Yesterday, Ronit wrote about her experiences with kids who were mentally stuck in norms and invisible rules at the age of 6. Their creativity was stifled by notions of “right” and “wrong” and external opinions about what is pretty, messy or appropriate. Today, I would like to share with you some more signs of kids being stuck like this, along with a wonderful video clip.
Read Are Your Kids Free? »
Every time I see a blind man, I am thankful for my ability to see the richness around me and remind myself that I do not need something to be taken away from me in order to appreciate it. Many people have good vision, but cannot see that the world is actually colorful, with many shades, with great landscapes and beauty all around. You see, it is not enough for beauty to be there. We must also learn to appreciate it.
Read Colorful Kids »
Fears are very natural in every person’s life. From an early stage of our life, we are scared of various things. As we grow older and learn more about life, more of the world makes sense to us and many of our fears disappear.
Unfortunately, many kids are not treated seriously when they express their fears and this makes them even more afraid. Fear has many faces and symptoms and when it is not handled well, it can get out of proportion and lead to growing up with anxiety, panic attacks and depression.
Read How to Help Kids with Fear »
Last week, during one of my workshop for “Together for Humanity”, one of the kids came to us in the break. She stood at the entrance of the community room, hesitating a bit. She was a beautiful looking girl, tall and dark, and looked like she had come from Africa.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked in a shy voice.
Read Dark Chocolate Girl »
Ronit and I think often about communication styles as a useful model for improving human relationships and developing kids. As a family, we are lucky to have all the communication styles (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic and Digital) represented in different combinations in the members of our family.
Read A Note to Remember »
When young kids go to any formal education, their knowledge of colors is checked. Colors are an easy way to check learning and it is possible to start teaching the colors at a very early age. Kids as young as 2 years old can learn their colors and build good learning connections in their brain. The earlier they start, the better it is for their learning abilities. So how to teach kids colors?
It is very important to understand the process of learning when teaching kids abstract concept like colors. For kids to recognize a color, they need to have accumulated hundreds of information pieces that help them define that color concept.
The understanding of what this thing is not is greatly helpful in forming a concept. We call these “negative examples”. When you show a kid an apple and say the color is green, it is possible for the kid to remember the shape of the apple and think this is the meaning of green. You must also show an apple that is not green.
Through our examples, we need to help our kids learn that color has no shape. Green can be an apple, a fabric or a leaf.
Read How to Teach Kids Colors »
Many times, we do not know if kids actually know things, because they are too young to tell us. In fact, they know a lot more than they can tell. As parents, we can sometimes ask our kids questions that are simply too advanced for them, conclude they do not know the answer and become disappointed with their lack of knowledge. This does not have to be so.
Read How Kids Learn »
If you are a parent of kids who go to school, you have probably heard many times expressions like “I hate homework”, “I hate school” or “I don’t want to learn”. As easy and fun as learning at school may seem, it can be hard work for many kids.
I believe that learning is harder when you do not understand why you should learn, how you learn and what you gain from learning. Unfortunately, most kids do not know what happens to them in the process of learning, so they only see the pain associated with it, instead of the pleasure.
Read How Kids Learn Best »
Without being taught parenting skills, many parents miss clues that their kids are having a problem. They just move along, expecting their kids to behave “normally”, which the kids can do for a while, but then the burden becomes too heavy for them to carry and they lash out, withdraw or show other signs of distress. The parents are then surprised and get upset at the “unacceptable behavior”. Sounds familiar?
Read Assume Coaching Position »
Being grownups, parents are often busy with grownup things. Being kids, parents often assume their children are busy with kid things. So when something happens that we classify as “a grownup thing”, we may assume our kids will simply ignore it or perhaps not fully comprehend it. Sometimes, we are so wrong.
Read In the Hearts of Kids »
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