Always look for an alternate solution

For last three weeks, I have started a new experiment with my  younger one.

Since she is the youngest and just seven year old. She used to often get upset , throw tantrums , get angry and refused to do her home work and any other things she needs to follow on daily basis.

Till few weeks ago, on some days I would really find it difficult to control her behavior and also ensure that she completes her studies and other assignments.

My only solution in such scenarios -  I used to stop talking to her or giving her any response. This would generally control her and then she would say sorry and we used resume the activity we were doing.. I used to get things done but  never on a happy note

One day I just felt why should I use a threatening technique to control her behavior  She is a 7 year old child. How can I expect her to be at her best behavior all the time. And how can I deprive her from mother's affection and love even for 3-5 minutes.

It lead me into thinking of a better way of doing it.

Did I find it ... you bet I did.

Whenever she would throw tantrum or get upset with us, I started copying her. If she would lie on floor , I would follow. If she goes to other room I would follow her. If she is sitting with crossed leg and head down, I would do that.If she goes and hides behind the curtain, I would do the same. Basically I started imitating everything she would do when she was upset.

The result was that after three -four such actions, she would give a little smile. She treated at it as a game between mumma and her. The smile would be followed with a big hearty laugh. I would then tell her why we need to do the task in hand right away and she would comply without any fuss..

It made my days so blissful. Earlier getting her to do her homework would at times just drain my energy and patience, and would seem such a daunting task. But this wonderful workaround left both of us happy. There were no arguments, no shouting... everything just fell into place so easily.

All it needed was a change of approach from my end.

My daughter is still the same , a little kid who is just having fun. I have changed and am happy with the change.

Note : It's been two months since I started this practice. It still works. Now there are rare occasions when this does not work, and that much I can manage.

Raising kids 1

This post is part inspired by my personal experience as mom and part triggered by recent incident narrated by a friend about her neighbor. The lady, whose behavior prompted me to write this particular blog, has two kids aged 5.5 and 3.5 years old.

She was pushing and thrashing her kids, because the elder one scored zeroes in all his assessments. My friend intervened and stopped that, but she wondered what more she could have done.

Parenting skill is something that is relative what works for me may not work for her. And I do not have any proof that my parenting style is better. But I do believe that raising kids are like maintaining a bed of flowers. You need to nurture them with loving care, guidance and support.

Let me begin by asking, how you would nurture a sapling to grow into a flower blooming plant.

1)     You start by choosing the proper pot for your plant.

2)     You then make a mix of soil and fertilizers (need basis) to get nourishing mixture and pour it into the pot.

3)     You put your little prized sapling deep into the soil and pour a little water each day till the roots are holding the soil strongly.

4)     Slowly you see it grow with each passing day.

5)     You pour small quantity of water ensuring that in the process you do not damage it’s developing roots.

6)     You weed it regularly, so that its growth is not impacted by the weeds.

7)     Occasionally you prune it.

8)     Within few weeks/months your plant will bloom flowers.

9)     Then you can admire the result of all your hard work of so many months.

Questions

10)What if you added too much water in initial few days?

11)What if you pour whole week’s water supply in one day and then for the rest of the week ignored the sapling because of your work commitments?

12)What if instead of gently & carefully watering it, you emptied the entire water can in one go?

13)Will the sapling grow into a healthy plant?

In all possibility it might not grow at all. All you will be left with is a rotten set of stems and leaves.

14) You can keep wondering on what went wrong.

15) After all you did give the entire week’s water supply to it. So what if, it’s done in a single day.

16) Everything else was readily available for the plant, the soil, the sunlight, its own chlorophyll.

17) If it wished it would have turned into a plant with beautiful flowers.

18) Whose fault is it… plants or yours?

19) Keep thinking …. … You already know the answer.

20) All you needed to give the sapling was water at regular intervals, rest all was taken care of by the sapling itself.

21) But you failed to even provide that essential water supply and that and only that was your crucial contribution for its growth.

I will conclude this in one more blog, as what my friend had narrated me was very overwhelming  and today I can manage to write only this much. 

Why mom and dad are better teachers?

1. You know your child's strengths and weaknesses better than anybody else.

2. You are their first teacher. You taught them basic life skills. 

Did you visited a specialist to teach them how to walk, talk , eat, sleep ....?

3. A child is happiest while studying with loving parents.

You can teach them according to their schedule. 

In between give them breaks to play or do some other fun activity in between studies.

This is not at all viable in a coaching/tuition class.

4. As a parent you can adapt teaching strategy to suit your child's interest.

For example, a child who is interested in drawing  can be taught maths concept using drawing.  

Or a child who does lot of chef role play can be taught concepts using kitchen supplies.

5.  Last but not least, you can do a lot of play way learning at home than at school or extra classes.  

Your home is like a big laboratory, give your children freedom to experiment with lots of stuff available at home.

You just need to look around house carefully and you will find stuff that you can leverage for interactive teaching of maths/science and other subjects.

For tips you can browse my blog listing learning activities I do for my kids and students.

Inside Earth's Layers

This was a simple activity just to revise various layers of our mother Eaarth.

We used a thermacoal ball of about 3" diameter for this.

1) Cut the ball into half.

2)  Use acrylic colors to paint a yellow circle in the center with diameter of 2 cm.

3) Use orange and red colors to paint concentric rings about 2 -2.5 cm broad.

4) Paint the outer age of sphere with black or green color.


5)  The central yellow part represents INNER CORE. 

6) The orange colored layer represented OUTER CORE.

7) The red layer MANTEL.

8) The black outline represented CRUST.



This is how it looked

We pasted it on a MB board, and also put label for color coding.

Carbon Atomic Structure

This was done for a school assignment "How to represent Carbon Atom".e

Forgot to take step wise photos of the making process. 

But here are the steps in text:

1)   Take a big thermacoal ball approximately  3" in diameter, cut it into half.

2) Paint it black with Acrylic color.

3) Let it dry.

4) Make a 1/2 cm long ring to represent "L" shell using white color.

4) Take some wooden beads of  three different colors.   We had orange, pink and green.

• Orange beads represented Neutron.

• Pink Bead represented Proton

•  Green Bead represented Electron.

5)  Last step was to paste the beads on the ball.  6 Proton and  6 Neutron in center part representing Nucleus.

And 2 Green Beads on white band "L" shell. And remaining 4 green beads on the "M" shell represented by outer black band.



Here is the final model.

Chemical Reactions Model building activity

We also did a fun model building for chemical reactions.

Not that my daughter had any problem in understanding and forming chemical reaction equations.

We still did an activity, just to ensure more clarity about the concept.

Material used were small thermacoal balls and barbecue skewers. Some colors, we used acrylic as it gives a nice shine and texture.


So you start with coloring the balls in different colors. Ensure you have atleast 8-10 balls of each color.



We used acrylic colors to paint the balls in different colors to represent atoms of various elements.

Once the colored balls were dried up, we were ready to experiment with molecular structure.


Here is a sample reaction we tried for methane and oxygen reaction.

The chemical equation is CH4 + 2O2    =   CO2  +  2 H2O


And this is how we made the model

It helps to a great extent in gaining clear understanding of chemical reaction. 

1. It gives  an actual understanding of how molecules break in a chemical reaction to form a new compound. 

2. Also how atoms bond in a compound.

I would recommend it to all parents as a must do activity for grade 6 and above students.


Wish I had figured out this technique when I was studying. Let me confess that I was very bad in chemistry. Because I never got clarity on concepts like molecular structure and valency and bonding of atoms. 

Star Tracker Program

With two little kids at home, sometime things get little difficult to handle.

As a mother I had lots of thoughts and questions.

In order to help myself, I started followed a simple yet powerful  routine when my elder one was 8 and younger one 3 years old.

Deriving from my corporate experience, I decided to use same motivation technique and performance improvement method that I used for my project teams. With slight modification I adopted it for my kids.

I started  a Star Tracker Program for my girls.  It was a nice colorful diary where in we used to keep daily  record of

1) Good deeds

2) And not so good deeds


They would list all the things they did during the day, we would then categories those and list in separate heading.

If number of good deeds scored more than bad deeds. They would get a Star for that day.

End of the week and month we will check who has got more stars. Both of them tried to do as many good deeds as possible during the day.

Some of the deeds were put in special category like
 1) Helping grandparents
 2) Taking Care of your siblings
 3) Not watching TV but going out to play.
 4) Eating two fruits a day

These were awarded more stars.

I added these special categories to highlight importance of these things in our life.

Also there were days when the Not so good deeds score was very high and chances of getting a star was bleak. These special categories would boost their star value on those days.

The objective of this exercise was not to highlight the wrong things but focus on good things. So I always ensured that they get at-least one star a day.  The  number of stars for a day depended upon how many activities remain on Good side after cancelling against the Not so good deeds.

Later based on my girls feedback we also added a Mother Star tracker, where in we would also list my good or bad deeds of the day and rate me as well.

We followed this daily for almost a year. And helped me a lot in instilling the right values and manners in my children. Sometime they would fill it themselves (especially my elder one , younger one was too small to write) and bring it to me for marking a star. Though my younger one was barely 3 years that time, but she used to list out all good/not good stuff properly.

I am not a trained psychologist, but as a mother I can vouch that this little exercise did wonders to my girls and myself.

It ensured that we talked about good and bad behavior for at-least 15 minutes daily. The 360* feedback (term from my corporate days) that I added post my daughters feedback added a new dimension to the whole thing.  It made them  realize that everybody (their mother included) has limitations and even grown-ups needs improvements. And there is no shame if someone highlights your wrong doing and asks you to improve. Life is about bringing a positive change in your life.

It also helped them open up a lot, as we discussed both good and bad things with out fear of any reprimanding later.

I would recommend it to all parents. All you need is a nice diary with colorful pages (to begin with choose one cartoon characters or some kiddie design) some star stickers, sketch pens. Plus you need to set aside 15-20 minutes from your busy day for this activity.

Do try it out and let me know how it helped you.

Would be happy to hear your feedback.

Happy parenting and happy learning.

Friendship Band

Tomorrow is friendship day and as always we decided to make the bands at home.

We started with chenille stems and wooden beads.

Chenille stems  as it can be easily weaved and molded into shapes.

Here is what the girls did with the supplies :

Finally, the friendship bands were ready to use.

We all had such an awesome creative time, making these bands.

Aren't these pretty?