Month: October 2022

Let your child learn to face failure

In many cases, the biggest blow to a child is not the failure itself, but his or her understanding of the failure. For example, if a child is not selected to represent the school in an inter-school competition, the usual reason they think of is that they are not as good as their classmates. But there may be other reasons behind it. Maybe the teacher is worried that if he gets hurt, he won’t be able to represent the school in other more important competitions. This is not to teach children to avoid responsibility, but sometimes we need to make them understand that it is indeed their own factors that lead to failure.


Parents need to remind their children that anyone who starts something will always have difficulty. Parents should encourage their children to persevere to the end, without taking the requirement of perfection too seriously. Don’t be impatient to provide help to your child; let them try to meet the challenge in a different way. For example, if your child has difficulty learning to write Chinese characters, let him or her copy them first.


 As children, their attitudes toward people and things around them are often unstable and easily influenced by emotions and other factors. When faced with difficulties and failures, they tend to develop negative emotions and fail to deal with failures with the right attitude, thus creating resilience. At this time, parents should tell their children in time, failure is not terrible, as long as a little brave can do a good job, learn from the failure to see how to do next time. Parents should consciously use their children’s failures as educational opportunities to guide their children to regain their courage and try again with boldness and confidence. At the same time, educate your child to face difficulties and setbacks, to improve the ability to overcome difficulties and resilience.

In life, no one can remain unbeaten for a long time, like China’s “hurdle king” Liu Xiang who also lost in the London Olympics. Only those who are brave enough to face failure will have the chance to show their smiles of success again.


 Parents should know how to teach their children to be brave in the face of failure, because no one is always successful in life. We understand from childhood that “failure is the mother of success”, so there is nothing to be afraid of when we face up to failure. However, if we look at our understanding of this statement, we should focus on “success” rather than “failure”, so that our recognition of failure is still conditional. When failure is no guarantee of future success, Failure, is still a shame and a sin.

Therefore, parents must be clear about whether they are teaching their children to face failure or to avoid it!

Do children need to wear sunscreen when the sun shines?

With modern information flow is well developed, many health care-related knowledge is easily available. One of the things that people will increasingly understand is the importance of sunscreen protection. Too much UV light accelerates skin aging and increases melanin production, resulting in pigmentation. Although UV rays themselves are effective in helping to produce vitamin D and absorb calcium, Hong Kong is on the edge of a subtropical region and is exposed to more sunlight each year than the upper northern hemisphere (such as Canada and Europe), so even with sunscreen products, there are still many opportunities for exposure to the sun.

Don’t children need sunscreen?
Adults, especially women, are aware of the importance of sunscreen protection. This includes applying sunscreen regularly every day, replenishing sunscreen regularly and avoiding outdoor activities during the sunniest hours (10 a.m. to 2 p.m.). In addition, you can also use a wide-brimmed hat and wear long-sleeved clothing. However, have you ever heard parents say, “Only adults need to wear sunscreen, not children? There are many parents who believe that children do not need sunscreen. There are three reasons for this.

1. children need more sunlight to be healthy
2. sunscreen is a chemical substance, which is not good for children’s delicate skin
3. it’s not a big deal if your child gets a little more sun.

In fact, this is not the right idea. First of all, children basically don’t know how to protect themselves or how to avoid the sun, so they are “at risk”. Moreover, children’s skin is thinner and more tender than that of adults, so they are more prone to sunburn and sun spots, and therefore need more protection. On the other hand, the sunshine hours in Hong Kong and China are longer than those in Europe and North America, so the exposure to sunlight is already sufficient, so as long as there are normal outdoor activities, there is no fear of not having enough UV rays or vitamin D.

Choose the right sunscreen
As for the chemical nature of sunscreen, you should know that there are two types of sunscreens, including chemical and physical. The former needs to be absorbed by the skin in order to have a sunscreen effect, while the latter reflects sunlight on the surface of the skin. Therefore, if you are worried about the harmful effects of sunscreens, you can choose the physical type, such as zinc oxide. In addition, parents should not forget that clothing itself is also the most effective sunscreen, so wide-brimmed hats, long-sleeved shirts and long pants are very important.

What will happen if you do not protect yourself from the sun?
1. General blemishes and freckles, especially on the nose and cheekbones
2. Skin sensitivity due to repeated sunburns
3. uneven skin tone, especially if sweat spots are also present
4. Roughness of the skin
5. Microscopic blood vessels and cherry nevi on the epidermis

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If Nobita Nobi did not have Doraemon

When I was a child, I loved watching the Japanese comic Doraemon, but what would happen if the real Nobita did not have the magic of Doraemon, what will happen? How can we improve the time management skills of children so that they do not become the real Nobita?
 The characters in "Doraemon" are vivid and lively, with distinctive personalities - the gentle and quiet Shizuka, the bullying Takeshi, love showing off wealth  Suneo, the magical Doraemon ...... but the one that impresses me most is the timid and often troublesome Nobita, especially his philosophy of "don't do anything today if you can put it off until tomorrow" is  a classic lazy person's reflection.

I remember one of the stories: Nobita consistent with his character of procrastinating things again and again, to the day before the test to start studying, the results cannot cope with and have to ask for help from Doraemon. Doraemon took out the magic - memory bread to help him, as long as Nobita printed the textbook content on the bread, and then eat, he will remember the knowledge printed on the bread. Nobita was happy about this at first, but because the content of the text was too much, he had to eat a lot of bread to remember all the knowledge, and as a result, he ate too much and his stomach could not stand it!. After he had a bowel movement, all the knowledge was washed away with his stool, and he scored a zero on the test. This is exactly what the Chinese saying goes: "Clutching the Buddha's leg in a hurry ", and lap up information without fully digesting it will not yield good results.

I wonder if you have ever met someone like Nobita? These people usually lack a sense of responsibility, because they are not interested in the work handed down by their teachers/parents/supervisors, but they can't put it off, so they have to put it off until the last minute to finish it. Due to the lack of time, the performance is naturally unsatisfactory; but there is another type of people who really want to do a good job, but unfortunately the concept of time is weak, or the work is too simple to think, to complete the work to be completed in 10 days only arranged in three days, the result is also due to the lack of time, have to drive at night to catch the deadline, the performance is naturally less than expected.

In the comic, Nobita’s son and grandson, Nobby, is living in poverty because of Nobita’s poor ancestors. In order to change the quality of life, he sent Doraemon back to the 20th century when Nobita was a child, hoping that he can use magic treasures to help Nobita, and thus change fate. Doraemon also really in Nobita every time he encountered a crisis to help him with magic. 

But I think, if Doraemon does not change Nobita’s bad nature, the problem will only keep repeating itself.

In addition, Nobita’s mother only scolded him after each trouble, but did not seriously think of ways to solve the fundamental problems of Nobita. In fact, if Nobita’s mother can cultivate Nobita’s sense of responsibility and master the skills of time management, even if Nobita does not have Doraemon, Doraemon does not have the magic bullet, I believe that Nobita will not repeat the same mistakes in the future. And a sense of responsibility and good time management need to be cultivated since childhood, otherwise it becomes a habit, and it is not easy to change in the future.

 

Due to the limitation of space, this article only focuses on sharing how to improve the time management skills of children. I think we might well start with the details of life, try to give an example, when my daughter was in the upper kindergarten class did a project study on the topic of “community”, I would like to take this opportunity to share with you how to consciously cultivate children to do time management through this project study. As you know, there are many steps involved in completing this project study, such as arranging time to take pictures of representative places in the district, such as parks, swimming pools, markets, libraries, post offices, etc.; then organizing the photos and adding a brief introduction next to them; children sometimes need to design report covers and draw illustrations… …It is certain that the above work cannot be completed in one day.

At this point, you can work with your child to plan a timeline for completing the entire project report and keep a calendar of tasks. If you can follow the schedule, I believe that your child will be able
to do a good job on his or her project. On the contrary, without proper planning, parents see that their children are not able to complete their projects on time, so they rush to do it for them. As a result, the child becomes another Nobita, and the parents become Doraemon to save Nobita. Sometimes I hear parents complain, “I don’t know if it’s me or him who has to turn in his homework. This practice also violates the purpose of the teacher’s homework.

 

 Doraemon” was a comic I loved to watch when I was a child, just like Nobita. Now I have grown up, but Nobita is still a child, living in the virtual world of comics. In real life, your child will grow up, he will need to face various challenges in the future, and we should not expect Doraemon to come out to save him when he encounters adversity, he will need to solve the difficulties he faces in life alone. For this reason, let’s work together to equip our children for a better future.

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

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.

Of course, it is more important to give children appropriate attention from time to time when they are behaving well and not crying, so that they feel safe and do not use fussing as a “bargaining chip” to win the love of their parents. This is the solution to the problem.