Positive Parenting

Bringing Up positive and self reliant children is the most tough and challenging job that also provides parents an huge atonement that they are taking their kids on path of success. But, most of the parents are not well prepared to take on the task of parenting their children in a positive and encouraging way. It’s very easy if they take a little care of little facts and go with them. Here are some simple and basic techniques that assist you in bringing up your kids in a positive manner and leading them to be successful in their lives.

Teach Self Esteem

Children are the mirror images of their parents, mainly of their mothers. As soon a baby takes birth, he starts developing a sense of self esteem that is very basic and primary. In fact, the baby sees the external world through his parent’s eyes for the first few months under their care and love. He begins learning about the environs through his parent’s actions and reactions. Parent’s behavior and mannerisms can affect their kid’s self esteem to a large extent. Little words of appreciation and encouragement can help the child to develop a keen sense of self esteem. Contrarily, making distasteful and needless comments and criticisms may make child feel depressed and think in negative ways.

Tips:

• Never use bad words to scold your child. Avoid using words like “stupid”, “you are good for nothing”, etc.
• Never degrade or criticize you child by comparing him with other kids. Example: “Look at your friend, He is so good”, “You act like a small baby than your little brother”, “Why can’t you top in the class like your friend XYZ”, etc.

Uttering carefully selected good words can have an unfathomed effect on your child’s psyche and mentality. Let your kids know that you really care for them. Show your caring attitude to them with your words and actions.

Devote Quality Time

This is conceivably another most significant parenting factor that most of us miss as dedicated, loving and caring parents. We are always busy in doing different, simultaneous tasks at the same time and keep ourselves occupied. But, children badly need their parent’s time for their speaking up their minds, sharing their thoughts with them, to make their needs and requirements meet. Giving good and quality time to children will help them develop a close, warm and affectionate bond with you.

Tips:

• Get up early to finish your household chores and preparations for your other work so that you can be available with your children to have a leisurely breakfast with them.
• Try hard to spend some quality time to read bed time stories and nursery rhymes for them, because children love to listen stories and rhymes from their parents.
• Drop your children to school and bring them back in the evening yourself, it will make them feel secure and also that you care for them.
• Reserve at least half an hour to play with your kid. As far as possible, try to play games those teach skills and intelligence to children.

Be Responsible and Become Role Model

Kids learn and understand by watching their parent’s mannerisms, behavior and actions how they act in front of other people. Younger your kids pick up cues from their parents. Be aware that your kids are watching you all the time and trying to act everything they observe from you.

Tips:

• Show respect to others so that your child learn the same trait from you.
• Other noble characters to show your kid are: friendliness, honesty, kindness, tolerance, complimenting others, and being modest to others.

Better Communication

Most of the parent’s always wish their kids to listen and obey to whatever they want them to do. This seems to be a wrong attitude on the parent’s part. You simply cannot expect your kids to obey and follow your orders just because you are a parent! Rather, you must explain and convince your kids about any issues that you want them to tackle on their own. Make suggestions and try to make them understand what you want them to do. You can also offer them a range of choices to choose from.

It has been observed that children who are able to participate in decision making process with their parents are more capable to perform better in whatever they do or perform. So every parent should invite their children to offer suggestions on any decision making task related to household work, etc.

To conclude, none of us are the perfect parents in this world. Similarly as our kids, even we need to learn, understand and master the skills and techniques of better and effective parenting. Once we learn how we can nurture our kids in a positive way, the rest becomes so easy and productive for both our kids and us.

We would love to know what you think about this article, your comments and suggestions make us research and write more better to serve you and other parents.

Is Reading Really the Second Nature?

Reading isn't something that comes naturally like learning to speak does. It takes so many efforts and considerations when it comes to the question of how to make kids learn to read.

How do Children Learn to Read?

There is no denying the fact that reading is a learned skill, and it is imperative that parents understand this! Most of the recent controversy and debates over how to teach kids reading — whether to use the method of whole language or phonics — has now died down. Everyone knows that the "whole language" stresses over literature and word meanings, while "phonics" teaches children to pronounce letters and commingle them to form words. So the need of the hour is a balanced program which brings equilibrium between literature and phonics.

The general belief that reading is something that comes naturally, like learning to talk is very much wrong. One significant aspect that has to be learned here is the relationship between the alphabet, speech sounds and their way of pronunciation.

Most children learn to speak out words in the first, second, or third grades and this is phonics. If a child can't make this connection between the alphabet and the sounds, then reading for him can be very difficult. This might be a symptom of a learning problem like dyslexia. Dyslexics face great difficulty connecting sounds with letters and blending letters to form words. The kids with dyslexia take much longer time to get it, but it is also true that once they get it, they advance very quickly.

How Can Kids Continue to Make Progress in Reading?

Whatever the schools, parents and teachers do to help kids read is very significant. When kids come to school for the first time, they have a huge spoken vocabulary from being read, heard by people, and from watching TV. So, it is important that as they begin to read, their reading vocabulary has to come up to the spoken vocabulary.

But, by third or fourth grades, the textbooks that kids read contain words that are beyond their spoken vocabulary usually. Then the task of reading becomes something to help improve their language.

As third and fourth grade students are introduced to new words by reading, they might sound out words without knowing their meaning. They must then look for the meaning of these words. At this stage, children read books on different subjects – like literature, social sciences, environmental sciences, general knowledge, geography, history etc., as well. This additional reading means that they will have to read at a good rate, and this way child learn more words and facts beyond what he use in his/her general day to day talk.

What Can Parents do if Their Child isn't Reading at a Good Rate?

If a child isn't reading at a good rate, then his or her parent must try to figure out the reason behind it. They can ask for an explanation that makes sense from a professional tutor or reading specialist at the child's school. It is not necessary that parents start trying to solve their child's reading problems on their own by force or any unfair means like beating children. Rather, they can go to a specialist to solve the problem of reading with their child.

Parents should also bear in mind that reading is significant at all levels for language either speaking or writing, and thinking. If kids spend most of their time watching TV, playing games, or just killing their time doing things which don’t make them read or learn, then they are left with any time for reading. And when kids aren't reading as much as they require at their age, their language level doesn't advance.

So at last parents should always come up with ideas, books, educational games, reading puzzles, and other activities which inspire kids to read and learn.

If you have any questions, need advice on helping kids read or learn, or any other suggestion you like to share with other readers, you are welcome with your suggestions and comments. 

First Step Learning - Nursery Rhymes for Children

Do you remember the days when you were a small kid and were growing up with family, friends and siblings, singing your favorite nursery rhymes in your sweet Kiddush voice? Even though it may have been such a long time ago, we should always still value those happy moments of childhood in life, the times where our learning years were just started. Now it's time we pass on the same memories i.e., nursery rhymes to our young ones and help them share the fun and love. There are number of nursery rhymes to go around. Making kids learn and sing nursery rhymes is an important step to be taken carefully when they are growing up and started learning.

It helps them develop a sense of music in their lives, assist with their ability to communicate, and provides happiness and confidence when they sing nursery rhymes with family and friends, especially at school.

Nursery rhymes have a lot more to offer than just entertainment value to children. They introduce children to the idea of a storyline, promote social skills, boost language development and lay the foundation for learning to read and spell.

In fact, reciting nursery rhymes may be just as important as reading stories and talking to your child. A rhyme’s repetition can sensitize the children to the individual units of sound, called “phonemes”, which make up words. For instance, the line, “Baa baa black sheep” places three “b” sounds in a row; later in the verse, the words “dame” and “lane” highlight the long “ay” sound. Nursery rhymes are written in such a way that similar sounds come out at, which doesn’t happen in every day speaking. Having developed sensitivity to language, children are ready, at age 5 or 6, to think about the sequence of sounds in a whole word, a skill that is imperative for learning to read and spell.

Nursery rhymes and other repetitive languages help children learn to think their way through a word sound by sound in the order in which they listen to it. This ability, known as phonemic segmentation, is best predictor of future reading success of a child.

So, if you're looking for something to share with your child, no other option is better than sharing the nursery rhymes. As adults, it brings back fond memories of your childhood and you will be glad to share these great melodies with childhood memories with your children, you will be able to teach them and show them what you grew up with.

Benefits of Nursery Rhymes

• Cognitive Skills: Between the age of 1-4 years, children develop their conceptualization of color, shape, size, and movement, and many more activities. Nursery rhymes have been proven to increase the pace of development of these concepts among children, making them more receptive and active in life. 
• Verbal Skills: When children attempt to sing the nursery rhymes, they are deliberately trying to express themselves coherently. This makes them confident speakers and very less self-conscious.
• Motor Skills: The facial expressions, coordination, gestures, movements and balance needed to act out a nursery rhyme help children develop their motor skills.
• Listening Skills: While reading a nursery rhyme to your children, you are basically telling them a story. To make sense of the story, children have to pay attention to you and the rhyme, thereby making them good listeners – an invaluable trait for later years.
• Reading Skills: Even when children aren’t old enough to read, listening to nursery rhymes can help them become good readers later in their academic life and then rest of the life. Because nursery rhymes help them learn the alphabet and recognize words, syllables and corresponding sounds which are the basics of learning language. 
• Language Skills: Nursery rhymes expose young children to relatively more ‘complex’ words such as spool, eagle, humpty dumpty, hickory dickory, mulberry, thumb, puddle, together, clock, nimble and hundreds more alike. These are words that are not likely to feature in their regular vocabulary and so nursery rhymes help them learn new words and their proper pronunciation, which makes them better and active speakers from a young age. 
• Social Skills: When a group of kids recite or sing nursery rhymes together, they bond better with each other as they feel that they have something in common with others. This makes them confident and outgoing.
• Auditory Skills: The rhythm and sweet melody underlying in all nursery rhymes sensitize children to sound. The patterned phonemic and phonetic arrangement of nursery rhymes lets children catch repetitious sounds, making them learn tunes, tones, notes and the ways in which sound can be organized in a spoken language.
• Imaginative Skills: Similar as the bedtime stories, nursery rhymes open up children’s imagination as they draw pictures of places and things in mind, and imagine about a world where everything is possible. 
• Memory Skills: Repeated exposures to nursery rhymes generally make children memorize the rhymes. This plays an entertaining memory workout and lays the foundation for an effective memory for the rest of their lives.

Nursery rhymes have always been seen as a way to help children develop so why not continue the tradition and teach our children, sing along with them, and encourage them to learn the nursery rhymes just as you did when you were at school. If you are too busy not to sing with your children you have another option to make them learn nursery rhymes by buying those DVDs of nursery rhymes for which there is no dearth in online stores. You can choose any number of different nursery rhymes and children will love to watch, listen and learn the animated nursery rhymes.