Family Tips

First of all, do not panic, if it seems to you, that your child grows insufficiently quickly. Children grow jerky. You have already seen it. Still yesterday he or she was little one, and today it seems to you, that you child has already become absolutely adult. If it seems to you, that the child grows insufficiently quickly, you’d better go to your children’s doctor.

Simply suggest him or her various foods, and you will see, that the child will choose what is necessary for an organism. Recent researches of the American Dietary Association have shown that in spite of the fact that 49% of mothers are worried that their children are hard to be pleased in meal, their children receive enough useful substances during a meal.

Provide various and diverse food for your child. Remember, that the more often you offer the child different products, the higher is probability, that your child will start to eat various products.

For the beginning, you should understand that it is impossible and unnecessary to force the child to eat diverse food. Try to understand, that the choice of your child to eat only this, instead of any another food, first of all, is his or her own choice. Try to look from the other point of view - the child learns to make the first choice in the life. And you try to force him or her to eat what the child does not want or can not eat in such amount. Frequently in further these children have eating disorder - they simply do not know, when they should stop eating or the meal starts to be associated with some obligations and something unpleasant. Your aspiration to force the child will have an effect further. Your child will be simply less open to new gustatory senses in the further life.

It may be so that you are not ready yet that your child will be in order, if he or she eats only cracker and washes down it with water all the day. You cannot expect from the kid eating balanced and useful food each time. If you are disturbed with his or her habits, simply start to write down that your kid eats. You will be surprised that your child has all necessary food groups in course of some weeks, instead of at one sitting. So, he can eat only fruits one week, only meat – the other week.

You also should understand that your expectations of the necessary amount of food are not always correct. Take your dietary intake, divide weight of your body into weight of the child and you will understand that usual portions are huge for your kid. Two-three pieces of bread for the five years’ old kid are equivalent to 15 pieces for an adult.

It is completely normal, if your kid has suddenly decided that he or she hates everything that you did not give him for a dinner - even the food, which he or she adored yesterday. Other extreme is also frequent - when your kid insists on the same food: Mum, give me again and again kefir and from same bottle. And it proceeds until the kid does not begin to hate kefir and starts to love porridge.

Experts say that the reason of such behavior is fear of new sensations. It is just what our civilization has developed for protection during evolution. You simply do not try what you have not tried earlier. Kiddies simply love everything that they have already tried earlier - it concerns daily habits, as going to bed, it concerns food and meal. Kids love things which they have tried or tasted earlier.

Other reason why small demanders do not want to eat - is a postulate «only try to force me do it». Kids put to the test your authority.

It may seem that the kid just does not have patience to sit on one place and to eat up a breakfast. What to do? Experts say that the best way is to create similarity of routine for meal. Try to remove all distracting things, as the TV, radio and pets.

The American scientists from Yale University have conducted a research and established that infants in the age of six months are capable not only to crawl and sound, but also to distinguish good and bad intentions of people.

According to new research, babies get social skills within the first several months of a life, therefore are capable to estimate intentions of other people, deciding who from them is a friend, and who - an enemy.

“We do not claim that babies reflect upon ethical questions, but they better treat those who act well, than those who do bad things. This is the basis of moral principles which are formed later”, - says the author of the research Kaily Hamlin. 

The data of the experiment specify that people start to estimate associates from the social point of view at an early stage of development, - mark the authors of the research.

It would be ridiculous to offer a five years’ old kid to choose the nurse, products in a supermarket or a schedule of a day. Nevertheless even small children should learn to make a choice. The small child should be given so-called «choice in a framework». Something similar makes an advertisement with us, asking which hamburgers do we prefer: round or square? Willy-nilly we should think of it, even if we do not favor these hamburgers.

Precisely the same thing is with the child: you should not discuss or lecture on advantages of movement and fresh air, it is enough to ask: «Where shall we go today: to a children’s playground near a house or to the park?»; «What will you drink: water or juice?»; «Will you put your toys in order now or after a walk?».

Such questions put limits: they do not allow the child to decide whether to remove toys or not. But they allow to make the choice, and the child will do cleaning more responsibly if it is his or her own decision.
As a whole, till 5 years age children are better to be offered a choice of one of two variants, and in a further their amount is gradually increased.

Let’s assume 13-years old girl saying her parents: «Today I go to visit my friend, may I stay there for a night»? If the parents know nothing about this friend, there are two bad answers. The conservative bad answer: «In no case! Do not dare to go there in at all». The liberal bad answer: «What a question! You are already adult girl».

Wise parents will not answer at once “yes”, or “no”, and will start to ask the child and search for variants: «What you need it for? Are there alternatives: can we, for example, meet you? Why would you like to stay there»? In a result any decision will be more reasonable and more responsible for both sides.

Conversation can never be too much. It concerns the child of any age. Therefore before making the decision, it is necessary to talk to the child.

Let us suppose, the kid declares: «I do not want to go to kindergarten tomorrow». Parents can not neglect this message, it needs to be investigated. But it is equally silly to agree with the child at once and to search for the nurse urgently.
When the small person experiences helplessness, he or she often starts to feel fear and not always understands the reason. And here parents act as natural psychotherapists, if take children’s feelings seriously and give the child chance to talk about them. The more the child expresses fears, the less they frighten. It is vital to show the kid that to be afraid (and also - to feel like lonely, guilty, angry) is normally. Tell him or her about your fears. You should ask open questions (but not those demanding short answers): «What don’t you like in kindergarten? What does frighten you there»?

If you want your child to turn into an independent person, you should start thinking about it literally from very young age.

It is easier for us to spoon-feed the kid that then to clean and wash a floor and a ceiling; we quite often would like to solve arithmetic exercises to have a rest at last. All parents do this way sometimes. But if such style of care becomes habitual, in a result you should accompany the 25-years old child to his love dates.

The baby is born as an entirely and completely dependent creature, then he or she needs some dozens years to become autonomous. Wise parents help him or her to find independence. It is difficult: all parents wish protect the child from severe realities. But there is a simple law of independent person’s upbringing: you must not do instead of your child those things, which he can do without your help. Yes, the child will have some troubles, but he can learn to deal with stress only from his own experience. Otherwise parents will have the child, who avoids risk at any cost and doesn’t believe his own forces. Such child will suffer already in the primary school age, when problems are inevitable and parents can’t be alongside all the time.
Therefore, for the sake of the child’s future, do not do superfluous. Such approach will undoubtedly increase timetable. However, there are no successful “express trains-methods” in a dialogue with children.

Wrong eating develops bad habits for all life
Problems with eating appear, as a rule, as a result of a wrong eating at a very young age. If you offer your child same food day by day, his or her tastes will not develop, and it the child will refuse any new food. Tastes of the child as well as other feelings are formed almost completely between one year and three. Parents should not give only useful food. Your child will not tell to you: “It is tasty!” Or “it is cooked perfectly!â€? Nevertheless, it is very important, that the child was pleased with the meal and that the meal was various as possible. Big attention should be given to different spices, so that the child has learned many flavoring sensations.

The daily routine develops time sense
Approximately to two and a half years, when the child already speaks, he or she starts to understand such notions as “before”, “after”, “yesterday” and “tomorrow”. In other words, while the child does not start to understand speech and to speak, he does not have time sense.

Daily routine is important not only to instill good manners in a child, but also to develop time sense. Some mothers teach kids to learn time by watch before children learn to count. The child does not understand value of hands; therefore it is useless to show him clock-hands and say: “Eight o’clock, it is time to go to bed”. The child goes to bed not because it is eight o’clock, but because it is dark, and because he or she wants to sleep. The regular daily routine allows developing abstract time sense. This schedule replaces clock to the child.

 
Kids should sleep 10 hours the least 

Day regimen should not vary strongly regardless of that fact, goes the child to school or not. If he or she wants to sleep – let it be so. Sleep deficit should be filled: especially when the matter concerns senior pupils. The child will have enough of sleep for day or two, and then should return to a usual regimen. Remember, that kids should sleep not less than 10 hours a day, the senior schoolchildren - not less than 8 hours.

If the weather and a free time allow, go to a park. It is desirable to go in for any active games. Activity should be alternated. For example, go to theatre, and the next day to any exhibition. But do not be over-diligent! It is very useful sometimes to stay at home and read any interesting book.

Try to walk more
Kids should spend outdoors 3 - 3,5 hours a day, senior pupils – up to 2 hours.

Let your kids have a rest. They have passed the complex period of school adaptation. Both younger schoolchildren and senior pupils get tired of lessons. Therefore let the child to forget about study during vacation and use a free time for the hobbies.

Verses for learning should bring up noble feelings in the child, they should be beautiful, refined and deserving to be remembered all the life. And at the same time the child should like them.

The purpose of such lessons is not simply to learn by heart, but also to develop aesthetic feeling of the child, his or her mental faculties and creative potentialities.

The brain of a child can keep in memory from 100 up to 200 short poems. The more intensively memory is used, the better it functions and develops.

But everything should be done in a proper time: child’s retention should be trained, while he or she finds a pleasure in repetition.