The 7 gross things your kid is bound to do

Sure there’s nose picking, but aside from that your little one will find more ways to gross you out before they reach their fifth birthday. Here are a few you can expect to come your way:

1. They’ll eat dirt.
2. Your child is a mini-Houdini. Crayons will somehow manage to fit in every orifice possible.
3. Take boogers to the next level. Besides eating them, you will find these green bits of grossness on your sofa, carpet, in the car, in your child’s hair, and other unsightly nooks and crannies.
4. Anything and everything will become a napkin.
5. Mix juice/milk/water with their entire plate of food creating a soupy mess you wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot-pole. They will find this delightful and chow down.
6. If it’s on the floor and resembles food it will, undoubtedly, become food. Luckily, their iron stomachs should be able to digest that three-week-old cheerio.
7. The words “put your clothes back on” will become part of your daily vocabulary as your little exhibitionist strips down anywhere and everywhere.

Courtesy: By ParentsCanada staff 

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5 Ways to promote literacy and learning through music

Reading and writing are essential life skills. As adults, we use our skills in reading to acquire new information, whether we are reading instructions for putting together a shelving unit, or analyzing legal documents. Think about all of the times you use writing in a day. Perhaps your job requires you to write performance evaluations, proposals, memos or transcripts; or you may use writing to keep yourself organized on a daily basis with lists or schedules. Writing skills are no doubt essential.

Educators know how important an effective literacy program is, and promote literacy skills through integration with other subjects such as Science (e.g., science reports and opportunities to follow lab instructions) and Social Studies (e.g., writing a newspaper from the Medieval Times, or researching for a presentation on tools of the Aztecs). Although children are provided with numerous opportunities to develop their literacy skills at school, many students still struggle. There are some great ways in which parents and caregivers can help their children develop into competent readers and writers.

The balanced literacy diet

In February 2012, the long-awaited Balanced Literacy Diet was released. After many years of hard work, Dr. Dale Willows from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) and her team released The Balanced Literacy Diet website – making hundreds of research-based, model lessons in literacy available for educators and parents around the world. The Balanced Literacy Diet is a framework for understanding and teaching literacy, based upon 15 essential literacy “food groups”.

The Balanced Literacy Diet website devotes a page to parents, providing insight as to how children learn to read and write. Along with links to sites aimed at supporting your child’s literacy learning such as Starfall and Reading Rockets, the Balanced Literacy Diet identifies the importance of reading with your child on a daily basis.

Literacy through music

A study by Cunningham and Allington (2011), shows that when we see or hear words in a new context, our brain creates new synapses (connections) to those words, making it so crucial that children are exposed to vocabulary and other literacy skills in different and meaningful ways. Music has been one of the most effective tools in bringing meaning to new material including skills in literacy – tapping into the Balanced Literacy Diet’s component, Motivation for Literacy.

Many parents without musical training feel overwhelmed using music as a tool for learning. Do not fear, there are a number of ways YOU can enhance your child’s learning experience through music.

Here are five easy ways parents and caregivers can implement music education to improve literacy and learning:

1. Sing along with recordings of literacy-based songs with your child
Songs such as, Down by the Bay, and Willoughby Wallaby Woo by Raffi are fun and effective songs for teaching rhyming. The Jolly Phonics program also offers a CD with interactive songs to teach each sound in the alphabet.

2. Take advantage of how your school’s music program lends itself to literacy instruction
Music programs running under the Orff Approach are great for enhancing literacy; using syllables, rhyming, music, movement, dance, drama and language are part of the foundation of this approach to teaching and learning music. The use of Orff instruments are included: These are pitched, and non-pitched percussion instruments, such as bongos (non-pitched), triangles (non-pitched), glockenspiels (pitched), xylophones (pitched), etc. 

If your school’s music program runs off of the Kodály approach, the use of syllables to represent various note values as well as call and response activities will enhance letter-sound correspondence and phonemic awareness. (Call and response activities involve the teacher, or a group of students speaking or singing a phrase, while the other students repeat a response, which could be the same phrase or a phrase differing in its words, sound, or in its entirety.) The Kodaly method of teaching music originated in Hungary with a focus on sight singing and playing instruments from memory. Children learn to read music through interval training, using what is referred to as the “movable do”. Ask your school’s music teacher for some extension activities (those which extend the child’s knowledge deeper, or to new contexts or applications) you can follow up with at home. 

3. Ask your school if they participate in Learning Through the Arts
The Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) began the Learning Through the Arts (LTTA) initiative in 1994 to help students reach their full academic potential through the arts. The LTTA program has since delivered programs to hundreds of public and private schools in Canada, and to 12 schools internationally. A study conducted by Queen’s University (2002) showed that LTTA students performed better in both math and literacy skills than non-LTTA students.

4. Encourage your child to take part in extra-curricular school music ensembles
Some private schools such as Appleby College, Branksome Hall, and Sterling Hall, place an emphasis on composition and performance, encouraging students’ creativity, thus fostering the students’ abilities to express themselves through literacy. Greenwood College allows students opportunities such as coffee houses to perform their own works, encouraging personal expression through music. The York School encourages composition through the Orff program, and even provides students in the Upper School a MIDI lab.  If you are looking for a program for your toddler, consider the Smart Start Program from the RCM. This research-based program has pulled the most effective practices from every method of musical training, including the Orff Approach, Kodály, Suzuki, etc., to provide children with early learning opportunities; promoting vocabulary development and phonemic awareness.

5. Use song books to teach concepts of print and vocabulary
Song books allow children to sing their favourite songs while using their finger to follow along in the book. This is an activity you can do with your child, using the hand over hand technique to follow along. Eventually your child will be able to follow along in the book on his/her own.  As words are often repeated in songs, here, they are repeated in print, allowing children to familiarize themselves with new vocabulary. Two excellent books I have used with my students are Over the Rainbow and Puff the Magic Dragon, both beautifully illustrated by Eric Puybaret.

Allowing children to feel competent in their reading and writing skills results in confident and happy students in the classroom. The more ways in which children are able to practice reading and writing in everyday contexts, the more confident they will become in using these skills in their everyday lives.  Provide your children with opportunities to have fun and be creative with language, and they will flourish. 




Courtesy: By Michelle Eisen

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Help your children be ready to learn

A child's first years at school are very important. If you want your children to do well in school, here are some things you can do to encourage them to be ready to learn.

These ideas may not surprise you. Many of the things you do every day are exactly what your children need to help them be ready to learn.

Self-regulation

Self-regulation means being able to control your behaviour, emotions and attention.

Children who can regulate their own emotions find it easier to take part in school activities. They get along better with others.

Children start to learn to regulate their emotions and actions when they are very young. They learn by interacting with their parents and other caring adults.

Parents can also help children to regulate where they focus their attention by giving them more difficult games when they are ready.

Making big tasks smaller

Parents can also show their children how to break a problem into smaller parts.

For example, when your baby can easily find the toy that you have hidden under a blanket, you can make it more challenging by hiding two toys.

If your child has trouble putting together all of the puzzle pieces or stacking all of the blocks, take away some of the puzzle pieces or blocks.

You can do the same thing when its time to clean up the play area. It can be too much for a three-year-old to try to put all of the toys away.

Instead, you can break the task down into one step at a time Where does the fire truck go?

It's also important to give your children space to do well on tasks that are okay for their level of development. Taking over for your children as soon as they get frustrated won't help them learn to do things.

Children who can regulate their behaviour, their emotions and their attention are much more able to learn on their own.

Feeling secure

A strong emotional bond between a parent and a child is so important.

Relationships in a child's family affect relationships outside of the family. Children who grow up in caring families find it easier to have good relationships with others, including teachers and other children.

Children who feel secure are better able to explore the world. Comforting children after a bad or upsetting experience makes them feel safe and helps them learn to regulate their emotions.

Letting preschool children explore their surroundings also helps develop their courage and confidence. These skills will help them with challenges all through their lives.

Thinking skills

Children are born with a sense of excitement about the world. They want to learn.

When you help your children understand their world, you are helping them learn to think.

Children need stimulation to keep wanting to explore. They need to meet different people, go to different places and learn about the natural world (such as plants, water and the sun).

Children learn to make connections among different people, things and places. Stimulation also helps children to cope with complex information.

People need to make sense of their worlds, especially young children. Parents can help their children understand the world by making experiences meaningful for them.

For example, a walk in a new park becomes a more interesting learning experience if you are there to point out to your children what is the same and what is different from the park that you usually go to.

Literacy & numeracy

• Literacy (the ability to read and write) and numeracy (the ability to use numbers) are two very important skills.
• Children need to be literate and to understand how numbers work to do well in school.
• Children need to learn to understand and use many different words. They need to learn that stories have a beginning, a middle and an end.
• Children need to learn what a number line is (three is one more than two, and four is one more than five). They also need to see what is the same and what is different in the weight, feel and size of things.

Here are some ways to help your child build good literacy and numeracy skills:

Read together. Reading out loud with your children from a very early age is very important. Reading together makes your children more ready to learn to read.

Have fun together. When you and your children share time reading a story and being close, they learn that reading is fun. Hold your children, touch and snuggle together, and get their full attention.

Repeat. You may be frustrated when your child asks to hear the same story night after night, but repeating stories over and over again is important for your child.

At first, children focus on the pictures in a storybook. Soon, they learn the story, word by word, and start to tell it along with you. By pointing to words your child knows from memory, she (or he) can learn that printed words (text) have meaning. 

Later, when your child learns to read in school, she will know that text is not a puzzle to solve by guessing. Your child will also know that text tells a story or gives information (or both).

Rhyming. The ability to hear the different sounds in language is a big part of learning to read. Parents can help children develop an ear for language by using rhymes and songs.

Learning words by sight. A basic sight vocabulary of common objects can help your children's early reading. You can help by asking your children to point out simple words in a story while you read together. You could also put labels on some things in your child's room, such as bed or closet.

Sharing written stories. Children need to understand that text is more than just a collection of words and sentences. Hearing and telling stories helps children understand what a story is. Playing make-believe also helps children to understand stories. 

Take your child's drawing and ask her to tell you the story behind it. If you write the story out for your child and read it with her later, she can see where stories in books come from. It shows your child that she can write stories, too. 

Counting games. Counting games are a good way to begin to understand how numbers work. 

To help your child understand what numbers mean, try simple counting games, such as counting backwards and forwards. Try easy adding and subtracting questions. You can even count your child's fingers and toes!

Board games that require counting and moving along a number line help your child see that numbers can be presented in different ways, but they always mean the same thing. 

Number games and reading together should be fun. They show children that learning new skills can mean getting to do more interesting things. 



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Help your preschooler deal with nightmares

In several attempts to rescue her three-year-old daughter from bad dreams, Maggie Lamothe Fennessy has sprinkled magic dust in the bedroom (also known as glitter) and surrounded her little gal with 23 stuffed animals including a rabbit named Foofy. Maggie’s soothing nighttime ritual includes bathing Rebecca Lynne, massaging her with lotion, reading books and the occasional ocean wave CD. But the Toronto resident also has three-month-old twins to manage and exhaustion is winning out.

Turns out there may be another way to combat the nightmares that wake up children like Rebecca Lynne: re-script their dreams. Think of it as Inception for Preschoolers, (sorry mom, Leonardo DiCaprio not included) where you plant good ideas and images in youngsters’ minds to blanket their dreams. If your daughter awakes from a nightmare about a 14-eyed-monster calm her down first. And then “reframe the dream,” says Wendy Hall, a professor in the School of Nursing in the Faculty of Applied Science at the University of British Columbia. “Rethink and transform the dream so that it is a more positive and less threatening experience.”

Teach your child that she controls who and what gets to be in her dreams. Be specific. Talk about colours, textures, smells and sounds. “You can write things into the script – that they have a magic wand or a force field they put up in the dream,” Wendy says. “They can have things under their control that they introduce to stop whatever they don’t want to happen.” If your daughter dreams of spiders, Wendy says, then talk about a book likeCharlotte’s Web where the spider is friendly and useful.

An anxious child is more likely to have anxiety-provoking dreams, says Penny Corkum, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Dalhousie University, so strive to reduce stress prior to going to sleep. Try guided visual imaging to help your little one imagine a tranquil environment. “You want your child to return to that relaxed place in their mind and to calm their central nervous system,” she says. The imaging technique along with an evening routine of no TV, relaxing activities as bedtime approaches and dimmed lights can be effective.

My four-year-old son has had nightmares since Halloween. So I asked him one night, what makes him happy. His response? Spiderman and Disneyland. As he snuggled up to a blue blankie he got on his first birthday, we talked about how he might dream about going on the Dumbo ride at Disneyland with Spidey. They’d drink pineapple floats, eat churros and watch the fireworks. The next morning, my son’s voice soared as he told me he’d been on the Peter Pan ride with Spiderman. The best part? I was there, too. The second morning he recalled going to the beach with Spiderman. The third morning he told me he’d dreamed of playing in my parents’ backyard. They live almost 5,000 kilometres away.

I’m thrilled my lad is sleeping through the night and waking up chirpy, but experts advise against asking about nightmares over breakfast unless your little one wants to talk about it. UBC’s Wendy Hall says, “You don’t want to make the dream such a focal point that the child starts doing it just to get attention.” Point taken.

You can talk about it at 2 a.m., though, if your son or daughter just sprinted to your bedroom fearing a vampire. (If he looks like Robert Pattinson, text me.) Avoid the lights – so the kids don’t wake up fully – then reassure them.

With practice, your children won’t need Mr. Sandman to bring them a dream; they’ll relax and drift off on their own.

What might be causing nightmares?

If dream re-scripting doesn’t help your child’s nightmares, sleep expert Dr. Shelly Weiss, says to look at other possible causes:

• Anxiety or bullying at school or daycare.
• Exposure to stresses such as marital conflict
• Exposure to too much violence on TV. if an older sibling is telling them terrible stories. Talk to your child, your child’s daycare provider, teacher or pediatrician to further investigate.

Courtesy: By Amber Nasrulla

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Encouraging kids to improve: Why you shouldn’t praise your kids

As parents, we want our children to feel confident and have a sense of self-worth. We instinctively realize that these attributes are invaluable when it comes to success in school. Since we want to build our kids up, we naturally praise them for their strengths, talents, and achievements.

However, praise purely for the sake of helping a child avoid feelings of disappointment can actually make matters worse when it comes to their academics. 

In fact, as parents, we should avoid constantly praising our children and, instead, provide meaningful encouragement.

Is there a difference? Absolutely!

• Encouragement is about acknowledging a specific task that was done well. Praise has a tendency to be general and is more about making someone feel good, not necessarily competent. This is a clear and important distinction: making a child “feel good” is temporary. Showing a child that she has demonstrated ability in a given task goes so much further. A child will eventually come to see your praise as empty and meaningless if the results are poor. Encouragement allows for challenges and mistakes, but pushes a student to learn from those challenges.
• Praise is final and leaves no room for a child to continue improving. Feeling “good” is a fleeting emotion. Feeling capable is not just an emotion, its knowledge gained from completing a task successfully. If we focus on simply making our kids feel good, we’re being shortsighted. Our goal should be for our children to improve. Isn’t that what their education is all about? Knowledge building upon knowledge? Encouragement allows for positive acknowledgement of a task well done and challenges a student to reach higher.
• Encouragement is about showing interest. Praise is often vague and doesn’t invite further discussion. Simply praising our kids all of the time is like sitting on the sidelines. It doesn’t show that we are truly interested or involved. If encouraging your child means allowing mistakes to be made, then we must also get involved so that she can learn and improve. Praise says: “Great effort, you’ll do better next time.” While encouragement says: “Great effort, now let’s talk about what you could have done differently and let me show you how to it better for next time.”

The goal of meaningful encouragement is for a child to gain confidence through achievement. It isn’t about artificially pumping up her ego nor does it create an unachievable standard. It’s about giving real substance behind our support. In order to prepare our children for their years ahead in school and beyond, we must encourage them to gain a sense of self-worth and determination by overcoming challenges, not avoiding them. 



Courtesy: By Marc Lapointe

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Spend one-on-one time with your kids

I can’t even remember where we’d been that day. The museum maybe? But I remember this detail. After zigzagging through a bunch of subway cars, my son Zachary and I breathlessly reached the front car. Zachary, then five, peered out the window as the train nosed into darkness, then leaned his head against me and whispered, “I’m glad you’re my Mommy.”

When our kids are tiny, it’s easy to manage warm bonding moments like this. We nestle and feed, rub noses at the change table and push them endlessly on squeaky park swings. But the older they get, the more complicated life gets. We add siblings to the mix, daycare, school, extracurricular circus acrobatics – you name it. At times when it gets crazy-busy, I worry. Is it all getting to be too much? I’ll catch myself debating, “What does my eight-year-old need right now – to yuck it up with his friends or some special time with me?”

My family is not alone in struggling to connect. According to a recent Statistics Canada study, in 1986 workers devoted 4.2 hours a day to family activities. By 2005 that had dropped to 3.4 hours. Between 2006 and 2008, family time plummeted 30 percent in the U.S., according to a report from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for the Digital Future. An exploding addiction to the Internet was blamed.

Family dinners and game nights are vital. But there’s even more buzz these days around another aspect of the family dynamic: the parent-child attachment bond. This is a mysterious connection I felt keenly the day of our subway excursion. “I think we’re just starting to understand how important the bond is to everything from mood control and intelligence to physical health,” says Jennifer Kolari, a Toronto-based family therapist and author of Connected Parenting.

Scientists have discovered that brain functioning is not “hardwired” in early childhood as previously believed. In his bestseller, The Brain That Changes Itself, Norman Doidge confirms brain “plasticity is at its height” in infancy but that the brain’s ability to reorganize itself and learn new things continues throughout life. And until their brains mature (around age 25), the perfect conduit for the massive learning our children will do is the parent-child bond.

How can we nurture this bond and optimize our kids’ brain development? Turns out, one-on- one time is a simple but powerful means. Jennifer says, “As we interact and spend time one-on-one we deeply connect with our children, and a lot of different things happen. Limbic bonding is occurring. This is the release of lovely reward chemicals which also stimulates neuroplasticity. So the more loved and connected and cared for that little brain is, the more that brain feels safe to grow and develop and become more resilient.”

Experts note a long list of benefits to children from spending one-on-one time:

• increased empathy and self-regard
• a better ability to regulate emotions
• improved ability to handle stress
• decrease in sibling rivalry
• improved parent-child bonding
• improved communication skills

I became fascinated with one-on-one time a few years ago when Zachary started senior kindergarten. Initially, I sought a pause from play dates. Plus, there was all this wistful talk from my mom friends with older kids. “Oh I wish I’d…” and then a list of stimulating activities. Given my flexible schedule and fears about time rushing by, I thought, “Why not?” I decided to devote one afternoon a week with my son for one year. We’d hit various Toronto hotspots like the CN Tower and Chinatown: whatever caught our fancy.

The first time we set out, I worried. Would we have fun? Would Zach yearn for his Lego-slinging buddies? Was I this pathetic mother who just couldn’t let go? But soon, I was bowled over by the effects. Zachary couldn’t have been more thrilled about “Zach and Mommy” time. He held my hand and shared – stories from school, glorious questions, his kid’s-eye view of the world. Once, passing a giant advertisement for lingerie he nudged me and hissed: “Mommy, I can see that lady’s underwear!” He listened attentively, and we grew closer.

After her second son was born, Toronto teacher Bronwyn Davidson started taking her first born, William, then three, to tea. Friends laughed at this unlikely choice, but Bronwyn says William loved it. “He’s 10 and he’s still interested in afternoon tea.”

It’s no coincidence Bronwyn and I see such rapture on our boys’ faces in these scenarios. According to scientists, this is due to the release of oxytocin, which promotes attachment and, subsequently, learning. “Oxytocin is sometimes called the commitment neuromodulator because it reinforces bonding in mammals,” writes Norman Doidge in his book. “It is released when…couples parent and nurture their children. Oxytocin appears also to attach children to parents.”

Bronwyn spends regular one-on-one time with both her sons. Her boys feel “appreciated for who they are, and not compared to each other. It’s nice to have that time where they’re not having to – I don’t want to say fight for attention – but I think that’s what siblings do. They want your attention so badly, and when there’s two of them, they have to compete for it. When it’s one-on-one, they just get it.”

Parents need this time, too. “I find if one of my kids is really starting to grate on me, I know that I need that one-on-one time with them,” says Bronwyn. “It’s almost like a cure. I think when they are starting to act out and behave in ways that are really irksome to me it’s probably because they need me.”

If this all sounds daunting, don’t be intimidated. “There are lots of ways to do this without feeling ‘It’s one more thing I have to do!’ ” says Jennifer Kolari. She insists parents can see powerful effects from just 15 minutes a day of “really focusing on your child.” In fact, Jennifer warns against overdoing it. “You don’t want to follow your child around and do this bonding all the time. They’re going to say ‘Get away from me.’ It doesn’t take a lot.” Paradoxically, she says, “The more connected your child feels to you, the more likely they are to be more independent.”

Our kids, particularly teenagers, won’t announce it to their friends, but Jennifer says they deeply desire involvement with us. “I was doing a twoday workshop with a group of teachers and one of the teachers started laughing and said, ‘This is ridiculous! I would never do this. My kid is a Goth.’ And I said, ‘Well, it could help. Go home and try it.’” Despite her son being 15, pierced and tattooed, she decided to heed Jennifer’s advice that night. “She told him ‘I don’t care if you’re a Goth, you’re the cutest little Goth I’ve ever seen in my whole life!’ And he kind of threw his feet in the air and they sort of wrestled. It was a bit awkward because they hadn’t connected in a long time. But she said they had the best night together they’d had in a long time. And then, as she was walking past his room at night (because she had long passed saying good night to him), she heard, ‘Mom, can you come say goodnight?’ So she went in, they rubbed noses, had this little moment and then she left. She said she actually slid down the wall outside his room and sobbed, because she never thought in a million years that her child would still want that from her.”

This story shows it’s really never too late to try and connect with our kids, and the results can be amazing. As Bronwyn learned from her tea ritual with William, “It doesn’t really matter what it is, but that it’s your special thing. He’s decided that’s it’s our special thing. And he doesn’t even mind that it’s not that cool.”

6 tips for successful bonding

Focus, even if just for a few minutes.
“Don’t check your email, turn off your cell phone, turn off the TV. Really make this focused time.”
– Susan Newman, Ph.D., author of Little Things Long Remembered: Making Your Children Feel Special Every Day.

Choose an activity you both like.
“You can be pretty straightforward. ‘Mommy doesn’t like Monopoly…’ Then you can be enthusiastic and you’re not pretending.”
– Susan Newman

Put away the flashcards and just have fun.
“Don’t make everything a learning opportunity; that is the biggest turnoff for kids imaginable.”
– Susan Newman

Keep it simple.
“The activity could be something as simple as giving a child a bath while the other children are occupied with dad in another room and being very mindful to enjoy the time with your little one.”
– Jamie C. Martin, mother of three and author of Steady Days: A Journey Toward Intentional, Professional Motherhood

Be fair.
“If you have two children you have to do it with both. You can’t have one getting these lunches out and the other not. That would create resentment.”
– Bronwyn Davidson, teacher and mother of two

Keep doing it.
“No matter how happy and secure your child is, they can always use more.”
– Jennifer Kolari, author of Connected Parenting




Courtesy: By Connie Jeske Crane

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Sleep travel tips while you're on vacation

We’d love to take our monster-loving five-year-old Xavier to Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party in DisneyWorld this year. The problem? It starts at 7 p.m. Xavier’s bedtime is 7:30.

Can we adjust his schedule so he can party, and not be Mr. Cranky-pants the whole next day? How much flexibility is really possible with a preschooler?

You need to know your child, says Saundra Schmidt Brook, of Waterloo, Ont., a mother of three. Her two-year-old slept contentedly in the stroller while the older children went on rides during their last Disney vacation, so keeping him out late wasn’t an issue. However, when it comes to her four- and five-year-old daughters, she says “We wanted everyone to have fun, so if they hit their wall, we just stopped for the day. They didn’t want to sit and wait for the parade, so we just left.”

Katie Thrasher of Montreal, whose children are five and eight, says she can do a late night once per trip, and avoids making it the first or last day. Having an afternoon nap (or at least a rest time) before the late evening makes a big difference. Katie says: “If they don’t want to nap, I put a movie on the TV or the iPad for them to watch in bed and often they fall asleep.” A hotel suite with a separate bedroom or a balcony where parents can sit and relax makes this easier.

Katie’s rule for the next day is that the first time someone gets miserable or melts down, they head back to the hotel for another rest. “Otherwise I find it’s just the first of many,” she says.

Marie-Lyne Pratt of Greenfield Park, Que., with three children, ages five, three and 20 months, has her own system. “With the young toddlers, what I like best is to bring a baby carrier. A good one. They’ll sleep in the carrier as mom walks around and can be easily breastfed when they need soothing.

“When older preschoolers get cranky or tired, snacks are your best friends. Things like drinkable applesauce have saved us countless times! They give your kids the energy they need to go on.” These snacks work during the evening when you’re hoping to keep the tired little one up a bit longer, and also the next day when he’s veering towards crankiness. Younger preschoolers often have more trouble than older ones adjusting to these changes, and your child’s personality might mean it’s better to stick with the usual schedule.

Ottawa mom Claudine Smith’s family reunion was to end with fireworks at 11:30 p.m. She thought two-year-old Henry would enjoy them so she arranged for him to take a long afternoon nap. Henry made it to the end of the fireworks show. But Claudine says “he was very cranky the next day and we ended up doing a lot of vegging on the couch. People say to me, it’s a vacation, it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t have a routine. But it matters for Henry. He’ll have meltdowns and be miserable, so it’s not worth it.”

And Xavier? We’ve decided he can do one late night with a relaxing day to follow. He’s happily planning his costume.

Travel sleep tips

• Know your child. If kids don’t handle changes to routine easily, then expect tantrums if they are kept up past their usual bedtime. Some children are flexible and will sleep in or nap the next day. You know your child best.
• Make a deposit to the sleep bank. Sometimes a nap or quiet time during the afternoon before the late night will help even if your child doesn’t usually nap.
• If you’re hoping for a sleep-in, set the scene. Close blinds to block out light and put a towel across the bottom of the door to reduce the sound if you’re in a noisy area.
• Pack a snack. A little food can give a tired child renewed energy. Go for fruit or a protein food rather than sugary snacks.

Courtesy: By Teresa Pitman

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Seal the Deal: Do dental sealants prevent cavities?

You make sure your kids brush on a regular basis, avoid sticky candy and rinse their mouths with water after eating sugary treats if they can’t brush their teeth. You even wrangle with those little kid-friendly flossers from time to time. Is there anything else you could be doing to help prevent cavities?

Some would say yes: dental sealants. A dental sealant is a thin plastic coating, made of acrylic polymer, that is painted onto a tooth’s chewing surface, and it can be very helpful in preventing decay. “Teeth have bumps and grooves that are formed as they develop, much like the plates of a baby’s skull that come together in the months after birth,” says Toronto dentist Dr. Joe Simardone.

“Sometimes the fusion of the parts of the teeth is incomplete, and deep ‘pits’ are formed. These pits are open to holding bacteria and food, which makes them susceptible to cavities. A sealant will get into these grooves and pits, and seal them off, bonding into the tooth structure, and smoothing out what nature didn’t smooth out. And then the teeth become less retentive to bacteria.”

But do sealants actually prevent cavities? “No, I wouldn’t say that,” says Joe. “There is no substitute for the toothbrush and toothpaste. Sealants just make the surface of the tooth easier to keep clean.” And they’re not permanent. “Over time, with eating and chewing, they will wear away, and will need to be touched up by the dentist.”

Still, given the relative ease of application – the sealant is usually brushed on with a small paintbrush, or dropped out of a syringe onto the tooth, and it dries in a matter of seconds – and the relatively low cost of around $25 per tooth, having them done might seem like a no-brainer. A 2000 report by the Surgeon General in the U.S. found that dental sealants reduced tooth decay in students by more than 70 per cent. And this past September, Saskatchewan’s Oral Health Program introduced an in-school dental sealant program in a select number of schools in the province.

Joe only suggests sealants to “really susceptible people” – people with very deep natural pits in their teeth, or with very poor oral hygiene. But some other dentists and health care professionals recommend all children get them. After all, they can’t hurt. And how many dental procedures can you say that about?



Courtesy: By Sara Curtis

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Teach your kids good dental hygiene

If you are worried about your kids’ dental hygiene, you probably should be. According to statistics, cavity rates are increasing among six- to 12-year-olds. In fact, 63 percent of kids in this age group have had a cavity, and more than 60 percent have had two or more.

“We’re seeing increases of epidemic proportions worldwide – tooth decay is the number one chronic disease for kids five to 17; it’s five times more chronic than asthma,” says Lisa Shoemaker, a registered restorative dental hygienist and educator in Toronto.

“Families are busy and they have busy routines – routines that don’t often include supervising kids when they clean their teeth,” says Lisa. In addition, kids tend to eat on the go and snack on foods with refined sugars, such as juice boxes, pop or sports drinks. Lisa recommends that parents step in and combat cavities with a few tips:

• Ensure your kids choose snacks such as fruits and vegetables, whole grain crackers and unbuttered popcorn. Cheese is also an excellent snack that neutralizes other acids in the mouth.
• Establish a consistent routine around caring for your kids’ teeth and supervise them when they brush and rinse.
• Incorporate an alcohol-free mouth rinse into their routine. This will fight bad breath and ensure kids get more fluoride and anticavity protection than brushing alone can provide. (Mouth rinses are recommended for kids six and up or once they are able to swish and spit.)
• Have fun! Use a wacky timer, change up mouth rinse and toothpaste flavours and buy fun toothbrushes. “Our kids time each other and we have funny face contests. We challenge each other to see who can hold the rinse and brush their teeth longer,” says Lisa. “This way, we don’t get bored.”

Courtesy: By Erin Dym

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Children's creative play

Children use different materials and create new things that represent people, things, places and events. This kind of play is the most common form of play in preschool children.

Children are creative by nature

Children are natural builders. They are engineers with blocks, artists with paint, sculptors with clay and designers with junk. 

Children love to make pictures and things with clay, sand, mud, blocks and building sets such as Lego. 

They like to draw and paint pictures of people, things and even abstract ideas such as beauty, war or death.

Watching thinking in action

Watching your child build and create is watching thinking in action. 

In making a sand castle, for example, your child must experiment to find out what mixture of sand and water will work. She (or he) also has to use her memory of what castles look like. 

Playing with blocks putting them together, taking them apart, building them again and organizing the different kinds is very good play for children. 

Its fun, and it also helps them develop mathematical concepts such as numbers, matching, grouping by shape and size, volume, measurement, relationships in dimensions, spatial relationships, symmetry, sequence and fractions. 

This kind of play also lets children learn about some scientific principles such as force, gravity, motion and balance.

Materials for building and creating

Creating with art materials lets children make choices and experiment. Using materials to represent something else gives your child a challenge, a problem to solve. Your children's experiences with creative art materials help them develop patterns for problem-solving. 

When children are doing basic messing about play, they are learning some of the skills they need for building and creating. For example, learning to use a pair of scissors is a skill that will help your child build and create things later. 

Stacking up and knocking down blocks over and over again is a basic skill needed for building towers and castles. 

Children need to find out how crayons, markers and pencils make marks on paper (or other surfaces) before they can use them to make pictures or form letters of the alphabet. 

Children need materials to make structures and pictures. Sand, clay and playdough (see the recipe on page 131) are good for moulding. 

Blocks can be made from wood, plastic, cardboard or milk cartons. 

Stones, sticks, wood scraps, buttons, string and scraps of fabric, and glue are all good materials for children's creations. 

Paints, crayons, markers and all kinds of paper help children to practise making marks, print and draw pictures.

Ask your child to tell you more

You can make sure your children have the materials they need, but it also helps to ask questions, such as How did you get that wonderful colour of purple? and Tell me how your spaceship works. 

Asking your children to tell you more about something they've created helps them imagine even more. It shows your children that you are interested in what they do. 

Your children will like it if you show that you think their creations are important by hanging up their drawings or taking photos of their creations. 

If you keep some examples of your children's creations, your children can also see how their pictures are changing as they grow.

Examples of building and creating play

2 to 6 years: Give children an empty cardboard box used for a large appliance (such as a stove or washing machine). Follow their lead and be ready to help cut holes, locate the paint or glue, and find scrap materials.

9 months to 6 years: Make your own playdough. Mix the following ingredients in a pot:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup salt
• 2 cups water
• 4 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 2 tablespoons cooking oil
• food colouring

Cook over medium heat until the mixture becomes like clay. Let it cool, and it's ready to use. Wrap the playdough well so your child can use it again, or keep your child's creations by letting them air dry.

18 months to 6 years: You can make building blocks by filling large paper bags with newspapers and closing them with tape. Children can also help you make the blocks. Markers or paint can be used to decorate them.



Courtesy: By ParentsCanada staff 

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TV Is Good

So there I am, picking up my four-year-old daughter from her preschool class. I got there a few minutes early and was waiting with two moms. The topic of TV came up and they both exclaimed how evil those dirty little electronic boxes were and how they never let their children watch all the 'crap' served up by malicious television executives. One mom said that she wouldn't even have a TV in the house, but she and her husband do watch the occasional documentary. As I listen, a sense of guilt and misguided anger courses through my body. You see, the little secret in our home is that we keep the TV on much of the day. I'm a TV junkie, my wife less so, and my kids watch tons of TV.

    I'm pondering these confused feelings when one of the moms asks the inevitably awkward question, "Do your kids watch much TV?" "Oh," I say. "We watch an hour or two." An hour or two? Who am I kidding! I'm a well-regarded psychologist working with children, families and schools and I'm standing in a parking lot lying about TV! If I think this is so evil that I have to lie about it, why would I poison my children with too much viewing time? What's wrong with me?

    But just wait one minute here. Do I actually think that I am damaging my kids with Caillou, The Doodlebops andDora the Explorer? That is ridiculous! Lets take a step back and introduce some common sense.

    For starters, watch your young children watching TV. My two little ones are building castles out of the couch cushions, colouring and rolling around on the floor. My older child is singing along with Elmo, teaching her little sister the words to the ABC song. They routinely watch the TV, but they also routinely disregard it as a function of the different activities they are engaged in. Indeed, psychologist Dan Anderson at the University of Massachusetts has found in his studies of children's TV viewing that young children are only 'watching' the TV about half of the time it's on. Most young kids are not 'glued to the set.'

You may ask, if they aren't watching that much, why have the boob-tube on at all? To be sure, we, like all parents, have to be careful about randomly leaving the TV on for no good reason, which unfortunately we do too often. And, I'd be lying again if I didn't acknowledge that some of this is just electronic babysitting, while the grown-ups are preparing meals or doing laundry. Which is fine.

    That said, it is also the case that I LOVE these kids shows. The social drama, the language, the songs, the fun TV, in the right moderation, is good! Of the many positive influences on their development, television has been a great source of material for children.

    Do I think that TV is a better alternative than going outdoors, playing with friends, pretend play, quality time with family, painting, colouring, cutting, skating, gymnastics, swimming, balanced meals and a decent nights sleep? 
Of course not.

    That's the whole point! This is not about which one is better. This is all about having a balanced and diverse life. Kids' lives are good when they have a wide range of people and experiences in their day-to-day world. Don't buy into the guilt of "oh no, my child has been overexposed to a toxic TV environment," as long as you are trying to introduce a mix of activities.

    The best evidence on the damaging influence of TV is with older kids and pre-teens becoming couch potatoes, over-eating in front of violent or sexually graphic shows, while having little else to do in their lives. (Another news flash, childhood obesity correlates with too much TV, although it correlates with many other variables as well.)

    A great perspective can be found on the Impact of Media Use on Children and Youth, at the Website of the Canadian Paediatric Society (cps.ca/english/statements/), where the bottom line is that too much of anything is too much and, as I've already said the obvious, violence and sex are not for kids. 

    We all have enough to worry about, so don't let watching a bit too much TV add to the guilt quotient. But if that does'nt soothe your nerves on this topic, go unplug the bloody thing and read a book with your kid. You'll both feel better. PC




Courtesy: By Dr. Michael Weiss

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