-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Archives
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- July 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- September 2015
- June 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- September 2014
- March 2014
- October 2013
- September 2013
- March 2013
- January 2013
- November 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
Categories
Connect with me
Category Archives: school
Dealing With Special Needs Teens – 5 Few Tips
Children with special needs, require special attention and extra support as compared to their peers. Additionally, kids, as well as parents, need to deal with the surrounding, adjust and adapt to it. Even people and peers of kids with special needs don’t necessarily understand them and can be non-empathetic to them. At times many kids with special needs are disobedient and hard to manage. Here are a few tips that could help you manage your teen kids in a better way.
Believe – Believing is primary. If you believe in your kids, others automatically will. If you don’t, don’t expect others to. Your child could be angry or disobedient but you need to believe that your kid is doing his/her best.
Don’t assume – If you have any questions ask them, but do not assume. Assumptions around the special needs of your child. If your child has a physical disability do not assume that it means that the child has mental too.
Promote Independence – Don’t assume that kids with special needs are unable to make decisions without help. As far as possible let them be on their own wherever they can. Ask if they need help before helping them out with daily chores. Guide them in being independent. Like for example when you put clothes on them, ask them which shirt they would prefer to wear, by giving them small options. This way you help them make their own decisions.
Foster their Strengths – Every child is unique and even children with special needs have their own strengths. As a parent try to recognize their strengths and foster them as you would do for a normal child.
All Friendships – Encourage your child to have friendships with everyone irrespective of whether their friends are challenged or not. Just take care that other friends treat your child properly and not poorly.
Well, managing teens without disabilities can be a daunting task, then obviously, parenting teens with special needs can be even more taxing, but with a few tips and points in mind, you can make the work easier.
*Sourced from Internet
Ensure Your Kids Eat Healthy – Few Tips
Gone are the days when Indians had four to five kids or even more and they just grew up in a joint family with a long list of close relatives to look after. There have been stories of women not being able to give any time to kids because most of the time went around in the kitchen and other domestic chores for the family. Today, women are out and working and equal to men, at least to say. Today parents are much concerned of every aspect of their child’s developmental process be it health or fitness, academics or sports, hobbies or extra-curricular activities or even mental health. Parents today want the best for their children. What they only miss out on looking into the details of all this is the quality time, which is of utmost importance for the kids and home-made healthy food as well. As both parents are out and working, many kids after school live in daycares and even if they are home, with all the online order facility available at the click of the button, many times its home delivery of restaurant made foods.
This apparently hampers the health of the child and deprives them of the needed nutrients that a homemade balanced diet can provide against the processed foods, loaded with unhealthy calories available outside. Apparently, kids pick every little thing from others and primarily it’s the parents. So, if the parents prefer unhealthy food, the kids are obviously going to prefer the same. Well, the solution is to follow what you preach. Eat healthy and seeing you do so, even the child will in no time.
A healthy diet includes five potions of fruits as well as vegetables on a daily basis. The balanced diet should include carbohydrates besides dairy, fats, veggies, and proteins.
It’s simple to understand if you spread it across a pyramid. At the base include the carbohydrates like cereals, pasta, rice and bread as Carbs are responsible for providing energy all through the day. Next in the pyramid are the vegetables and the fruits, followed by protein rich foods like fish, eggs, nuts, pulses and dairy like milk, cheese and yogurt. The phoenix or top of the pyramid is made up of the smallest part that is the fat and sugars including ghee, butter, oil, sweets and cakes.
The base is the largest part and subsequently decreasing as it goes up. Your child’s diet also needs to be that way in order for him/her to get the balance of all the nutrients required to be in the best of health.
*Sourced from Internet
Just know about Schools in Whitefield Bangalore
Life Skills For Making Children Independent
Gone are the days when kids used be taken care of any of the family members of a joint family and parents particularly moms were busy cooking for the whole house and other chores. But in today’s times when families have gone nuclear and parents, mostly both of them working, are very much concerned about every need of their child. They do seem to be focused in getting them everything that is needed more so because of the lack of time they have to spend with their kids. But, one thing that has not completely wiped out of still from our society is that academics is still the most important part of a child’s life. If the child fails there then there is pressure of performance. This obsession is apparently a legacy that has been carried forwards since the beginning of time of education. The winds of change are blowing but still we have to see a complete change in the mindset.
Speak to many school heads and many of them will bring this issue to light. Rather than concentrating merely on academics, parents need to understand that every child is unique and is blessed with a unique capability. As the saying goes ‘never judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree’, parents need to understand and explore the hidden talent of the child and try to nurture and foster the same rather than pressuring the child over academic performance. Parenting is a roller coaster ride with its highs and lows and bonding with children, working together with the teachers at school and parent can certainly help.
What kid really need to sustain in this world where Newton’s law ‘Survival of the fittest’ still holds true is a support that someone is always with them in their journey and who else than a parent can fill this space. Here are few tips on how you can foster your child to become independent through life skills.
-
Teach them to Respect people – To earn respect, you need to give respect and this needs to be instilled into the child early on. Etiquettes helps groom a child’s mentality and the way to do it is to do it yourself.
-
Encourage Extra-curricular activities – A holistic approach and an open mind can work wonders for the child, so beyond academics join them with extra curricular activities like sports, music or anything else that interests them.
-
Put them in Situations and observe then respond – Put them into situations without helping them. Try to observe how they respond to situations. This will help them make decisions, boost their self esteem
-
Relax and Have fun – Don’t take everything seriously. Children do make mistakes and will keep making them as they are learning every moment. So, just try to ignore silly mistakes and give them freedom to do mistakes by assuring them that we all make mistakes when we try. It’s okay to make mistakes some times as long as you learn from them and avoid repeating them.
-
Follow a hobby - Hobbies always help in unwinding yourself and rejuvenating and starting early always helps.
All this helps them through their journey of life when they grow up, making it easier too.
*Sourced from the Internet
Teaching Manners To Kids – A Few Tips
If you want your kids to be well mannered grown-ups and pass the same to their kids, then the time to teach them manners is well at grass root level only. It’s only when they are kids that you need to do the task. Be it simple manners like saying please, thank you, sorry and so on, to greeting people on meeting them, from table manners to manners around public behavior, it needs to be done so that your kids turn out to be civilized human beings when they grow up.
Off course, it’s not a cakewalk! Here’s run down a few tips to help you sail through the process with a bit of ease.
First things first, preaching your children will never ever work. It’s like putting your point across the ears, in from one and out from the other. So, try to put your point across in a way that it reaches them and stays with them.
As per the director of Emily Post Institute, Peggy post, who also is a writer of umpteen books on etiquette, storytelling method for teaching them manners is a very good idea that does work. Kids are fond of fairy tales, stories of kings, queens, and battles to name a few. You may use these people and weave stories around them to teach them how to greet others, wear clothes and behave, etc.
Patricia Tice, Ph.D. and a business etiquette expert uses the sing a song method to teach etiquettes to her little toddlers’ clients. The songs they sing help them learn manners. So, they sing and learn simultaneously.
Now, for example, you want your kids to learn some table manners like holding the spoon, saying please and thank you, a rehearsal session at home could work well. Off-course with a catch viz. if the kids pass the rehearsal, they would get a reward like dinner at one of their favorite restaurants at the end of the week. This small and smart ideas definitely work well with kids so do rewards if used well and in control.
*Sourced from the Internet
Just know about Vydehi School of Excellence
Are You Game To Watch The Moon Landing Of Chandrayaan 2 With Prime Minister Of India?
As the Chandrayaan 2 is inching closer towards its landing date of September 6, 2019 on the moon, there is curiosity and excitement building up over the monumental day. ISRO has already released the first pictures of Earth sent by Chandrayaan 2 using its L4 camera. Apparently, as per ISRO the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi is going to watch the landing of Vikram lander on the Chandrayaan 2 live in Bengaluru with select students of Class 8th to 10th class. Well, to grab this opportunity you need to be a student studying in class 8, 9 or 10 and crack the quiz contest by ISRO.
Two students from each state will get this opportunity of watching the landing accompanied by none other than the Prime minister of India. The procedure to enter the contest is available on the website www.mygov.in. The quiz contest is to be held between August 10 and August 20, 2019. The objective primarily is to create awareness about space programs within the children of the country. Only Indian Citizens are eligible to participate in the contest where they will have to answer a maximum number of quiz questions to win this once in a blue moon chance. The quiz has around 20 questions that have to be answered within 5 minutes. The participant has to answer all questions in the shortest time duration.
Meanwhile, the fourth and fifth orbit-raising maneuver has been successfully completed and by the time you are reading this, the sixth maneuver scheduled for August 6, 2019 would also have been completed.
The Chandrayaan 2 – was launched with the help of a heavy-lift rocket geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle – Mark III (GSLV MK III).
So, if you are up and excited to grab this opportunity, login to the mygov.in website to know the details and register yourself for the contest dated August 10, 2019.
*Sourced from the Internet
Pets Relieve Exam Stress Of Students – A Report
Well, college and exams put together is the perfect recipe for stress amongst students. There have been cases of college dropouts due to stress and extreme ones include even suicidal thoughts or suicides due to the pressure of studies and clearing exams. There’s a bit of good news for students though. It’s about reducing exam stress by spending time with pet dogs or cats. Now, Who doesn’t like pets? But, did you know a study shows the psychological benefits of having pets at home? Yes, you read that right, a study has found that pets relieve exam stress and study-related pressures of students. The study was published in the AERA open journal that said, many universities have implemented programs like ‘pet your stress away’.
The study was based on a research involving 249 college students who were randomly divided into four groups. The first group got a chance to do hands-on interaction with pet cats and dogs for a duration of 10 minutes. In order to compare the results, the second group was just allowed to observe the first group petting animals. The third group, in turn, was shown a slide show of the animals that were petted and the last or fourth group was simply waitlisted. The students who waitlisted did so without having any stimuli like phone, book or more. To check for the results, the salivary cortisol samples of every participant was collected in the morning after they woke up and the data was crunched.
The results did show that the students who interacted with pets showed a reduction in stress levels because there was a visible reduction in cortisol hormones causing stress. Even if the time they spent with kids was as less as 10 minutes, it worked in reducing stress as per researchers. The objective of the research was to find out whether this kind of exposure would help in stress reduction by reducing hormone secretion related to stress. This paves the way to utilizing the same for benefitting mental health over a period of time.
*Sourced from the Internet
Just know about Best Schools in Bangalore
General Anxiety Disorders In Kids (GAD)
It’s not just the adults, but even children suffer from an anxiety disorder or Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). A child suffering from anxiety disorder will be worrying a lot about one thing or the other. Be it relationships with friends, family issues, marks in class, sports performance and more.
Anxiety up to a certain level is alright but if anxiety is consistent and keeps on increasing and spreading across areas of life, its time to consult a doctor for the same. Your child could be suffering from Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).
It is known that between 5% and 10% of the people suffer from anxiety disorders and its more common with kids having ADHD.
Symptoms
Kids with generalized anxiety disorders experience too much of fear or worries often to an immense extent. As a result they are not able to concentrate, are restless, fatigued and suffer from frequent urination, stomach aches as well as sleep difficulties.
The stress and tension are of chronic nature and do interfere and affect various areas as well as the quality of their life.
At times even the child might be able to understand the excessive anxiety issues, but might not be able to control or manage it.
Diagnosis
One of the criteria around the diagnosis of GAD is, the experience needs to last for around six months at least. A trained mental health practitioner will assess the child and work with the child around his/ her anxiety disorders.
Well, apparently GAD is more likely to affect children who have undergone challenging situations in life or have been maltreated are at a higher risk of GAD. Challenges like humiliation, cruelty, and abandonment are a few triggers that already affect adults, then children would obviously be, isn’t it? Even puberty could bring in stressors besides consistent difficulties in relationships socially as well as frustrations and school performance issues as well. Treatment plans are based on diagnosis and differ from individual to individual.
*Sourced from the Internet
Should My Child Use A Cell Phone?
Cell phones have become an integral part of our lives, and we cannot deny this fact or even ignore it. Children just like adults are becoming slaves to these little gadgets. There’s been a lot of debate on whether kids should be given cells phones or not. Obviously, considering the tender age and the exposure a cell phone can give to your child, it is a matter of concern. While there are parents who want their kids to carry cell phones only for security concerns, there’s the flip side to it which does matter a lot. So, how do we decide whether we should be giving cell phones to our children or not. Apparently, parents who consider to give cell phones to their children at the age of 8 -10 years, have to keep a few points in mind. Here’s a run through some of the points to consider, so as to ensure safe and responsible handling of cell phone.
-
Avoid giving your child a smart phone if your objective is safety of the child only.
-
If you provide a cell phone set limitations for the use of it.
-
Ensure that your kid cannot download any games or obscene content
-
Be aware of the passwords they set
-
Take away the phone once the child is at home, if not at least 1 hour before bedtime
-
Understand that your child will observe you and learn, so be a good role model
-
Lock the sites that have adult content
-
Talk to your children about it
-
Set limits with the usage of screen
-
Monitor their usage by using apps that help
Try to understand your child and his/her cognitive capabilities. Consider the maturity levels of the child and then come to a conclusion on – if it would be a good idea to give the cell phone to your child at that age. There are children with ADHD behaviors who aren’t able to handle cell phones with responsibility. You may decide on the basis of your own experiences with the child and the responsibility.
*Sourced from the Internet
Just know about Bangalore Schools
Top 5 Story Books Your Children Must Read Before Teenage
“If you want to make your children intelligent read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales”.
These are words of the quintessential modern genius, none other than Albert Einstein. Very rightly so, fairy tales and stories tend to accelerate the growth of the human mind in infancy and early years. They fuel the imagination of children and make them believe in the extraordinary feat the human mind is capable of achieving.
Another similar quote around fairy tales is one of Neil Gaiman– “Fairy tales are more than true not because they tell us that dragons exist but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated.”
So, here’s a list of 10 fairy tales/stories that your child needs to have in his/ her collection.
-
Jungle Book – This book is a truckload of adventures and inventions and is an apt choice to spark and fuel the imagination of your kid. Written by Rudyard Kipling it’s a story of a boy called Mowgli raised by wolves in the woods and his fight with the king of the jungle tiger Sher Khan.
-
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Listed in one to the greatest books to have and penned by Mark Twain, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the story of a rebel and runaway slave who seeks liberation.
The Lie Tree– Awarded as the winner of overall Cost book Awards recently, it’s a true original and the lead female character of this book could be an apt role model for children while the book a great addition to their collection.
-
Toms Midnight Garden – Written by Philippa Pearce, it’s a story about a kid who goes to stay with his uncle and aunt, but things take a different turn as the clock strikes 13. He finds himself in a little garden with a little girl who comes from a different time zone. This book is sure to leave an impression of a lifetime and is considered to be one of the finest works of children’s literature.
-
Matilda by Roal Dahl – Though there are many books by Roald Dahl which need to be in the must-read list, Matilda is one of the more special ones, for the imaginative capabilities are on full throttle in this emotionally compelling and overwhelming story of a little girl and her struggle for love and escape.
There are umpteen books that your children should read before teenage and the above are just a few of them. Have you made reading a habit for your little ones yet!
*Sourced from the Internet
Just know about Vydehi School of Excellence
The Right Breakfast For An Energized Start Of The Day For Kids
Present day, nuclear families and working parents is a common picture when you look around. Parents are also more concerned about their children and inspite of their busy schedules and time unavailability they want to give their children the best. Though, many parents aren’t really aware about what could be the ideal breakfast for their kids. Due to hectic time schedules people do prefer bread, cereals and many ready-made or instant recipes for kids. But, are they really as healthy as they claim to be. Fitness expert ‘Rujuta Divekar’ has a slightly different take on breakfast for kids. Through her book ‘notes for healthy kids’ and their parents, she explains how ancient or traditional Indian breakfast is far more healthy compared to the instant breakfast. Here’s a run-down a few tips around healthy breakfast for kids.
Avoid Packaged Food – Primarily, the food that is free from any kind of preservatives as in packaged food needs to be avoided altogether even if it is cereals, bread or juice. Packaged stuff is loaded with preservatives and high on sugar as well as emulsifiers, to name a few. Infact, they do more harm to health than benefit.
Eat Homely Food – India has a rich and varied tradition when it comes to food. Recipes like Upma, Poha, Dosa, Idli, Paratha, Thepla, Khakra are known to be one of the most-healthy options if prepared at home. Breakfast being the most important meal of the day needs to be filling because it helps you work throughout the day and stay energized. These foods do just that against packaged foods. You may add fresh thoroughly washed fruits and dry fruits alongside milk if you’re in a hurry burry rather than opting for packaged food like bread, cereals, etc.
Avoid Plastic – From plastic food containers to plastics, sliver foil wrapping and water bottles, cutlery we use plastic everywhere. Plastic and aluminum foils are quite harmful to health. In the ancient times Indian used metals like silver, copper, bronze, brass for eating. Apparently, that’s the way it should be. Using metal containers and thalis apparently helps in protection of food against bacterial and viral infections. The alternative cost effective solution is glass if silver ware or other metal is expensive to get.
Gadget Free eating time – When you eat food you need to concentrate a bit on it. You need to feel the flavors to savor it and ultimately to understand your actual food requirement as well. When we are hooked to television or gadget, we go on hogging and never really understand how much food we need or would be enough. You can definitely get an answer to your requirement if you concentrate on food. There is a hormone in stomach called leptin, responsible for sending a signal to stomach once the stomach is full. But, to catch the signal you need to be attentive.
Eat together – Last but not the least, adding a dash of love makes food tastier isn’t it. So, top your food with love and see how it works positively with the health of your member. Make it a point to have atleast one meal together with family even if you have a packed schedule. Find out that quality time and enjoy food together with your family.
*Sourced from the Internet
Just know about the Vydehi school of Excellence – Meal Plan