Bi-lingual books

Lawrence was in Guangzhou last month and he bought some books for the kids. I was appalled when I received the books from him. I guess he simply picked up a few as he was told to, and didn't even bother reading the contents.

When I showed the books to him, he just laughed without putting up a defence, for once :()

I had to cross out all the English lines, one by one! I bet you would faint too if you flip through the book :( The author simply did a word for word translation of the story from Chinese to English!

We have to be extra careful when buying bi lingual books for our kids. We may end up teaching them bad English otherwise!

"No junk" policy

Though not exactly a health freak myself, I am very particular about the kids' diet.

Every so often, Nicole would bring home bags and bags of sweets and "junks" from birthday parties held in her school. I would normally do a quick check before returning the party bag to her. Out go the sweets, heavily sweetened cookies or biscuits, twisties, cheesy rings and what not. She would probably be left with 1 mashmallow and 1 plain cracker. She has learnt to accept her fate and be happy with what she is given. I am thankful to have Nicole's understanding in this area :) In this incident, poor Nicole was left with one tiny bag of mashmallow.

I would rather buy my own snacks for her. An occasional treat of ice cream and chocolates and a good selection of yogurt and cheese sticks :) Perhaps this is one way to keep your kids healthy? Nicole doesn't fall ill easily, thank God!

Is honey more effective than cough syrup?

I am not sure if there is any scientifc proof in this. I realise that Nicole has been coughing much less ever since I started filling her school water bottle up with honey water, 3 times a week. In fact, the last time she really coughed was a long time back, at least some 3 to 4 months ago.

Perhaps you could let your child try it too, but not if they are less than 1 year old!

How to get young children to drink water?

I believe when young children are down with virus or bacterial infections, the most challenging task of the parents is to get them to drink water, as much fluid as possible.

Thankfully, I was able to convince Nicole to drink plenty of water when she was down with stomach flu 2 days ago. I had to get creative in telling her stories on how the bad virus was playing up in her tummy. I told her she needed to drown the virus with warm water every half an hour and she needed to drink some soup to give her the energy to fight the virus. As silly as the stories could get, it was effective in gushing fluid down into her body to help flush out the virus speedily :)

Well, if your kids have problems taking plain water, you could think of your own silly little stories to convince them too!

How to cultivate interest in reading (2)?

Further to my earlier post dated 9 July 2008 on above subject matter, a reader has shared her frustration in getting her daughter to even sit and listen for a minute. I have some suggestions which perhaps could get the little ones to at least sit and listen for a minute before they run away to something more interesting :-)

1) The reading environment should be quiet with as little distraction as possible (keep all toys away, anything which will distract them. If you have a helper, get her to sit in to help "control" the kids)

2) Most kids (assuming aged between 2 to 6), would enjoy role-playing. Before you start reading a book, perhaps you could tell them that you are pretending to be her school teacher, Ms.XXX. They tend to be more attentive :)

3) If the book describes a dog, you could imitate the sound of a dog "whoof whoof" and make them laugh. Try to be more interactive and involve them in your story telling. I know most of us are not trained in this area and it will be an uphill task for us too :) but it is worth a try!

Well, try it out and let me know if it works and gradually they would enjoy more of your story telling and they would voluntarily sit and wait for you :) (hopefully) :)

Happy Reading!

How to encourage babies to talk?

One good way I discover is to help your baby "vocalise his babbles". For example, if you hear him saying "ple" while looking at an apple, you could reinforce it by saying "apple"! Try it...