Tantrum Busters

This time of year brings out the best in our children, their schedules are off because of all the fun and exciting activities associated with the holidays. Parents often try to squeeze in a few more errands before nap time and this can lead to the dreaded public tantrum. Anyone who has been a parent or guardian has had to endure the public tantrum. Instead of losing your cool, and your senses, try taking a deep breath, smile at an understanding adult nearby, and then see if one of these tips will work:

1. Distract.
Distract your child with something, this a great way to help them to calm down. Put a cartoon video on, listen to music, read a story, watch television, go outside, or watch animals outside your window. This is often not easy to do, but if you find a distraction that works it might be enough to settle them down.

2. Bribe.
A goal for good behavior can do wonders. Something along the lines of, if you stop fussing until we get to the car, I'll let you watch your favorite video tonight”. The child's favorite things are truly wonderful motivators to use. However be sure to use this tactic sparingly so they don't expect a treat every time they show good or bad behavior.

3. Pick your Battles
Sometimes you need to step in and stop the tantrum, other times if they are not hurting themselves or anyone or anything around them let your toddler express their feelings. Let them get their anger out and then explain the consequences of their actions.

4. Keeping Your Cool
Do not overwhelm a child that really just needs some peace and calm to settle down. Your child mirrors your response to their tantrum. If you respond by yelling at your child this might just increase the tension and raise the level of your child’s tantrum or make it last longer. Try a calming hug and some kind words instead. Your child may just want to know that you understand their feelings or frustration.

Thanks

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to teach your children about the importance of giving thanks. In a busy world the thank you note or email or just saying thanks is being used more and more infrequently. Here are some ways to reinforce the importance of giving thanks and thanking others.

Teach Through Doing
Children learn through their parents actions. Take the time to thank others, send notes and emails. Say thanks to the people you deal with every day. The more your child sees you thanking others the more it will become part of how they show thanks to others.

Help Your Child Reflect on Giving Thanks
Set aside time during the holidays to complete a craft about giving thanks. Have your child create a collage by cutting out pictures of what they are thankful for and gluing them to colorful paper.

Have the Family Reflect on Thanks
When everyone sits down at the table, go around and ask them to say one thing that they are thankful for. This teaches you child what is important to their family.

Volunteer
Volunteering to help though a charitable organization or community group, even once a year, can do a lot to teach your children about being thankful and showing thanks to others. This is an especially powerful message during the holiday season.

Preschoolers and anger

Go away, I don’t want to play with you anymore, you’re not my friend. These are some comments that are heard on playgrounds all over the country. Whether you hear your child saying these things or another child is saying this to your child, it’s concerning for parents to hear mean things being said. Does this type of activity indicate that your child is mean or, is it normal for a preschooler to express themselves this way?

Preschoolers often struggle with letting go of the self-centered world of being a toddler and moving into the empathy needed in a group or school setting. Newly developed language skills are letting them express themselves more than they ever have before but they still struggle with knowing how to act on their own behalf without being aggressive.

Here are a few tips on how to help your child make the transition to showing empathy instead of acting aggression.

Stress the proper words – if you hear unkind words being used at home point it out to your child. Tell them how they could communicate using kind words. Explain that they can better influence others by keeping cool and being nice to others.

Take a break – To help manage anger tell your child to take a break from playing with their friends if they start getting angry or using unkind words. Kids have a short memory and this might give them the time they need to cool off.

Some children respond more to praise than punishment. If your child is continually getting angry or saying mean things to others start praising and rewarding good behavior, maybe through a behavior tracking chart. Give them a sticker for good behavior each day.

In some instances the aggressive words and behavior could be an attempt from your child to get more attention. Set up some special time each day where you can review their behavior, talk about it and maybe do a fun activity.

Toddler Friendships

Kids can make friends fast. It’s a wonderful gift that is given to young children that they haven’t developed any thoughts yet on what they like and don’t like in a friend. As a result, they are open to being friends with everyone. They simply walk up to a child and ask if they want to play. But should preschooler’s have best friends?

At this age children will call each other best friends but you should consider this more of a preference. Preschoolers often lack the emotional and cognitive development to consciously decide who on one best friend.

Three is not a charm

If you have ever had a play date with three children you’ll notice it sometimes doesn’t work out well. Children at this age have a preference to pair up in groups of two. Working as a larger group, three or more, requires higher developed social and organizational skills.

Play groups work well

Play groups that offer the opportunity for toddlers to form parings with other kids are a great learning environment. This provides a larger group where your child can begin to learn group behavior.

Observe your child as they interact with others. If they exhibit improper group behavior like biting or hitting you can correct your child before it becomes a problem. Just remember at this age your child will not understand the concept of patience. They’re not being mean to others, they are just trying to get what they want.
Be patient with your child. As they get older they will develop empathy for others which will let them become aware of others feelings and allow them to work well in both large and small groups.

Developing Literacy

How does your child develop literacy?
Literacy skills (reading and writing) start to develop in preschool when teachers begin to expose children to spoken and written language.

During this time you’ll find a teacher using a combination of pictures, printed letters and words, and speaking. Through this process your child begins to make the connection that objects or pictures represent words that have meaning.

There are many ways this occurs in the classroom including:

• Nursery Rhymes: Children love the sing song cadence of nursery rhymes. In many cases children have head these rhymes since they were babies, and a common classroom activity is to have them fill-in-the-blanks on favorite nursery rhymes and stories.

• Scribbling: as we spoke about in a previous blog, scribbling is the start of writing and scribbling on paper should be encouraged as much as possible.

• Printed Letters and Words: Classrooms that are full of pictures and words make for a rich environment for children learning the basics of literacy.

There is no substitute for reading with your child. The time you invest in reading your child will be paid back to you as your child becomes a strong reader. Let your child guess at words as you read. Let them understand that pictures often give clues to the words on the pages.

Here are some other ways that you can reinforce literacy at home:
• Make books available
• Label objects around their room
• Read in front of your child. When they see you read they will want to read too.
• Encourage your child’s creativity. Writing, drawing and even finger painting all encourage literacy.

From Scribbling to Stick Figures

As scribbling continues to develop you’ll begin to recognize shapes and figures. This will typically occur around 2 years of age. They will tell you that shapes represent your house or something that went on in their day like a school activity. They begin to explain the stories behind the forms, shapes and stick figures. This is a fun time because your child starts to realize the power of communication.

At the age of three, motor and cognitive skills are becoming much more refined and developed. You may start to see figures that look like letters and multiple pictures may be strung together to create a story.

How can you help move your child’s development of writing skills along. Here are some activities that you can have your child do that can help:

· Make sure you have a lot of markers, crayons, pencils, and paper in places around your home so your child can scribble anytime they want.

· Offer your child a choice of colors in paper, pencils, markers and crayons. The more colorful the better.

· Encourage their creativity. Offer to take all of your child’s masterpieces to work or put it all on the fridge. Show them you are proud.

Encourage them to do projects that reflect everyday life:

· Create a menu and play restaurant

· Have them write out checks to play store

· Have them create a program for their big play or dance recital

· Have them create tickets to the show they are putting on

· Have them write a note to you every night before they go to bed

· Make scribbling a lot of fun by scribbling with pudding, ketchup, yogurt or other edible items

· Frame your child’s next family portrait and hang it in a place where everyone can see.

Why Scribbling is Important

What is the connection between your child’s scribbling and cognitive and motor skills? Like many parents when your child brings up a paper with scribbling on it and tells you it’s a family portrait you probably wonder what they are seeing that you’re not.

But even though the picture itself might not be a masterpiece, it is a critical milestone for your child’s development. Before you tell your child to stop scribbling on that piece of paper consider the learning that’s taking place:

· Scribbling is essential in the development of hand and finger control and overall dexterity.

· It also develops very important hand-eye coordination skills which many children struggle with early on.

· It’s helping to develop imagination and independent thinking skills

· When your child begins to form basic shapes they start to recognize writing and drawing as communication channel.

· It can help your child communicate difficult emotions that they can’t express in words.

As you can see scribbling is your child’s first introduction to the fundamentals of reading and writing.

Internet Safety/Cyber bulling

To continue our theme about bulling for the week today we are going to talk cyber-bulling. This is another topic that has been in the news lately and brought to everyone’s attention. Parents and guardians need to know ways to help their children to deal with this problem here are a few tips to help:

Don’t respond
Never respond to an attack, whether it's through email or in a chat room. Responding only ignites the problem.


Save the evidence
Print any offensive or malicious messages. Kids should have proof about what is taking place.

Talk to a trusted adult
Tell someone about it. Kids need to know that they can go to a trusted adult (parent, teacher, etc.) and share what is going on.

Block the bully
Put up blocks on email senders or "friends" in social networks.

Contact your school
If the cyber bullying is occurring through your school district’s Internet system, school administrators have an obligation to intervene. Even if the cyber bullying is occurring off campus, make your school administrators aware of the problem. They may be able to help you resolve the cyber bullying or be watchful for face-to-face bullying.

Be a friend, not a bystander
Watching or forwarding mean messages empowers bullies and hurts victims even more.

Source: www.safekids.com

Bullies

With all the talk in the news lately about bullies, it has brought this right of passage for many children to light. Bullies are not a new thing many of us have memories of our own childhoods with bullies. It does seem nowadays that we are seeing bullies show their true colors at an early age. As parents/guardians we want to protect our little ones but we can not be there all the time, so how do we prepare our little ones to deal with bullies.

* Tell your child to avoid the bully as much as possible. Stay away from him/her on the playground.

* Have your child practice standing and walking with confidence. Bullies usually pick on people who are smaller and physically weaker than they are, or who they feel will not retaliate

* Don't let a bully make your child feel bad. Teach your child that when someone says something bad about you, say something positive to yourself.

* Don't reward the bully with tears. The bully wants to hurt your feelings, so act like his name-calling and taunts don't hurt.

* Teach your child to use humor when dealing with bully. Laugh at his threats and walk away from him.

* Most importantly make sure your child is comfortable keeping the lines of communication open with you.