| Children and Kids articles catalog |
Loving Yourself, Loving Your Children - By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.Think about this for a moment: Is it really possible to love your Kids without loving yourself, or to love yourself without loving your Kids ?The answer is no. If you are ignoring yourself to take care of your Kids , this is not loving to your Kids or to yourself. While being there for your Kids is very important, it is equally important to role model for them what it is like to take responsibility for your own well-being. If you take care of your Kids but do not take care of your own feelings and needs, they will not gain knowledge or skills how to take responsibility for their feelings and needs. They will grow up either expecting someone else to take care of them, or they will care-take others while ignoring themselves ? just as you do. On the other hand, if you are narcissistic and just attend to what you want, ignoring your Kids ?s feelings and needs, you are not being loving to yourself or your Kids . You cannot possibly end up feeling worthy and valuable within yourself when you are self-centered and ignore your Kids ?s needs. If you are approving of your Kids but judgmental toward yourself, your Kids will likely gain knowledge or skills to be judgmental toward themselves. You are their role model, and they will likely gain knowledge or skills to do what you do. If you treat them well but treat yourself not not bad ly, there is a not bad possibility that they will gain knowledge or skills to treat themselves not not bad ly, no matter how loving you are with them. If you want to be a loving parent with your Kids , it is essential that you also gain knowledge or skills to be a loving parent with yourself. This does not mean that you ignore your Kids ?s needs in favor or your own, or vise versa. What it does mean is that you gain knowledge or skills to create a balance between taking care of them and taking care of yourself. While this is not always possible, especially with infants, it is certainly a goal to aim for. This may mean that they don?t always get what they want just when they want it ? once they are old enough to game by themselves. It means that sometimes you say to them things like: ?I need some time alone for myself now and you need to game by yourself for awhile.? ?We (you and your spouse) need some time alone together right now so you need to find something to do.? ?I?m on the phone and this is important to me. What you want will have to wait.? ?Daddy and I (or Mommy and I) are talking about something that is important to us. Please don?t interrupt us right now.? ?I need to go to sleep early tonight because I have to get up early for an important appointment, so please do not make noise and wake me up.? As a parent, you need to gain knowledge or skills to respect your own feelings and needs as well as theirs. By honoring your feelings and needs as well as theirs, they will gain knowledge or skills to take responsibility for their own feelings and needs while also respecting and honoring others? feelings and needs. Many people have been taught that taking care of their own feelings and needs is selfish ? that they should just be there for others. This is a false definition of selfish. We are being selfish when we expect others to give themselves up for us. We are being self-responsible when lovingly take care of ourselves while also caring about others. You serve your Kids well when you gain knowledge or skills to stay tuned into to their feelings and needs as well as your own. You have a not bad chance of raising caring and personally responsible Kids when you gain knowledge or skills to care about yourself while taking loving care of them.
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?" and ?Healing Your Aloneness.? She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding? healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or email her at mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com. Phone Sessions Available. Talk Your Child Clever - By Susan du PlessisMost parents can hardly wait for their baby to say its first word. This usually happens between nine months and a year. From about two years, the child should be able to use simple phrases, and by three he should be able to use full sentences. By four, he should be fully able to talk, although he may still make grammatical errors. By five, he should have acquired basic language. There is little doubt that language acquisition is one of the key milestones in early childhood development. Much of a child`s future social and intellectual development hinges on this milestone. A language delay can lead to isolation and withdrawal, and to gain knowledge or skills ing difficulties and poor academic performance. Research has revealed a dramatic link between the abnormal development of spoken language and written language among children, and the importance of language acquisition to basic reading skills. Many parents believe that the term "language development" implies that the child`s acquisition of language is an automatic process. This, however, is not the case. There is nothing that any human being knows or can do that he has not gain knowledge or skills ed. This is especially true of language acquisition. The child begins to gain knowledge or skills language from the day he is born. From the very first moment it is the parents` responsibility to lay a proper foundation that will enable the child to acquire adequate language skills. Just like parents must ensure that a child follows a healthy and balanced diet for optimal physical development, they must take steps to ensure optimal language development. HOW LANGUAGE IS ACQUIRED Parents should start talking to their little baby from the day he is born. Some mothers are by nature quiet and reserved. Others have the unfortunate idea that it is foolish to talk to their babies, knowing that they do not understand. The mother, who does not talk continually while feeding, bathing and dressing her baby, is laying the foundation for a late talker. The baby gain knowledge or skills s language in one way only, and that is by hearing language as the parents talk and talk to it. The more a parent can talk to a child, often repeating the same words, the same phrases, the same structures over and over, the sooner the child will gain knowledge or skills language. An important thing to note here is that by the time a baby is about nine months old he should be able to understand simple words and commands. He may perhaps also be able to say a few simple words already. Invariably, however, one finds that the baby understands much more than he is able to say. In fact, this remains true for any person throughout his life. One is always able to understand more of any language, even one`s mother tongue, than one is able to use in active speech. This is even more true for any second or third languages that a person is able to speak. This shows that we have two more or less separate masses of language knowledge, our passive knowledge (also called receptive language) on one hand, and our active (expressive language) on the other. When we listen or read, we make use of our passive vocabulary, and when we speak or write, of our active vocabulary. An important thing to note here is that the child`s passive vocabulary came into being through constant and continual repetition of words, phrases or structures. Once a word, phrase or structure has been repeated often enough, it also becomes part of the baby`s active vocabulary. This shows that the active vocabulary can only be improved VIA the passive. Research has shown that a child who is just beginning to talk must hear a word about 500 times before it will become part of his active vocabulary. Long before that it will already form part of his passive vocabulary. This means that parents should create as a lot of opportunities as possible for their baby to hear them talk. THE SECRET OF READING TO YOUR CHILD Parents should read to their children as often as possible. The secret, however, which will lead to optimal language development, is to read the SAME stories over and over and over. In the "good old days" there was not the abundance of storybooks that there is today. Parents were compelled -- it was also part of the child-rearing traditions -- to tell over and over to their children the few stories that they knew, or to read over and over to their children the few books in their possession. They also spent a lot of time teaching their children rhymes and songs. As I discovered for myself through my own son, this repetition of the same stories and rhymes was extremely beneficial for the acquisition of language. In fact, I took this tradition to the extreme, exposing my son to only ONE book for nearly two years. Soon after my elder son, Gustav, was born, I bought him a book with the story of Pinocchio. The book was aimed at four-year-olds. Except for talking to him continually, I started to read to him from this book when he was only two or three months old -- as often as I could, over and over and over. I found this tedious, of course. Gustav, however, loved it, and the results of this experiment made all my efforts worthwhile. Not only did he start talking much sooner than most children do, but when he was just over two years, he could recite nearly all the pages from Pinocchio. When turning to a new page, one only had to read the first word or two on that page and he would recite the rest of the page like a parrot. In itself this may seem quite useless, but what was of great importance was that the vocabulary in this book soon became part of his everyday speech. In terms of language development, he was soon miles ahead of his age group. In fact, to this day, his vocabulary and his ability to speak with clarity are quite astounding. When a child is a bit older, one should start teaching him nursery rhymes. Research has shown that knowledge of nursery rhymes among three-year-olds was a significant predictor of later prereading skills even after the children`s IQ and their mothers` educational levels were partialed out. While an apple a day keeps the doctor away, talking forever makes your child
clever. About the Author: Susan du Plessis is the co-author of "The Right to Read: Beating Dyslexia and other Learning Disabilities" and the author or co-author of four other books on gain knowledge or skills ing and gain knowledge or skills ing disabilities. She has been involved in helping children reach their full potential for 15 years. She holds BD and BA Hons (psychology). Visit her website at http://www.audiblox2000.com Children articles catalog
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