As Parents, especially Mothers, we are by nature the carer and giver. Everyone comes ‘before’ you. It took me a while to really understand this but unless you are healthy, happy and in control, you can’t love or care for your family.

In other words, you must make time to really look after yourself, getting to know yourself, and reassessing your programming from your childhood. Learn about accepting and loving all the parts that you have judged, start loving yourself, and allow the love to flow through to your family.

Give yourself permission to be happy! Do the things that align with who you are and activities that make you happy. For example, if you love to sing, join a local choir or sing loudly in the shower.  If you love painting, find the time to incorporate painting and drawing in your spare time. Do the things that align with who you are and without having to please everyone around you.  Take time for ‘me’.

If you are happy, everyone at home will follow suit! 

This is a beautiful message from Terri Amos – Britt from The Enlightened Mom http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Hy7Z5zJsc. 

Love your thoughts as always!! Head to the Facebook Page and share your thoughts.

Do you ‘journal’? Do you write a journal?

What's Journaling?

Your journal is your personal space— a place where you may have the answers to all the questions you need answering. And taking time out to write helps you unravel many issues.

Why is Journaling useful?

I find that journaling is one of the most useful tools to help clear your mind daily. It helps reconnect with yourself, processes change and uncovers insights about what is emerging in your life, and so you can understand who you are and what you want in life.

Daily journaling will help you to reflect, complete actions and recover self insights. It is the best way to connect with your thoughts and feelings and find out about who you are. Written words may contain hidden meanings; journaling is a very effective tool to do that.

I would suggest you try it for a minimum of four days continually; you will start to slowly uncover insights into your thoughts.

Love your thoughts on this as always.

Last week we talked about how much do you understand your children. In today’s blog, let’s talk about how much you know about yourself. Know WHO you are and WHAT you want in life.

The exercise is similar – The aim is to bring awareness about you.

These questions are useful when you are feeling overwhelmed and being reactive to situation and circumstances. Such as, when your child/children behave in a certain way, you reacted, either being really angry or upset about it.

Let’s just start by asking these simple questions:

• What is favourite colour?
• How would you like to spend your weekend?
• What makes you sad? WHY?
• What makes you angry? WHY?
• What are you grateful for?
• How does happiness look like?

Get your journal out and give it a go, and notice when you start putting thoughts into words, your level of awareness is so much clearer!

This is a very simple exercise. The aim is to bring awareness to how much you know your child/children.

These questions are useful when you are feeling overwhelmed and trying to figure out why your children are not as responsive to your instructions etc.

Create a Q & A chart for each child.

• Their favourite colour
• Food they like
• When they are sad, how do they react?
• When they are angry, how do they react?
• When they are happy, how do they react?
• When they are tired, how do they react?
• When they talk to you, what is their ACTUAL message?

Give it a go and notice when you start putting thoughts into words, your level of awareness is so much clearer!

After looking at Ways you can empower your children with the love of reading and Recommendations by Mrs. Yvonne Louie, what books will you introduce to your children?

I did a recording about the books that may be suitable for children at different age levels:

Preschoolers – Picture Books: Bright, colourful and minimal words

School Aged – Picture books but with fun, challenging activities, such as puzzle books.

Primary School children – Picture books with more words, more challenging puzzle books and nonfiction books.

As always, I value your comment. Please let us know what books are you introducing to your children right now and at what age…Leave your comment below.

Last week we talked about how to empower your kids with the love of reading. This week we explore WAYS we model the love of reading to our children.

When my children were preschoolers, we spent a great deal of time in the libraries. We would attend story telling sessions in various local libraries, which we all enjoyed.

Why story telling?

Children can relate with the book better as the storyline is told like an activity. It was fun to enjoy story session time with other children, and they interacted with each other after the story session. On top of that, the librarians will recommend age appropriate books for the children; of course, you as parents will decide the suitability according to their reading level.

Last year, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mrs. Yvonne Louise (author and teacher/ librarian for 25 years) about reading and children. 

Yvonne talked about:

• What is the benefit of reading with your children?
• How to encourage our children to enjoy reading?
• When should parents start reading to their children?
• What books should parents choose based on their children’s age?

Enjoy the interview. Love your thoughts and feedback below.

Can you still remember your favourite story books? Who is your favourite author? How do you allocate your time for reading?

Language skill is a life skill that we can empower our children with. Language enhances the children’s quality of life, as it empowers them to read and write. With good language skills children can progress in their studies and research, travel, communicate and achieve great success in life. On top of that, being literate means your child can occupy themselves with interesting story books, which stimulates their imagination. 

How do you introduce the love of reading to young children?

Make a fun day out to visit the local library or libraries around the area. Check out the story telling sessions for each library, and if time permits, encourage your children to go for the story telling time. They will be able to relate with the book better with the storyline being told like an activity. Find fun adventure books and share the journey with your child by reading together.

Alternatively you can spend time with them, both relaxing in bed or on the couch, sharing the books together. This is the best outcome: not only are you introducing the story and words to your children, you are also connecting with them through books and words.

However, if you are a working parent and finding the time and energy to read to your children challenging, what can you do about it?

Don't let that stop your children from reading. This is the method that I used when I was just too tired or do not have time to read to my children. I invested or borrowed CDs with interesting stories that my children loved. They were absolutely into Harry Potter series at one stage, so we borrowed the Harry Potter CDs from our local library. 

Every night, they would be eagerly waiting for bed time to start the audio. They would either lie down and listen to the stories, or they could sit up with the book and follow the wordings together with the audio.

So fellow parents, do not hesitate to experiment with various methods that will encourage your children to enjoy books and stories….either way, they will still benefit from the wonderful stories, learning vocabulary and connecting with you through books and stories…

Share your thoughts; do you have any other methods that you use that encourage your child to love reading?

“How do you open up communication with your kids?”

Good morning! Grab your cup of coffee or tea and your breakfast and let’s discuss a topic that is very dear to me – How do you open up communication with Your Children?

I am very inspired by this message 

So today’s topic is about speaking the language of your children.

As parents, we love our children – there is no doubt about that. We want them to be their best in whatever they do… We will pour our heart and soul into teaching them, guiding them, imparting our knowledge of the world to them. However, pay close notice that who’s language are you speaking?

Language has a broad meaning. Are you speaking the language that you were brought up with? This is the language that is based on your life experience, that may not connect well with your children…

I remembered when my son was in Kindergarten, the class was learning basic multiplication. He was finding it a bit challenging, so I was helping him using fruit. For example, “if I put 2 apples in a basket, and I have 2 baskets, how many apples would there be in two baskets?” Though this is from two times tables, it did not make sense to him. Apples and baskets???

To him, he’d never seen apples in baskets before. I know baskets and apples because we always carried basket when doing our shopping when I was growing up; but here in Australia, we use trolleys and plastic bags …so the basket and apples concept did not connect with him.

So what can we do about our ‘language'?

My son was very keen on basketball, and my husband thought of the “basketball” concept. He asked my son: “if one ball through the hoop is 2 points, how many points would that be if I were to shoot 2 balls?”… Without blinking an eye lid, he said 4 points… Oooolah! He had grasped the multiplication concept through the "basketball" concept! He could learn through a sporting analogy.

This concept applies to everything in life. If you are going impart a life skill to your children, SPEAK their language. Use examples that they can understand. Speak the language they can understand and the level they are able to comprehend.

Let me know your thought or you may have experiences that you would like to share with the community.

Music and Kids

Children instinctively enjoy music and that is why it is a perfect medium for inspiring learning in a whole host of areas. The best way for anyone to learn is voluntarily through rewarding activity. This is where music can really come into its own.  

For 2 to 5 year olds, singing songs, making music together with different instruments and dancing around are all too much fun to be thought of as learning tools! However, the fact remains that music activities can provide a central core of intelligence for the development of basic skills right across the board.  

All areas of the government's "Desirable Learning Outcomes", on which most schools around the world base their curriculum and which also form the basis of the Basic Skills Test here, are addressed in some form by music-related activities. This means that activities and games involving music are not only highly enjoyable for children and adults alike, but can be beneficial for child development in areas including reading, mathematics and science as well as social and personal development.  

Social Development  

As a group activity, music really takes-off. Children with little else in common can form fruitful relationships when it comes to playing together with musical instruments. 

In a pre-school setting, group activities such as singing or playing circle games, where children pass round an instrument or clap rhythms, help to develop social skills like taking turns, working together and sharing.  These are skills which don't come naturally and this is a rewarding and enjoyable way to practice these. Sharing enjoyable experiences through music like playing games, singing and dancing can also help strengthen bonds between children and their adults.  

 
Personal Development

On a more personal level, these activities can help instill a sense of self-confidence while encouraging children to listen closely and be ready to respond. Music activities also give pre-school children the opportunity to find out that music can be enjoyed by everyone regardless of age or ability.  

Hearing music from other countries is a good place to start in building awareness and respect for cultures other than our own. Recent research has also shown that moving to music by dancing and doing actions to songs can help with brain development and memory.  
 
Language and Literacy

Music activities help develop communication skills. Singing and chanting repetitive songs and rhymes all help build up confidence in using language while helping children to remember new words.  It gives first experiences of language structures such as phrasing in sentences and syllables within words.

Listening to music and talking about how it sounds and how it makes you feel is also a great opportunity to discover new words and to use them in descriptive ways.

Listening carefully to different types of sounds made by different objects is a good way to build up the skill of concentrated listening and the ability to discriminate between sounds.  These are essential when it comes to learning and using language.

Music is itself a non-verbal language of its own which has the power to communicate emotions, sometimes very powerfully. For children to experience this by hearing music and by playing instruments let them investigate forms of communication which their limited verbal skills do not allow.  

This is a good introduction to the communicative potential of language. Relating sounds to symbols that can be drawn on paper and sequencing them from left to right in response to rhythms they make, is also a good foundation for reading and writing skills.  

Article contributed by Dr Christobel Llewellyn

 by Dr Christobel Llewellyn

ATCL, LRAM, BA,LLB, M.Mus, PhD

Founder of Kinderjazz