddenly her word strike me real hard. She said to the mother of 3 children : "Why can't you just let your 8 months old baby sleep on her own?" Her word has encourage me (or rather I feel challenged) to start trying to put  my daughter sleep on her own bed right NOW! So I quickly think of my strategy how to go about it.
First, I told my girl that mommy was going to put a new beautiful bedsheets on her bed and that she will be sleeping on it tonight.While i was putting on her new bedsheets, i kept engaging her by asking her if she likes it and asked her to try laid down on her bed.
Next, I kept telling her that she is a big girl now and I trusted that she will be able to sleep on her own. I continued praising her and gave her some toys to play inside the bed.
Then, I told her that I was going to turn off the light but I will be around. When the light is off, she started to feel uncomfortable and wanna get out of the bed. I kept consoling her and hug her but insist not to bring her out of her bed. She cried for a while and I asked if she want to drink some milk. I was able to convince her to lay down on her bed while taking her milk.
After finished her milk, I quickly sang her songs and pat her back slowly so that she won't feel like standing up again. A few minutes later, miracle happen- she finally fell asleep. The whole process took around half and hour but I was so blissful that we had succeed at the first trial.

It has been 3 consecutive days she was sleeping on her own bed (keep my finger crossed :)). I really feel that I am a very lucky mother and I am so proud of my daughter ^-^
                                                                     

How to make toddler listen and behave

As new parent, I think it is normal that we get frustrated when our kids don't listen to us. Most of the parent will start talking to the child nicely but after we repeat ourself for a several times and they still won't listen, we will be annoyed and start yelling at the children and follow by punishment. This will make the situation worst as the toddlers may think that they only need to listen when you are mad and they won't listen at you for the first time anymore! Being said that, how to get them to listen at the first time? There are several ways mention by the expert and here are the summary of what i think it is most useful tips. We can try practicing it and modify along the way to suit your own style of teaching your children.

The first most important thing to take note at is the eye contact with your child when you want to talk to them. Connecting with the kids before you start direct by getting on the floor and looking them straight in the eye and adress them by their name. By doing so, you will have their full attention and they will hear what you are saying. Many parents including me make a mistake by yelling them eg. from the kitchen while the child is at the living room. How effective that could be is really questionable :)

Next, be clear, short and simple in the message you want to pass down to your kids. Children don't have long attention span. Put the main directive in the opening sentence. The longer you ramble, the more likely your child is to become parent-deaf. For example, you may just say "Billy, don't play with that thing, it is not your toys!" rather than explaining long reason why he can't touch that thing as it is dangerous and may cause fire, etc.

I found it very useful when kids are given choices or offer that they can't refused. For example, "When you get your teeth brushed, we'll then begin the story-telling session." This will offer the kids a reason for your request that is to the child's advantage or liking and at the same time they will do as per what you want them to. You may also give them a heads up when there is going to be a change in activity. For example if its almost time for bed you need to tell them. "Time for bed in 5 minutes" and a couple of minutes later tell them again that its almost time to pack up. Then do it. If you just rip them away from what they are happily doing then they are not going to be happy resulting in tantrums and crying. Make sure you strictly follow through as per what you said. When you said 5 minutes, you should really follow it and don't drag another 5 minutes.

Last but not least is to set a good example to your children. Kids are like copy machine, they copy what they see or hear. So, show them how to listen by listening to them and others around you. Also if you don't like the kids to yell and scream, you yourself must not yell at them or poeple around you. Else you will be regret to hear them say "mommy, you also yelling at me, why can't I?"

Anyway, I found that sometimes children won't listen no matter what strategies or skills you use. These are time where they are in a bad mood, especially if they are not having enough sleep. At this time, you may use your own judgement to either close on eye or remove them from what they are doing. Switch their attention to their favorite activity such as bringing them out for a walk. Or you may put them to sleep.

p/s: I wrote this topic due to a request from my good friend and I hope she will find these tips helpful :)

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

Recently i read about this article by Amy Chua who is a professor at Yale Law School and author of "Day of Empire". The title itself is already very catchy - Why chinese mothers are superior. It might make all the chinese mother proud of themselve after reading this article. However, as a chinese mom myself, i don't think i am the type of the mother she described. She has two very outstanding daughter and she believe that discipline and hardwork make them successful. She don't allow TV or computer game for her kids. She insist them to practice piano or violin many hours each days. I don't think I can or I want to train my daughter like this. I can't see them crying while practicing any of the music instruments hours and hours unless they show interest. I would rather give them some happy childhood. There is no "B" in the Chua's family. I disagreed with this too. The world is not perfect and sometimes we may failed to score A, and i think it is perfectly fine. As long as we try our best and we learn from the mistake. I worry that giving too much pressure to the kids will develop depression. Every year when the major school exam result is out, there are news of failed student getting suicide. I will never want this to happen to my family. Anyway, all parents want their kids to be successful in life, but the measurement of successful is really depends on each individual's interpretation.