Positive Parenting Tips

Positive Parenting Tips

As children grow into early childhood, their world will begin to open up. They will become more independent and begin to focus more on adults and children outside of the family. They will want to explore and ask about the things around them even more. Their interactions with family and those around them will help to shape their personality and their own ways of thinking and moving. During preschool stage, children should be able to ride a tricycle, use safety scissors, notice a difference between girls and boys, help to dress and undress themselves, play with other children, recall part of a story, and sing a song.

Following are some of the things you, as a parent, can do to help your pre-schooler during this time of development:

• Continue to read to your child. Nurture his love for books by taking him to the library or bookstore.
• Show affection for your child. Recognise his accomplishments.
• Encourage your child to play with other children. This helps him to learn the value of sharing and friendship.
• Be clear and consistent when disciplining your child. Explain and show the behaviour that you expect from him. Whenever you tell him “no”, follow up with what he should be doing instead.
• Help your child develop good language skills by speaking to him in complete sentences and using "grown up" words. Help him to use the correct words and phrases.
• Help your child through the steps to solve problems when he is upset.
• Give your child a limited number of simple choices (for example, deciding what to wear, when to play, and what to eat for snack).
• Help your child develop a sense of responsibility—ask him to help with household tasks, such as setting the table.
• Talk with your child about school, friends, and things he looks forward to in the future.
• Talk with your child about respecting others. Encourage him to help people in need.
• Help your child set his own achievable goals—he’ll learn to take pride in himself and rely less on approval or reward from others. 

Child Safety First

As your child becomes more independent and spends more time in the outside world, it is important that you and your child are aware of ways to stay safe. 

Here are a few tips to protect your child:

• Tell your child why it is important to stay out of traffic. Tell him not to play in the street or run after stray balls.
• Be cautious when letting your child ride his tricycle. Keep him on the sidewalk and away from the street and always have her wear a helmet.
• Check outdoor playground equipment. Make sure there are no loose parts or sharp edges. Watch your child at all times, especially when he is playing outside.
• Be safe in the water. Teach your child to swim, but watch him at all times when he is in or around any body of water (this includes kiddie pools).
• Talk with your child about how to ask for help when he needs it.
• Keep potentially harmful household products, tools, equipment, and firearms out of your child’s reach.
• Teach your child how to be safe around strangers.

Healthy Bodies

• Eat meals with your child whenever possible. Let your child see you enjoying fruits, vegetables, and whole grains at meals and snacks. Your child should eat and drink only a limited amount of food and beverages that contain added sugars, solid fats, or salt.
• Limit screen time for your child to no more than 1 to 2 hours per day of quality programming, at home, school, or child care.
• Provide your child with age-appropriate play equipment, like balls and plastic bats, but let your pre-schooler choose what to play. This makes moving and being active fun for your pre-schooler.
• Practice healthy eating habits and physical activity early. Encourage active play, and be a role model by eating healthy at family mealtimes and having an active lifestyle.

Tips to Develop Your Child’s Financial Senses (Part 2)

INVOLVE CHILDREN IN PURCHASE TRANSACTIONS

• Teachable moments occur each time you are at a cash register with children.
• Children will quickly observe the exchange that occurs during the purchase transaction.
• This is a great time to explain the need to pay for items before we can take them home.
• When children want something in a store and the answer is "no," you may consider explaining that we don't have enough money for that item today and we need to save for it.
• Let your child hand over the payment and receive the change from the cashier.

MAKE THE PROCESS ENTERTAINING

• It is easy to integrate the building blocks of financial habits if they are part of your daily activities. Children love to explore uncharted territory. Make financial lessons fun like any new adventure.
• An entertaining and educational approach will help maintain a child's interest.

Boost your child's learning potential

As parents, we want our children to improve in their behaviour, make good grades, and clean up their messy rooms. It's nice to have high expectations and goals for our kids, but sometimes our correction can turn into criticism, and when this happens they don't get the encouragement they need.

Consistent focusing on what our kids have done wrong rarely works to improve learning or motivation at school. Similarly, comparing them to a sibling ("Why can’t you be more responsible like your sister?"), name-calling ("You are just lazy and childish"), and overreacting to mistakes are poor motivators.

Most children really want to please their parents, and discouragement and frustration set in when they think that no matter how hard they try, they won't be able to please Mom and Dad.

It's important to establish a home base where kids know they're accepted and loved not just for what they do (their grades, sports wins, and achievements) but who they are (the valuable person who is your son or daughter). We can always find fault since kids are works in progress, but encouragement to children is like what sun and rain are to flowers — vital and necessary if they are going to grow and bloom as they were created to.

In fact, studies show that students who are successful learners have parents who are involved in their lives and have built strong, loving relationships with their kids, set limits, and spend time together. This is because emotional security (the foundation of which is a loving, trusting relationship with parents) is at the core of students' motivation systems and what experts call their "availability to learn." There's a high correlation between emotional insecurity and the turmoil it produces in a child's heart and mind, and his inability to learn in the classroom.

At home

Encouraging children's efforts spur their learning. When a child grows up in a home with loving parents and an atmosphere of encouragement, it fosters mental growth. How can you apply this to your child and your home environment? When your daughter brings home a math test with a score of 82 (but you wish the grade were 90), you could say, "That's a real improvement, Honey; you got six points higher than last week."

About school

When her team doesn't win the debate, you could praise her efforts and the preparation that went into the event. When she does well and makes a high grade, praise effort, not just her intelligence. Research shows this stimulates more effort; but if we tell kids they are geniuses and the smartest person in the class and then they make a lower- than-expected grade, they'll reduce their efforts and thus learn less on the next unit of study.

So, when the school year begins, getting off on the right foot is important. Meet the teacher and let her know you're involved in your child's education at home. Help your child get organised and use study methods that work for him and build on his strengths.

Then, if a problem hits in math, science, writing, or another subject, you and your child tackle the problem together and come up with a solution to get her back on track. You don't waste time over- focusing on mistakes but notice what she's doing well or trying hard at and praise her for that. You don't have to wait till the highest score on the exams is made to encourage the right actions.
In a sense, you become your child's best encourager because if you don't accept and encourage your kids, they'll find someone who will, and that person might encourage them to embrace values that you don't share.

The most important tip

Let me encourage you along the way as you juggle work responsibilities, maintain the household, and drive your kids to and from enrichment programs — keep believing in them, keep sharing their enthusiasm for learning and life, and most of all, enjoy their growing-up years — they fly by so quickly!

Tips to Develop Your Child’s Financial Senses (Part 1)

FOSTER AWARENESS

• Children learn so much through observation. This may not be the age for detailed lessons, but this is a great age to introduce broad concepts.
• Children may begin to understand the difference between needs and desires.
• Patience and restraint developed in other areas should translate to responsible financial behaviour.

SOW THE SEEDS FOR LIFE-LONG HABITS

• As adults we work and earn money. As adults, we also should be saving and giving in addition to spending our money. These are the habits that we should be conveying to our children during teachable moments.
• A piggy bank is an effective and time-tested teaching tool for saving money.
• Involve children in your family's charitable giving.

ASSOCIATE RESULTS AND REWARDS

• This is a great age to set goals and establish rewards.
• Although an allowance may not yet be appropriate, it isn't too early to associate compensation with work.
• You may consider tracking progress toward acquiring an item that your child desires. 

Introducing kids to money

Money gives people decision-making opportunities. Educating, motivating, and empowering children to become regular savers and investors will enable them to keep more of the money they will earn and do more with the money they spend. Everyday spending decisions can have a far more negative impact on children's financial futures than any investment decisions they may ever make. 

Here are some simple ways to help educate children about personal finance and managing money:

• As soon as children can count, introduce them to money. Take an active role in providing them with information. Observation and repetition are two important ways children learn.
• Communicate with children as they grow about your values concerning money --- how to save it, how to make it grow, and most importantly, how to spend it wisely.
• Help children learn the differences between needs, wants, and wishes. This will prepare them for making good spending decisions in the future.
• Setting goals is fundamental to learning the value of money and saving. Young or old, people rarely reach goals they haven't set. Nearly every toy or other item children ask their parents to buy them can become the object of a goal-setting session. Such goal-setting helps children learn to become responsible for themselves.
• Introduce children to the value of saving versus spending. Explain and demonstrate the concept of earning interest income on savings. Consider paying interest on money children save at home; children can help calculate the interest and see how fast money accumulates through the power of compound interest. Later on, they also will realise that the quickest way to a good credit rating is a history of regular, successful savings. Some parents even offer to match what children save on their own.
• When giving children an allowance, give them the money in denominations that encourage saving. If the amount is $5, give them 5 1-dollar coins and encourage that at least one dollar be set aside in savings.
• Keeping good records of money saved, invested, or spent is another important skill young people must learn. To make it easy, use 12 envelopes, 1 for each month, with a larger envelope to hold all the envelopes for the year. Establish this system for each child. Encourage children to place receipts from all purchases in the envelopes and keep notes on what they do with their money.
• Use regular shopping trips as opportunities to teach children the value of money. Spending smarter at the grocery store (using coupons, shopping sales, comparing unit prices) can save money. Demonstrate how to plan economical meals, avoid waste, and use leftovers efficiently. Show them how to check for value, quality, warranty, and other consumer concerns. Spending money can be fun and very productive when spending is well-planned. 

Kindergarten Curriculum Framework (KCF)

With the growing demands and expectations on Singapore Preschool Education, the Ministry of Education (MOE) had recently published a refreshed Kindergarten Curriculum Framework (KCF) so as to enable the preschool industry to have a consistent desired outcome of preschool education and to manage parents’ expectations on the standards of preschool education locally.

In the framework, 6 key areas had been identified as the core competency a child should achieved at the end of Kindergarten 2:

• Aesthetics and Creative Expression
• Discovery of the World
• Language and Literacy
• Motor Skills Development
• Numeracy
• Social and Emotional Development

There are defined goals in each area of the holistic approach towards a child’s early education development. We shall highlight briefly on these areas.

1. Aesthetics and Creative Expression
Children should be able to:

• Enjoy art and music and movement activities
• Express ideas and feelings through art and music and movement
• Create art and music and movement using experimentation and imagination
• Share ideas and feelings about art and music and movement

2. Discovery of the World
Children should be able to:

• Show an interest in the world they live in
• Find out why things happen and how things work through simple investigations
• Develop a positive attitude towards the world around them

3. Language and Literacy
Children should be able to:

• Listen for information and enjoyment
• Speak to communicate with others
• Read with understanding and for enjoyment
• Use drawing, mark making, symbols and writing with invented and conventional spelling to communicate ideas and information

4. Motor Skills Development
Children should be able to:

• Participate in and enjoy a variety of physical activities
• Demonstrate control, coordination and balance in gross motor tasks
• Demonstrate control and coordination in fine motor tasks
• Develop healthy habits and safety awareness at home, in school and in public places

5. Numeracy
Children should be able to:
• Recognise and use simple relationships and patterns
• Use numbers in daily life
• Recognise and use basic shapes and simple
spatial concepts in daily life
6. Social and Emotional Development
Children should be able to:
• Develop an awareness of personal identity
• Manage their own emotions and behaviours
• Show respect for diversity
• Communicate, interact and build relationships with others
• Take responsibility for their actions

At the end of pre-school education, children should:

• Know what is right and what is wrong
• Be willing to share and take turns with others
• Be able to relate to others
• Be curious and able to explore
• Be able to listen and speak with
• understanding
• Be comfortable and happy with themselves
• Have developed physical co-ordination, healthy habits, participate in and enjoy a variety of arts experiences
• Love their families, friends, teachers and school

Teaching kids about money

Teaching kids about money need not be tough and can be fun. Use of everyday activities and events can help young children to relate money much easier, eg buying food in the food centre or doing shopping in supermarket.

In conjunction with the learning objectives set by the refreshed Kindergarten Curriculum Framework (KCF), here are some tips you as a parent can consider using to help your children to learn about money management to prepare them for life.

• Ask the children to draw the different denominations of local currency to learn about recognition of money
• Get the children to draw and learn about the different currency used in the world
• Role plays and Storytelling about story of saving to help appreciate the importance
• Allow them to handle small amount of money to facilitate learning of spending money
• Discuss with them about needs and wants whenever they struggle with monetary decisions.