Kids Learn Through Play

For children, life is a playground. They love to play. From tiny babies who hold toys and manipulate them clumsily, to school children, who play sophisticated games that require thinking, planning and manipulating, kids just love games. In fact, games are a source of calm and comfort for most. They stimulates the mind and body using a “fun incentive”.

Education in early childhood is very important in building the foundation for happy learning. The early impression children have of learning determines their attitude towards acquiring new knowledge later on in life. Researchers discovered that pre-teen children who called their learning activities “play” were more successful, happier in school and more socially content at the end of adolescence than those who considered their learning activities “work”.

Children play games for many purposes. For example, games can be used to improve social skills. During games, kids must negotiate, share, relate and connect with others. This helps develop understanding, compassion, empathy, acceptance and trust. Later on, this allows healthy intimacy.

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Raising Kids and Bamboo Trees

Parents are often frustrated with their kids and/or with their own parenting. I coach many such parents and they express a lot of frustration. You cannot blame anyone else for the way your kids turn out and raising children is not easy, so it is not surprising that parents become frustrated. I have the most wonderful kids but they did not grow up exactly the way I expected them to. No matter how much you learn or how much you know, they will come out different to what you imagine.

This is because we are different people when we give birth to them than when we imagined them. They are born to time that is different to what we grew up with.

Patience is one of the necessary skills in the parenting job description. Sadly, no one can tell jut exactly how much patience they need until they are put to the test. They then have to find it within them.

Raising kids is similar to raising bamboo trees. Here is a story I heard called the Bamboo Tale.

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Teaching & Education Beliefs: Attitudes & Responsibilities

Here are the last 20 of my top 100 beliefs about teaching and education. Today’s beliefs are about teacher’s attitudes and responsibilities. To read all of them, check out the Teaching & Education Beliefs.

1. In order to raise a new generation of thinkers, teaching should encourage kids to question, even it is means they question you. During my lessons, I teach the kids to question me and the world around them; we should not keep doing things just because we always have. If we do that, we never grow and evolve. Our job as teacher is not to think for them, but to teach children to think for themselves.

2. If you focus on a child’s problems, all you will see is problems. If you focus on their strengths, you will see their gifts. Teachers consider kids problematic or gifted depending on what they focus on.

“Teaching is not about what we give our students but about what they choose to take. We spend too much time giving our students information and too little teaching them how to absorb it” – Ronit Baras

This post is part 5 of 6 in the series Teaching & Education Beliefs

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Teaching & Education Beliefs: Use Your Power

Here are 20 more of my top 100 beliefs about teaching and education:

1. Teaching is the business of manipulating students to think they are smart, wonderful, talented, pretty, successful, happy, healthy and wealthy. Whether we like it or not, us teachers have a lot of power over what our students think about themselves. Do not feel guilty. It is part of the job description. Just be sure to use this power wisely.

2. When I am upset with my students I think of them as the cutest babies. My anger dissolves.

This post is part 3 of 6 in the series Teaching & Education Beliefs

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Teaching & Education Beliefs: I Am an Educator

In today’s part of Teaching & Education Beliefs, I want to share with you the first 20 of the top 100 beliefs I have about teaching and education.

Last week we discussed where beliefs about teaching come from: from our parents and our own teachers. In this post, I want to share some helpful tips that I found useful through my career.

1. I am an educator. I teach, I coach, I present, I motivate, I do public speaking, I write, I do my community work. In all those roles, I educate kids and grownups on how to find the gifts they have inside and let themselves shine.

2. School is not a place where kids come to gain knowledge; it is a small version of real life. Children have opportunities to use trial and error without detrimental consequences. Kids come to school to learn about themselves, grow and evolve.

This post is part 2 of 6 in the series Teaching & Education Beliefs

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National Teacher Appreciation Day

National Teacher Appreciation Day was this week on May 7 2013. This is a wonderful idea. Teachers deserve much more appreciation than they currently receive.

Teaching and education are the tool and the outcome in a student’s life. Much like the artist uses a brush to paint. The teacher is the artist, teaching is the brush and education is the finished canvas.

Teaching has been my journey for the last 27 years. I am not a school teacher any more but I still consider myself an educator. I teach, I coach, I present, I motivate, I do public speaking, I write, I do community work and in all those things I educate kids and grownups to find the gift they have inside let it shine.

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Parenting By Example

Even though this video was about how cute animals are, I could not help thinking how wonderful the big dog was at encouraging the little puppy to try something it thought was too hard. It did not bark, it did not push, it did not show disappointment. It simply let by example. It did not give up when it did not work the first time, or even the first three ties. It kept doing it again and again, until the puppy was confident enough to try it for himself.

Parenting is the same. When we want our kids to do things that they are afraid to do, we need to show them how we do it. Again and again. Without shouting, telling them they are small and unable, calling them names or showing disappointment. We do not even need to push them to do the things they cannot do, do not want to do, or are afraid to do. We need to lead by example. Again and again. Until our kids are confident enough to do it themselves.

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Down Syndrome & Inspiration

I learnt about Down Syndrome first hand during my first year of university. I was working with a child with Down Syndrome during my work experience. At first, it was scary and I felt devastated. After getting to know the kid, I learned that he was no different than any other child with intellectual difficulties. To my greatest surprise, he improved quickly and learned a lot. It made me wonder how far we could go. I had my doubts when he did not get things the first time around, but he taught me that as long as I continued to teach him, he would continue to learn.

This experience, coupled with my work on a project about creative thinking (where we tried to teach physics to grade 1 students), taught me that too often we limit kids by our expectations. If we allow them to move forward at their own pace, they will exceed our highest expectations.

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Wired for Happiness: Changing Wires and Strengthening Highways

Our brains are full of neurons – synaptic connections that link our life experiences to our emotions. Think of them as wires. Some are conscious and some are subconscious. The Be Happy in LIFE program takes people though the process of noticing their wires, evaluating them, choosing good wires and changing wires on the way to happiness.

Every client who takes a journey with us reaches their happiness goal. We bring the knowledge and all it takes is a bit of courage. I will share the knowledge with you here and all you need to do is gather some courage to make lasting changes.

So, how do we change our wires?

The key is to choose what you want to think.

This post is part 3 of 3 in the series Wired for Happiness

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Wired for Happiness: Wires and Highways

Last time we talked about the snake brain. Even though our brain has 3 parts, each with different functions, the primitive snake brain is far superior when we are stressed. It has two main functions: (1) food (yummy, yummy!) and (2) protecting us from danger with a fight or flight response. Meanwhile, the puppy brain stores information as emotions and uses them to navigate us. For example, on a conscious level, we would label all kinds of anger with the same five letters: a.n.g.e.r. The puppy brain is able to distinguish between “I was slightly angry”, “I was angry”, “I was very angry” and “I was soooooooo angry”. In the brain, the feeling is stored along with its intensity.

Whenever something happens to us, the puppy brain searches our emotion bank for similar feelings we experienced in the past. This helps it decide how to translate the new information.

This post is part 2 of 3 in the series Wired for Happiness

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Raising Kids and Bamboo Trees

Teaching & Education Beliefs: Attitudes & Responsibilities

Teaching & Education Beliefs: I Am an Educator

National Teacher Appreciation Day

Parenting By Example

Down Syndrome & Inspiration

Wired for Happiness: Changing Wires and Strengthening Highways

Wired for Happiness: Wires and Highways

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