Self-Esteem In Young Children

How important is self esteem?

Good self esteem is very important for the development of your child. The foundation of good self esteem starts at an early age. Low self esteem can have significant consequences. It can lead to social anxiety, lack of confidence, and depression later on in life.

High self esteem, on the other hand, has long-lasting impacts on a child’s development. It leads to the ability to learn from mistakes, makes a child more resilient, self-assured, motivated, more likely to succeed in life, happier and they perform better in school.

Parents have one of the most important roles in forming a child’s opinion about their self esteem. Here are some easy actions you can take to help.

* Give lots of compliments when your child demonstrates strong character and positive behavior

* A hug and a kiss go a long way. Let your child know they are loved unconditionally

* Try to spend individual time with each of your children when you can

* When there is bad behavior don’t just yell, make sure you tell a child how to correct their actions.

Self Esteem buildings Activities

Sports and Hobbies: Every child has some sort of talent and it’s important to let them show it. Success in sports, Cub Scouts, and academic pursuits are incredible builders of self esteem. A child feels an individual sense of accomplishment and for team spots a sense of acceptance and appreciation for group success.

Family Involvement: activities that involve the participation of the whole family can do a lot to build self esteem. Chores, family sporting events like bowling, even video games are great self esteem building activities. Everyone from youngest to oldest competing, complimenting and supporting each other can provide a great foundation for high self esteem and long-term personal success.

Use every day events, activities and life lessons to take the opportunity for esteem building and you’ll see the difference in your child’s self esteem.

Sources :

http://early-childhood-development.suite101.com/

The Magic of Encouragement by Stephanie Martson

http://www.buzzle.com/

Tattling

Why do children tattle? Well they primarily do it for attention. It often gives a child a sense of feeling important by reporting to you what has happened. The act of tattling actually helps to develop critical thinking skills in your child.

Tattling involves the skill of observation. It requires your child to determine if a behavior is not appropriate. Then they have to report the details of what has occurred to you.

The trick with tattling is to try to teach your child the difference between tattling to get a sibling in trouble vs. telling on a sibling to protect them.

Tips to Reduce Tattling

· Teach your child to determine the impact of the event they witnessed. For example, if your child reports an event to you, you might ask them “Did anybody get hurt?” This question will help your child understand that the consequences of a sibling’s behavior can be important in determining if the behavior is truly bad and if they should tell on them.

· If the other sibling’s behavior was truly bad, avoid punishing them in front of the tattler. Punishment of the sibling can serve to reinforce tattling behavior.

· Make being a tattle tale inconvenient. Try praising your child for their observation skills. Then, require them to report a good behavior they witness each time they want to report a bad behavior. Ultimately, they will decide that tattling takes too much time.

· Make sure your child is receiving enough attention from you. Tattling could be sign your child would like to spend more time from you.

Tattling is a normal part of child development. However, if you feel you need to control this behavior try the tips above

Sources: http://earlychildhood.suite101.com/

http://www.tnpc.com

Perks of daycare

Parents often feel guilty when they drop their child off at daycare. But here are some reasons you may not have thought of to feel good about your choice:

Long-Term Health Benefits - Some may argue that your child will have more sniffles than the average stay-at-home child. You may have heard that children who attend daycare are exposed to illness more frequently which serves to boost their immune system. Some research indicates that this boost to the immune system can help reduce the affects of allergies, asthma, and even some life threatening diseases.

Better Prepared for School – Your child benefits from a strong curriculum at Goddard that teaches the basics such as the alphabet and numbers, and vocabulary. By the time school starts your child has had exposure to the concept of learning environment. They understand what is expected of them when they go to kindergarten. This can provide a valuable head start that other children may not be getting.

A Social Network – Since your child has an established group of friends from daycare who will be joining them in Kindergarten the first day of school might not be as scary. You and your child have a connection to the other parents and children through your daycare experience. In addition skills like cooperation and making friends may be more advanced as a result of the daycare experience.

Sources:

http://www.parenting.com/

http://www.selfgrowth.com/

Vegetable Garden for Kids

Healthy eating habits start at an early age. But many parents have difficulty finding fun ways to entice children to eat the green vegetables. One great way to get your child excited about trying vegetables is to introduce them to food from a garden. Kids tend to eat food they have grown themselves, and growing their own veggies, fruits, or herbs may be the push they need to become vegi-lovers for life.

There are also a plethora of science lessons to be learned in agriculture. Your preschooler can learn about the need for sun, water, and nutrients. You can also begin to teach your child about the food pyramid and the need for a balanced diet.

How to do it:
* Choose a sunny spot to plant your garden.
* Select what you want to grow

It’s your choice on what to grow. Go to your local garden center and ask for expert advice on what grows well in your climate and what is easy to care for.

Vegetables:
Asparagus, Banana Pepper, Beans, Bell Pepper, Cabbage, Carrot, Corn, Cucumber, Potatoes, Radish, Spinach, Squash, Sweet Potatoes, Zucchini

Fruits:
Blackberries, Blueberries, Cantaloupe, Grapes, Melon, Strawberries, Raspberries, Tomatoes, Watermelon

Sunflowers and Nuts
Growing a plant from a seed adds extra curiosity as your child checks to see if anything is sprouting.

Other ways to make gardening fun:

Stage a contest to see whose pepper plant grows the tallest or whose cornstalk yields the biggest ear as a way to encourage responsibility for watering, weeding, and tending the plants.
Give extra away to neighbors or friends, or people in need to teach a lesson on community and the benefits of giving.


Source: http://www.greatschools.org/
http://hubpages.com/

Discipline Mistakes

Have you ever wondered how your child learned to push your limits so well? Some of what they learn about pushing the limits of discipline actually comes from our habits. For example have you ever told your child ”I’m counting to three and you better stop, one, two, two and a half, two and three-quarters …”. Well here are a few ways you can try to make discipline a little easier.

1. Always follow through

It’s really about establishing boundaries and sticking to them. This means not giving them slack when you set limits. If bedtime is in 5 minutes extension should be rare not the norm. You might not get a tantrum immediately but the next time bedtime rolls around you’ll get a little begging for an extension and that could develop into a full tantrum. This how children learn to push the limits.

Of course it’s important to establish the right boundaries. Don’t set limits you can’t carry out. For example, if you’re not going to turn the car around and cancel the Disney vacation than don’t use it as a boundary. Once you start following through, your kids will know you mean business. Also, keep your limits concise. For example, “If you clear your plate, you’ll get dessert. If you don’t, no dessert.” Simple, relevant, and very effective.

2. Bribing

You’re in the checkout line at the store and the begging and tears start. “I want that toy, I need that candy bar”. Next start the tears and then the full fledged tantrum. Bribes are like junk food, they lack substance and they leave you felling empty once you’re done. In other words the bribe might work to get you out of a potentially embarrassing tantrum but your child won’t learn to change their bad behavior. In fact you have actually reinforced their poor behavior with a reward.

One tactic to try is to bring their favorite toy or activity to the market. Just when they start to request an item, pull it out and offer it to your child to occupy their time and distract them. You can also let them decide what toy or book to bring to the store. This gets them involved in the process of planning their trip and their own reward for good behavior.

3. Yelling

Yelling is like a game of chicken. You begin to yell and then you’re reinforcing that behavior with your child who ultimately begins to yell back. Each of you are trying to out-yell the other and bad behavior becomes reinforced.

Instead of dialing it up, dial it down. Use time outs or even quite times as punishment for bad behavior. This offers the fundamentals of conflict resolution. It teaches your child to remove themselves from the stressful, elevated fight situation to give time to calm themselves. Once they are calm then you can continue to reinforce with traditional methods of discipline.

No one has all the answers to disciplining a child. Try different methods until you find out what works and what doesn’t.

Source: http://www.greatschools.org/
http://www.parenting.com/

Playground Safety

As parents we want to get our kids outside and playing during the warm months, and the local playground is the usual hot spot. It’s important for the kids and parents to have fun and socialize but, it’s also important to think about safety.

Stats

Overall playgrounds are very safe places to take your children but, there are risks that parents should be aware of. Here are a few statistics about playground related injuries:

* Each year approximately 211,000 preschool and elementary children received emergency department care for injuries that occurred on playground equipment.

* Boys had a slightly higher percentage of injuries (53.5%) than girls (46.5%).

* Almost 70% of all injuries occurred on public playgrounds

* 67% of deaths occurred on home playgrounds

There are several factors that go into playground injury. Playground equipment, children's behavior and adult supervision all make a difference in the injury rate.

Playgrounds are often viewed as an outdoor babysitter, but adult supervise should be a given to children of all ages with more attention being paid the younger the child is. One important factor in avoiding playground injuries is having an adult deciding if the equipment is at the proper development, age and level of coordination for the child. Here are some more safety tips.

Safety Tips for Kids
1. One person at a time on the slide and slide sitting down and facing forward.

2. Move away from the slide exit as soon as you reach the ground.

3. Climb stairs or steps slowly.

4. Wear proper footwear: sneakers are a good choose

5. Avoid climbing or sliding on equipment support poles or beams.

6. Don't stand up on swings; don't jump off swings in motion.

Source: http://www.cpsc.gov/
http://www.aaos.org/

Backyard Fun

Are you looking for fun outdoor activities to do with the kids this summer? Here are a few ideas:

Gnome Village
Head to your local dollar store to find some inexpensive gnomes. Then have your kids uses some creativity and gathering sticks, rocks, leaves, berries, etc., to make a magical village. This is a great activity that you can add to throughout the summer.

Bugs are always fun
Make a homemade terrarium out of an old shoebox with dirt and rocks with holes punched in the top. Have the little ones search for bugs in the back yard and collect the in their homemade terrarium.

Scavenger hunt in the park
Make a list of things that you find in the park. Determine how simple or difficult the list of items will be based on your children’s ages. Have them find a flower or a type of rock. You can also use this opportunity to teach children about nature, science and history.

Create your own Water Park
Get the sprinklers out, baby pools, water slides, plastic toys and gym sets and have the kids create their own water obstacle course. Through in some water balloons and water toys and your kids can cool off on a hot summer day.

Let your kids lead the way, they have plenty ideas that can make adventures in the back yard even more fun!

How much is enough sleep

You need the right amount of sleep in order to be your best the next day. If a child has the right amount of sleep it may reduce their tantrums and meltdowns. But sometimes parents don’t know how much sleep their children need in order to function properly.

Babies

It might be difficult to establish good sleeping patterns with a newborn baby at the start. Newborns are can spend around 16 - 20 hours of the day sleeping. However those hours are not always consecutive. In fact, sleep for a newborn rarely lasts over 4 hours at a time. This is caused by a baby’s need to eat often. From 3 to 6 months, a baby may sleep 5 hours all together during the day and 10 at night. At this time 6-8 of the night-time sleep hours might be consecutive. From 6 - 12 months, a baby should sleep around 3 hours during the day and 11 at night time. Of course these are all estimates and your baby’s habits could significantly vary.

Kids Ages 1 - 3

Kids ages 1 - 3 should sleep around 10 -13 hours. Some of those hours may be during the day for certain kids. It’s important to find the right balance between time spent napping vs. sleeping at night but If your child does not seem to easily fall into a nap routine, consider taking away nap time altogether and opting for an earlier bedtime.

Kids Ages 4 – 5

Kids ages 4 – 5 should get 10 -12 hours of sleep on average. Like the younger children, this time will be in a mix of napping and sleep time. What time those hours are received is not as important as the fact they get them. If your child is phasing out of naps try to replace them with some quite time in the afternoon.

Kids Ages 6 - 10

School-aged kids need about 9 or 10 hours of sleep. This can vary greatly as your child is now developing their own personal sleep habits. To determine if your child is getting enough sleep, pay attention to your child’s cues. Irritability or hyperactive behavior may indicate the need for more sleep.

Keep in mind these are guidelines and only you know what works best for your child. If your child is waking up throughout the night or having problems falling asleep or staying asleep you may want to consult your pediatrician.

Source: http://www.thechildrenshospital.org/wellness