Family MattersPractical Parenting Blog

TV Diet (7): Learning and Education

Last week, I wrote about the influence of watching TV on kids’ and adults’ perception of relationships as disposable and easy to change. Today, I want to write about something very close to my heart – learning and education – and how watching TV affects them.

Some people might say, “Big deal. Not every child has to do well at school. Besides, there are things kids can learn from watching TV too”.

Well, humans must learn to survive. Your kids’ opportunities in life depend very much on their abilities to learn and develop new skills. Read on and you will see that watching TV causes kids to do poorly at school, but this also sets them up for a much more limited life long after they finish school.

This post is part 7 of 18 in the series TV Diet

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Kids Need Friends

Many couples choose for the man to work and “win the bread” and for the woman to stay at home and raise the kids until they are old enough to go to school. Often having 3 kids 1-2 years apart, the woman saves the family child care money for 7 years and then returns to the workforce.

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Motivating Kids (2)

The questions in Motivating Kids (1) provide a way to give your kids’ “wanting” muscle some good practice and to allow you as a parent to help your kids get what they want in life and be happy. The next step is to chunk each dream down to realistic, day to day pieces that do not involve genies, kings, fairies or lottery tickets.

This post is part 2 of 19 in the series Motivating Kids

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Things Kids Never Argue With

I once said (OK, I have said it hundreds of time) that kids believe everything you tell them. The younger they are, the truer this statement is. Parents do not know they are lucky that their young kids do not question them as much as they should. In fact, because kids do not doubt what their parents say, I would like to encourage all the parents reading this post to take advantage of this phenomenon and plant good thoughts and beliefs in your kids’ little minds. So if you are a parent and you want to learn how to plant good thoughts in your children’s mind, buckle up and enjoy the ride.

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Motivating Kids (1)

Many times, I hear the question “How do you motivate kids to do things?” Most parents in the world would like to know the “magic tricks” of motivating their kids to succeed, to be friendly, to be healthy and happy. I guess it is part of having kids, that desire for them to be “in the zone”, where everything is easy and gives a good feeling. In this sense, kids and their parents are exactly the same. Motivation has no age.

In my parenting classes, 100% of the participants want their kids to have love, success, friendships, confidence and happiness. All of the parents look for the formula they can use to help their kids get these things.

In the coming weeks, I will be posting about motivating kids, covering all aspects of motivations and how you, as a parent, can use each and every one of them to give your kids what you have always wanted to. With each post, I will also include tips, exercises and/or printable resources to help you on this exciting mission.

This post is part 1 of 19 in the series Motivating Kids

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Colorful Kids

Every time I see a blind man, I am thankful for my ability to see the richness around me and remind myself that I do not need something to be taken away from me in order to appreciate it. Many people have good vision, but cannot see that the world is actually colorful, with many shades, with great landscapes and beauty all around. You see, it is not enough for beauty to be there. We must also learn to appreciate it.

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Parent-Teacher Relationships

Teacher erasing from board

Teaching is the most rewarding career (together with life coaching and writing). I think it is rewarding because every day, teachers feel they are making a difference. Making a difference is a high need that most people have and we all, in small ways or big ways, make a difference in other people’s lives.

If you are not a teacher, but you are a parent, this post is as much for you as it is for teachers, because parents can work on their side of the relationship for the benefit of their kids and guide the teachers with today’s insights. In fact, why not email the post to them or print them a copy?

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How to Teach Kids Colors

Girls painting with colors

When young kids go to any formal education, their knowledge of colors is checked. Colors are an easy way to check learning and it is possible to start teaching the colors at a very early age. Kids as young as 2 years old can learn their colors and build good learning connections in their brain. The earlier they start, the better it is for their learning abilities. So how to teach kids colors?

It is very important to understand the process of learning when teaching kids abstract concept like colors. For kids to recognize a color, they need to have accumulated hundreds of information pieces that help them define that color concept.

The understanding of what this thing is not is greatly helpful in forming a concept. We call these “negative examples”. When you show a kid an apple and say the color is green, it is possible for the kid to remember the shape of the apple and think this is the meaning of green. You must also show an apple that is not green.

Through our examples, we need to help our kids learn that color has no shape. Green can be an apple, a fabric or a leaf.

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How Kids Learn

Many times, we do not know if kids actually know things, because they are too young to tell us. In fact, they know a lot more than they can tell. As parents, we can sometimes ask our kids questions that are simply too advanced for them, conclude they do not know the answer and become disappointed with their lack of knowledge. This does not have to be so.

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Tess Buys a Miracle for a Dollar and Eleven Cents

Specs of light in different colors

There is a wonderful story of a young girl who believed in miracles. I thought it was a good idea to bring it here so you can read it too and be inspired.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a post about my experience with a group of 3-year-olds. I managed to convince them (it wasn’t a hard work at all and it was a lot of fun) that they had magic in their little hands. It was magic that from that moment on, those young kids used their small hands to comfort each other and felt very powerful.

I remember a childhood story about a teacher who wanted to make her young students happy by planting a “bubble gum bush”. She planted some bubble gum wrappers with the kids and when they came two weeks after, they found a small bush with bubble gum hanging from its branches.

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