Exploring Our Children’s Potentials

Earlier this year I recommended a book by Dr Kevin Leman called ‘Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours’.

I don’t know if you’ve read it by now. If you haven’t, I’d still encourage you to pick one up from a book shop or borrow one from your local library. It’s a very insightful read.

Anyway.

Today I’d like to share with you three parenting reminders I personally find useful.

And hope you and I can learn to put them into practice, consistently, everyday.

Happy reading!

…

1. Listen

Ask your children how they feel about their school, their activities, the family, the events of the day. Really LISTEN to what they say.

And when they do share, it is often a good idea to ‘refrain’ from giving  ‘quick negative comments or corrections’, as it will ‘dampen’ their willingness to ‘share their true feelings about something’.

Asking a simple and sincere question like ‘Ooo, and then?’ will further encourage the child to open up too.

(I know I need to be better in this)

2. Spend time WITH your children

Put special time in your schedule just to be with them.

Fulltime moms usually feel they’re with the kids all the time anyway. But when we look closely at how we spend the day with the kids, are we just ‘together’ with them, or do we really have those ‘special time’ with them?

Every child longs for that special bonding time with his parents. And it could be anything, from going out and about regularly as a family, cuddling up while reading a book together before bedtime, to helping Mommy out in the kitchen.

3. Spend time WITHOUT your children

Get someone to help and look after the kids while the parents plan a night out.

Okay now, this is a tough one for us.

Unless our parents or other close family members are here on holidays, it’s tough for us to get someone (whom we’re comfortable with) to babysit the kids.

For our case, our ‘time together without the kids’ is when they’re all asleep at night. That’s when we can freely chat, catch up, share, or even watch a DVD together.

Oh another option (which we did last Saturday) is :
we let the kids to play at IKEA’s Smaland, a supervised play area themed after a Swedish forest, for one good hour, while we both walked around the store, and enjoyed a good chat over IKEA’s yummy hot-dogs and curry puff!

The kids enjoyed themselves! And, so did we.