kids / children Tag

Posts tagged 'kids / children'

Helpful Staycation Ideas to Make Your COVID-19 Holidays Great

The holidays are coming and this year, 2020, isn’t a normal year. We can’t go on vacation the way we did in previous years. So, what can we do? We can have a staycation. But first, we need some staycation ideas.

With COVID-19 looming, limited money, closed attractions, and restricted events and restaurants, a proper holiday seems difficult, even impossible. So, we either have a staycation or go nuts.

A staycation isn’t staying at home. It’s having a vacation, and enjoying our time, at home, or close to home. But how do we do it?

Read Helpful Staycation Ideas to Make Your COVID-19 Holidays Great »

100 Easy Ways of Entertaining Kids During COVID-19

Many parents are looking for easy ways of entertaining kids, but that’s happening now more than ever before. The restrictions that came with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have created challenges for many families around the world.

Usually, kids spend a lot of time at school. Their time is full of learning, variety, and activities to keep them interested and occupied. It’s very hard to get bored at school. So, parents just need to entertain them in the afternoons.

Now, however, they spend most, if not all, of their time at home. This period is very difficult for them because they locked up and bored out of their little mind. Finding entertaining things to do is a much bigger challenge than it normally is.

Fortunately, you’re at the right place and I’m here to help!

Read 100 Easy Ways of Entertaining Kids During COVID-19 »

How to Inspire Your Kids’ Natural Kindness

Humans are kind in nature. Just watch young children. They are born with natural kindness. This is the main reason it’s so wonderful to be around children. They constantly give and engage in a way that makes you want to give in return.

Research has found that kindness is contagious. If you want to see it in action, try smiling at people as you pass them on the street. Smiling is an act of kindness! And when you smile, people smile back.

When babies see a puppet show with kind and affectionate characters, followed by rude and mean ones, they prefer the kind puppets. Yes, they were just babies. But they have an innate ability to mirror their surroundings. They can notice the tone of the voice and actions.

Read How to Inspire Your Kids’ Natural Kindness »

How to Motivate Your Stepchildren: A Stepparent’s Guide

Being a parent is one of the biggest challenges a person ever experiences. Being a stepparent is even harder. If every family needs goals, blended families need them even more.

Think of a family like a ship. Parents are the captains of the ship, and as captains, we need to make sure our family arrives at its destination safely. In every sea, there are storms and calm waters, and we need to prepare ourselves for every ride.

What do ships need in order to move? They need two coordinates. They need to know where they are and where they are going. Without them, we don’t know how much supplies to take, what direction to take, what to avoid and where to stop on the way to have some fun.

Read How to Motivate Your Stepchildren: A Stepparent’s Guide »

Boring: What Does it Really Mean?

As a parent, I hear the word “boring” a lot. I also heard it a lot as a teacher. There are two main reasons kids use the word “boring”:

1. They say “boring” instead of “hard” when they want to hide their difficulties.
2. They want to manipulate their parents and put pressure on them.

Today, I would like to talk about the reasons and solutions for the second type of motivation.

Children learn at an early age that their parents find the word “boring” painful. They know their parents feel uncomfortable when they hear it, so it becomes a “button” to press. This happens when the parents see themselves as being in charge of their children’s entertainment.

I am sure you have heard many mothers say that they can’t leave their babies on their own for 2 seconds. Those babies grow up to be kids who can’t entertain themselves, and later on, they become adults who can’t entertain themselves.

Read Boring: What Does it Really Mean? »

I’m Disappointed in You!

Think of the last time anyone said to you, “I’m disappointed in you”. How did that make you feel?

Being disappointed is part of life. I guess it is one of the greatest challenges in life. Realizing that life is not happening the way you want and managing to push through despite it.

Although being disappointed is part of life, being disappointed in others should not be. When I work with my life coaching clients, we deal with a lot of disappointment. Sadly, what hurts them most is not self-disappointment – that things didn’t happen the way they “should have” – but being a disappointment to someone close.

When I think of all the times I have heard this, I can see two groups of people that express disappointment in my clients: teachers and parents, in this order. I dare say that they cause a lot of damage.

Disappointment is “sadness or displeasure caused by the non-fulfilment of one’s hopes or expectations”. Therefore, saying to someone, “I’m disappointed in you”, is telling that person he or she is not fulfilling your hopes and expectations.

Who are you to cause someone a bad feeling for not fulfilling your expectations?

Read I’m Disappointed in You! »

The Power of Complimenting: Don’t Be Stingy

Some parents are stingy with complimenting. I do not blame them. They probably grew up with stingy parents, who probably grew up with parents that did not compliment them either. I have said many times that we suffer today for things our ancestors did, which have not evolved.

Wake up, parents! We do not need to do the same things our great-great-grandparents did, because in some areas of life, they were not great at all. Giving compliments was definitely one of these areas.

The belief “back then” was that compliments got in the way of “building character”. I have clients and friends who say it aloud, “If you compliment people, especially children, they become complacent”.

What?!

Since when is complacent a bad word, anyway?

Read The Power of Complimenting: Don’t Be Stingy »

The Power of Bilingualism

My introduction to learning languages and bilingualism happened 24 years ago, when we moved to Texas, USA, and our daughter started to learn English. As a Special Education teacher, I knew she would be fine, but as a mother, I was scared, because at the age of 4, with the language of a 10 year old, I was afraid she would be left behind.

She wasn’t!

Since then, I have been working with inspiring people who specialize in language acquisition and with many children of migrants around the world. I have learned that parents and teachers play an important role in supporting language development. If they understand the challenges and consider the myths around language, they can help kids with healthy language acquisition.

Read The Power of Bilingualism »

Kids Eating Healthy Food: You Can Be This Lucky Too

When it comes to kids’ healthy eating habits, I was lucky, because my children, all three of them, have no issues with eating healthy food. Our children eat healthy food and were never “junkies”. My youngest had a sweet tooth for a while, but as soon as she entered her teen years, with great influence of some of her friends, she switched to cherries and blueberries. I told you I was lucky!

My parents were not that fortunate. All five of their children struggled with our eating habits and with our health. Some of us still struggle as grownups today. As a child, I was on antibiotics for three months of every year until the age of 12. When we were kids, my parents spent many days with us in hospitals and clinics when we got sick.

I was in a hospital once with each of my children and it was a great reminder that I did not want to raise my children to be sick.

Food and health are strongly connected!

Read Kids Eating Healthy Food: You Can Be This Lucky Too »

How to Turn off Children’s Creativity

As an educator and a mother, I believe in the importance of developing children’s creativity. My first real job as an educator was in a very special project, called “Creative Thinking”. It was a very important part in my career and in forming my philosophy.

I think this is the reason creativity is such a high value for me. I have written a lot about creativity and how to “turn it on”. But today, I would like to give some negative examples of ways you can turn it off, just as easily as you can turn it on.

Please check if your relationships with your children or students include any of these things. If so, this may be limiting their creativity and future success.

Read How to Turn off Children’s Creativity »