Major Haircut

My son will have his first day in school tomorrow so he has to give up his long hair. We went to a trip to the hairdresser and had his first hair cut. It was a major event for him, it was his first time to have a haircut in all of his four years. I feared that he'd act up in the hairdresser's like other kids but I was surprised to see that he behaved like a grown up while his hair was being cut.

BEFORE

AFTER

THE EVENT

and the blogging Mom could not help but cover every major firsts in her son's life, that's me with the cam.

THE NEW LOOK--READY FOR SCHOOL

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I Want to Give My Son A Good Start

I know that children who do good in school enjoy more advantages than others. My son would start school next year (he is three now) so i want to give him a good start as early as now. I have thought out some ways to help my son excel in school and I am posting it here so that mommies like me would see it and through their reactions and comments I would be able to improve on it.

I know that my boy, like other young children, is a learning machine. He learns faster than adults like us because his mind is still clean, I mean not cluttered with the kind of things that fill the mind of adults. I know I can give my son, especially because he is still below five years of age, a good start in education by using these simple techniques:

• I read to my son aloud stories from books. This helps to develop reading and imagination
skill in him. My little boy is showing great interest in books and his father likes to buy him books.

• I talk a lot to my son as if he is a grown up to help him become good at his language. Baby talking is not good.

• Music is good for the brain so I teach my son to sing simple songs. There are many researches that show that music is not only good for overall health, but it is good for brainpower too.

• I help my son explore things, like—toys, various objects at home, plants, flowers. I see, touch, turn around the objects in my hands along with my little boy.

I also ask questions and discuss the objects playfully so that he learns as he plays with me.

• I also try to answer my son's questions straight. If I don’t know the answer, then I try to
find it out together with him.

I think the above steps are useful in developing intelligence and learning skill in children. But mommies out there may have more to add to it, I hope to hear from some mommies out there more tips in giving our children a good start.

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Positive Parenting Could Change the World

I am now reading a book about parenting written by a father and his daughter. The book touches on "positive parenting" and it is very enlightening, I am learning a lot from this book.

Everyday when we turn on the TV to watch the news we see crimes, tragedies, and wars. We could not help but ask why these things are happening. The single most important factor behind these tragedies is parenting failure. How does parenting failure happen? The way we see parenting could lead to parenting failure or parenting success.

Children treated with heavy punishment and insult became cruel warmongers and even dreaded criminals. But there are parents who sees heavy punishment as the only means of making "good children". Have you seen the latest Batman, The Dark Knight? There it is explained why the Joker is a cruel warmonger and a dreaded criminal. The Joker is a product of parenting failure.









Children who did not receive enough love became selfish and insensitive to others’ needs and happiness. If a child who was not loved become a parent he would not be able to give love to his children. This would be passed on to the next generation.

Children who did not receive enough praise for their good deeds but received lot of criticism for their faults could not develop enough confidence to set and achieve meaningful goals—and were condemned to live an ordinary life filled with many problems. Try having a casual conversation with unhappy people and you will discover snippets of their past and of how they were not praised or appreciated when they were young.

Now, on the positive side, think about all the good things that the human race has achieved in this world. What caused these good things. The answer, positive parenting. Just have a peep into lives of friends who are happy and nice people. You will find that most of them experienced happy and positive parenting, at least by one parent, mother or father.

But how do we go about "positive parenting"? The book has this to say :

1. Love Your Children Unconditionally;
2. Show your love through actions;
3. Praise Your Children's Good Work and Achievements;
4. Make Your Children RESPONSIBLE for their actions and life;
5. Teach your children to be kind and helpful;
6. Turn Mistakes Into Opportunities for Improvement;
7. Don’t Complain to Your Neighbor;
8. Support Their Interest;
9. Avoid Pampering.

There are many more in the book that would help us become positive parents. I am still reading the book so I hope that in my next posts I would put in some more insights about parenting that I would like to share to my fellow parents out there. If we all start positive parenting today, the world would be a better place in to live in in the near future :)

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Tears on My Pillow

While I was doing my rounds yesterday, I left my son to play alone with his playmates outside. They started playing with his toy dump truck and some shovels. I heared them running towards our backyard as I blog. There was a pile of sand at the back and they love playing with it as if they were playing at the beach. This is one of their favorite games so I let them be dirty.

After a few minutes I heard a thump followed by a whimper. I ran outside and found Josh lying on his back trying to sit up. When he saw me he started to cry in pain, while holding his head. The truck was at his side. I asked him what happened, my neighbors told me he stepped on his truck and slipped. He kept on crying as his playmates watched him being carried by me to the house.

I bathed him so his wound will be cleansed at the same time he really needs a bath. While doing this he kept on crying. He does not want his wound on his elbow touched. After, I dried him up and put his clothes on him...with sobs on the side. I put him to bed to have his nap, still he crying.

He cries a lot when he gets wounds because he seldom gets those and when he does he puts all his hurt into it , hehehe c: Here's how he looked yesterday as he cried himself to sleep c: Kawawa naman :(

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How to Make a Super Kid

We have an only child, a boy who is so full of life. He is always full of energy, we do not know where he gets it. He is always everywhere in the house, putting his inquisitive little fingers on everything that is too fragile for his probings, we always feel as if we have a dozen children. He is too much too often mischievous but we know that his nature is good. The mischief is just a spice that adds a different flavor to his sweetness. He probably just looks up to his daddy who too much too often teaches him some little ways of doing mischief the cute child's way. I have the feeling that his daddy was a mischievous child then. Our world revolves around him, every decision that we make is somehow influenced by his existence. He is our son, our only child, Joshua Daniel. We have a lot of dreams for him.

Every parent has dreams of their child being the best among the rest, the genius, the superkid. But where do we get the standard for the super kid? Do we have the super kid when our three-year-old flawlessly executes on violin Paganini's 5th Caprice like the way it is in some milk commercial on TV? Do we have the super kid when our three-year-old paints like Da Vinci? If we see it that way we will never have the super kid.

When Josh was around two his daddy said that by the age of three he should be able to play the guitar. But now our Josh seems to be more interested in percussion, he loves making good noise with his daddy's African drum.

His daddy is an artist (he used to paint) so it is only natural for him to expect his son to become good at art too. When we bought him his first set of crayons (he was two then) we were somewhat disappointed to see that he was somehow not interested in drawing the shapes that we were trying to make him copy. But just a few months after that, when his daddy brought home a watercolor set, things changed. We saw our son's interest in that medium. It only took a couple of days before all the colors in the set were exhausted. Our little boy fell in love with the brush and the paint. He spent many hours experimenting with the different effects the wet brush could have on the paper. He ignored his playmates for the brush. We just watched our son enjoying his art.

Every day we discover something new about our boy, little things that make him our superkid. Now he is addicted to computer games and this has caused him to become better at his alphabeth. In his favorite website, Miniclip.com, there is a list of more than a hundred games, anyone who wants to go back to a particular game must know how to read because to go to the game you need to click the name of the game in the list. My son has some favorite games of his in that site. He knows his alphabeth but he is not that good at reading yet. His daddy found a very good opportunity to teach him how to read. Children learn when the motivation to learn something is there. My son is motivated to learn to read because of the game.

Now I realize that every child is a superkid. If we just learn how to see the litlte wonders that a child could learn and do every day, we will see the superkid in every child and we will be more fulfilled as parents.

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