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“No!” “Not allowed!” “No!” Does it really work?

Written by : Child Behavioral Emotional Therapist – Ip Wai Lun

Many times, parents get angry because their children don’t follow the rules or challenge some bottom line. For example, if a parent doesn’t want a child to touch something, the parent will just say, “Hey! Don’t touch it!” and “No!” and “Stop”, the child will hear many of these “No! and “No! In fact, this will often make children feel that they have done something wrong, which in turn will undermine their confidence and make them avoid doing things in the future.

As a parent, what can you do to make your child follow the rules without undermining his self-confidence? What kind of talking skills can parents use?

For example, if a child is angry and his face is red, we can use the following “three-step” approach.

Part I: Say How He Feels

“Mommy and Daddy see how angry you are ……”

“Look at your red face. ……”

Parents can try to help their children say how they feel. This is the first and most important step.

Part 2: Setting boundaries

When a child has a temper tantrum and may hit someone, parents should immediately set a line: “Okay, we can’t hurt others. Help him to set a compliance line.

Part 3: Arranging a platform for diversion

If the child has already hit someone, the parent should arrange a platform for the child to channel the anger.

For example, the parent can say, “Oh! I see you are so angry that your face is red and you want to hit someone! Why don’t you show Daddy how angry you are? “Why don’t you hit this shark doll?”

Maybe the child will say, “Yes, okay! and then hit the shark doll. At this point, the parent should tell the child, “Oh, Daddy is really angry to see you.

By allowing the child to express his or her emotions, the child will understand that when he or she has negative emotions, they won’t be accepted by the parents.

If parents use the above three steps, not only will they accept their children’s negative emotions, but they will also not condone their misbehavior, and most importantly, children will learn to follow the rules.

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Parents Zone

Poverty leads to change, change leads to adapt” Let children learn to be flexible

Written by：Gigamind English Primary School Principal Law

 

There is a Chinese saying: “Raising a child for 100 years old is a long-term worry for 99 years. This speaks to the heart of thousands of parents. As the weather turns colder, you are busy adding clothes for your child, but when you see other people’s children running and jumping around wearing only a single coat, you may worry that he is too warm and less able to adapt. If your child doesn’t listen to you and does what he wants to do, you will be annoyed, but if he asks you for everything, you may worry and say, “Oh! Didn’t I teach you that? Why don’t you always know how to adapt?

 

The power of adaptability from the movie

Spontonsive Flexibility is an element of creativity. If you know how to adapt, you can solve a problem in a different way.

 

Have you ever seen the movie “Apollo 13”, which is based on a true story? One scene of the movie tells the story of the runaway spacecraft, filtering toxic gas equipment is broken, scientists found that to solve the problem, we need to connect a round interface to a square interface above. Different sizes of water pipes cannot be reliably connected, but they want to connect the round interface? Sounds like you know it is impossible, but if you cannot connect the filter cannot pass the toxic gas, the three astronauts will not be able to return alive! In the end, with the cooperation of each other, they used plastic bags, cardboard, tape and other things to connect the two different interfaces, successfully solved the problem.

We need to be mindful that developing children’s adaptability requires an attitude of tolerance and acceptance of seemingly silly solutions to problems. Since adults have more experience and are better at solving problems than children, they sometimes feel that the solutions children come up with are not good enough. However, the most important thing is that these solutions were thought up by the children themselves, and they can work. Even if they don’t work, they probably make some sense and can barely do it. No matter how “dumb” a child’s approach is, every success and every parental support gives him or her more confidence to solve problems in the future.

Letting your child try

Adults may be able to figure out solutions to problems faster than children, so we need to give children enough time to think and try, and not rush to tell them what they think. Parents should let go of their children and let them face difficulties on their own. “Poverty leads to change”, and the motivation for “change” will be weakened with too much help.

This is the difficulty of being a parent.If you help too much, you worry that your child will not know how to solve problems on his own; if you help too little, you worry that he will not be able to catch up with others; and with so many things to deal with every day, how can you have time to let your child take his time to finish what he has to do every day? However, there are times, such as during the holidays, when we really need to consider slowing down the pace of life and allowing our children to do more of their own work, learn to solve problems in their own way, and develop adaptability.

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Parents Zone

Low toddler patience. Learning the importance of waiting

Written by： Ms. Ng Ka Chun, Former Principal of Lok Sin Tong Leung Wong Wai Fong Memorial School 

 

Young children always have low patience and have difficulty tolerating & waiting. Self-control is a comprehensive ability of an individual to properly control and regulate his or her behavior without external supervision, to suppress impulses, and persevere to ensure the achievement of goals. It is an important component in the construction of self-awareness and is an important psychological quality for the success of an individual.

 

Waiting is the mark of a child’s success

In the 1960s, the American psychologist Professor Michel conducted a fudge experiment. He took a group of children aged about four to a modestly furnished house and gave them each a very tasty piece of fudge, telling them that if they ate the fudge right away, they could only eat one; if they ate it again after 20 minutes, they would be rewarded with one more piece of fudge, and they could eat two pieces of fudge in total. After Michelle left, some children were eager to eat the candy, while others were patient, closed their eyes, or rested their heads on their arms as sleep; some children talked to themselves or sang to divert their attention and spent time restraining their desire. Through observation, Michelle found that one-third of the children ate the candy immediately, one-third of the children waited for Michelle to come back and redeem the extra reward before they started to eat, and another one-third of the children insisted at first, but then could not resist giving up waiting.

Michel continued to follow the children who participated in the experiment until they graduated from high school. The results of the follow-up study showed that the children who started eating candy right away showed a lack of confidence and did not get along well with their peers as teenagers, while those who waited until the end to eat candy were socially competent, assertive and academically successful. The “waiters” scored an average of 210 points higher on the test than the “non-waiters”. The actual results show that those children who could wait had a much higher success rate than those who could not wait.

 

In the above experiment, Michel introduced the concept of “delayed gratification” – the ability to wait is the ability to delay gratification, and children with delayed gratification are more likely to succeed as adults.

 

Let babies learn to wait a while

Patience is not something children are born with, but it can be mastered through learning. Before a child can learn patience, he or she must have the “ability to measure and understand time” and the “ability to understand cause and effect” before we can develop the ability to tolerate frustration and delay gratification.

Infants from zero to 18 months of age have only two or three minutes of patience. Even so, newborns must be taught to wait a while, and encouraging patience begins with simply telling them. When he hears your words, he will begin to think about what will come later, so parents can prepare their baby for his needs while describing in words what you have prepared for him. When a few months old baby hears you, he will stop fretting as a sign that he understands what you are saying, because language is linked to cause-and-effect thinking, so it helps babies learn to delay gratification.

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Parents Zone

What should we do if a child is having a tantrum?

Written by：Dr. Hui Lung Kit, Psychiatry Specialist

Many parents have had the experience of taking their children out to play, and the family was in a happy mood and the children were having a good time. But suddenly, the child makes some unreasonable requests (such as seeing a toy to buy), and the parent does not allow it, the child immediately changes his face and cries. When the parent reprimands the child, the child becomes more aggressive, not only crying louder, but also having a tantrum fiercely and stomping on the ground, attracting the attention of passers-by (who may even suspect that you are abusing the child). Parents have no choice but to do their utmost to soothe the child, or even raise their hands in surrender and buy the child a toy in the hope of calming the storm. In the end, once the child has succeeded in his request, he would turn tears into laughter even when the toy is still not received. The previous crying is gone and makes parents unable to laugh or cry.

However, have parents ever noticed that if the number of times of “compromise due to pressure” increases, the number of children’s cries will increase instead of decrease? This is due to a psychological phenomenon – “Positive Reinforcement” consequence. Positive Reinforcement” means that when a behavior occurs, if a reward is given immediately, the behavior will occur again. The more the reward, the higher the chance that the behavior will be repeated.

To apply the example to the child, if the child cries a lot, if the adult satisfies his unreasonable request (such as buying a toy) when he is most agitated, this is a reward for his crying behavior, and in the future, when the child has other unreasonable requests, he will be more inclined to use the crying method to achieve his goal. In addition, children generally want to be loved and cared for by their parents. If parents usually ignore them, but the child cries, the parents will immediately become very nervous because even scolding is a form of attention, and over time, children will tend to cry as a means of attracting their parents’ attention.

Therefore, the first and foremost thing parents should do to properly handle their children’s crying is to maintain a gentle attitude, but at the same time, they should stick to their principles and not compromise easily, especially not to finally give in and meet demands just because the child continues to cry. If parents cannot control the situation, they can try to reduce their attention to the child, such as removing eye contact, being expressionless, or not talking to the child. In addition, if the crying occurs at home, parents can take the child to a quiet corner, cut off all attention to the child, let the child calm down, and then slowly explain to him what the problem is.

 

 

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Parents Zone

Having breakfast makes you smarter. What breakfast can “wake up our brain and morning “?

Parents Zone

system

Written By: Founder of Kat-Spirit Nutrition Centre 

Senior Nutritionist Ng Yiu Fun

The school year has started, did the children have breakfast before school? Many children have different reasons for not eating breakfast, but parents should pay attention to the fact that breakfast has a great impact on the growth of children!

Earlier, a study by the Chinese University of Hong Kong showed that breakfast has a significant impact on the academic performance of students. Students who have the habit of eating breakfast every day, test scores are more than 5 points higher than the average student who did not eat breakfast. Why does breakfast make us smarter?

Because the brain needs blood sugar for nutrient absorption and consumption, but when our body sleeps all night without food, the body has consumed our blood sugar for the whole day. Therefore, we need to eat breakfast to replenish blood sugar, so that our response becomes faster. Parents may ask, “What is the best breakfast for children?

What breakfast can “wake up our brain and morning”?

1. Starchy food

This includes porridge, flour, noodles, rice, bread and biscuits, so we can eat a sandwich, a bowl of macaroni or rice flour as well; even drinking milk, eating oatmeal or corn flakes is fine

2.Protein supplement

Since protein itself can make us react faster, for example, shredded chicken is rich in protein, so for breakfast, you can choose a bowl of rice noodles in shredded chicken soup or macaroni in shredded chicken soup, or have an egg sandwich with cheese, which can also help us replenish our needs for the day. So all parents remember to remind children to eat breakfast before going to school!