Home
Alone:
If you can't be
there when your child gets home from school, find a way to give her/him
the feeling of being supervised.
·
Make sure your home is safe.
·
Set firm rules.
· Prepare your
child to deal with situations that may arise.
· Keep in touch;
get a mobile phone or pager.
For more
information, the Canada Safety Council has a booklet entitled:-
At
Home on My Own.
To get a copy, send a stamped [94 cents] 6x9-inch envelope to the
Canadian Safety Council, 1020 Thomas Spratt Place, Ottawa, Ontario K1G
5L5 CANADA.
Note from
Barbara Joy……….
Remember Parents,
Prepare your children well, communicate with them often, set firm rules,
make sure your children follow those rules, ground them when they
disobey you [remember you mean business], and you will live to see your
children to adulthood.
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Parents, here are valuable
articles to help you parent well and help your children. They are
FREE.
Pass it on to other parents who are looking to parenting well.
A CHECKUP FOR PARENTS
Set Good Examples
Parents are the child’s first role model. What they wish to teach
children, they must possess themselves.
Carl’s house was for sale,
and his parents were showing it to prospective buyers. Trying to help,
Carl told about the leaking roof, and was reprimanded for it later.
“We finally sold the
house,” laughed Carl later, “but I’ll bet those people were mad when
they discovered the roof leaked!”
How effective will these
parents be in teaching honesty, consideration for others, or
truthfulness? Perhaps in the home more than anywhere else, parental
actions speak louder than words. Can parents teach calmness when they
have little control over their tempers? Or forgiveness for mistakes
toward their children? Or truthfulness, when they instruct children to
tell telephone callers they are not home?
What parent’s model for
children will likely be imitated. Parental fairness teaches justice.
If parents approve and praise, children learn to like themselves, and
treat others well. Parents who practice tolerance teach children
patience.
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Love Your
Children
Parents must be models for loving. Children can love only
to the degree they have been loved. First John 4:19 illustrates this:
“We love because he first loved us.” Children who are loved find it
easy to love playmates, teachers, and, in the future, marriage partners,
for they have seen love at its best.
To love children means to accept them as they are,
regardless of good points or faults. This kind of love gives children
strength and security.
Parents should demonstrate an inclusive love. They may love
their own children too much and other persons too little. Jesus, in
answer to “Who are my mother and my brother?” [Mark 3:33] included those
who were of no blood kin as well. Parents demonstrate God’s love for
all mankind when they reach out to those beyond their families.
Instill Positive
Ideas of God
Loving, caring parents lay the groundwork for positive ideas
of God. Children who are loved can best believe in a loving God.
Bill had a bike accident, involving costly repairs. Feeling
the burden was too great for the boy, Dad agreed to split the cost. As
Bill experienced his father’s mercy, he felt a surge of love toward
him. As a result of such experiences, Bill learned about the Father’s
mercy as demonstrated by his own father. In the same way, parents teach
God’s forgiveness by showing forgiveness. They teach God’s
steadfastness by being dependable in all circumstances.
Parents transmit positive ideas of God by faithful
attendance in worship services and Sunday School. On these occasions,
children sense the people dearest to them feel God is important. This
helps the children to believe that God is important for them
personally.
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Instill Feelings
of Value
By going to church with their children, parents are also
saying:”I care about you. I value you as a person.” This sense of
value is strengthened by the right kind of communication in the home.
Talking is not communication. There needs to be an exchange of warmth
and understanding. For this to happen, parents must listen to their
children. By doing so, they help them clarify what is happening to them
and give support for any defeat or victory they may have.
One mother taped this statement over her sink: “When we are
too busy to listen to our children, we are too busy.” A child told her
teacher: “What I don’t like at our house is the newspaper.” Does the
daily paper exclude real communication with your children?
Praise is excellent communication. It makes children feel
valued and develops healthy self-esteem. Praise helps children become
confident in themselves. On the other hand, emphasis on mistakes is
disastrous.
In a loving moment, Lisa decided to write to her
grandmother. Upon seeing the letter, Lisa’s mother pointed out the
errors instead of praising Lisa for her thoughtfulness. This parent did
not understand that persons cannot build on weaknesses but upon
strengths. By praising what children do, parents express confidence in
their ability and encourage self-sufficiency.
Give Proper
Discipline
Feelings of value can also flourish in an atmosphere where
appropriate discipline is enforced. Some rules should be negotiable.
Others should be flexible as growth and maturity take place. For
correction, parents should rely on careful timing, listening,
understanding, and awareness of the child’s feelings. This leaves open
the possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness. It teaches children
that discipline is to help them, not to relive parents’ frustration or
anger.
Discipline involves allowing children to experience the
consequences of their actions. This provides learning situations if
consequences are imposed in friendly ways, free of retaliation. Paul
stated this attitude in Ephesians 6:4: “Fathers, provoke not your
children to wrath.”
Discipline involves allowing children maximum freedom to
work things out on their own, considering their skills and abilities.
In giving such freedom, parents help children move toward independence
and responsibility.
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Evaluation
Evaluations are tools for self-improvement. This checklist
can help you work toward becoming a better parent. Do you:
________ Admit your shortcomings and ask your child’s forgiveness?
________ Practice truthfulness and fairness?
________ Accept the child as he or she is?
________ Listen often to your child?
________ Talk often with, not to, your child?
________ Express appreciation, approval, praise, and love?
________ Show love for others outside the family?
________ Instill feelings of value and respect in your child?
________ Act supportive in the child’s victories and defeats?
________ Demonstrate God’s love in your treatment of your child?
________ Attend Sunday School and worship services with your child?
________ Give enough freedom to benefit from experiences?
________ Encourage independence and responsibility?
________ Make rules consistent, yet flexible, considering the
offense
and the age of the child?
________ Keep rules few and simple?
________ Avoid using threats, bribes, criticism, or words as
weapons?
________ Discipline without anger or retaliation?
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Decades of research
demonstrates that enjoying reading, and reading well, are the biggest
factors in a child’s school success. Good readers make great students:
They score higher on achievement tests in every grade and in all
subjects, including math and science. So what are the “secrets” of
giving your children an academic edge and a lifetime pleasure?
1.
Good readers
start out ahead—and stay ahead.
Reading scores in Grade 1
are a key indicator of success in high school. “If a child is reading
in Grade 2, school success is pretty much guaranteed. Right now…four
out of ten children are at risk of not becoming successful readers. We
have to reduce that statistic and parents are a big part of that
solution. The earlier you get your child started, the better. Try this
tips:-
●
Read, talk and sing to babies. This builds a strong foundation for
vocabulary and understanding. Respond to your infant’s coos and cries,
building to a point when the two of you can look at or refer to the same
thing. For example, with a wordless picture book, point to pictures of
objects—a hat or a dog—and say their names.
Then move on to books
with just one word per page, increasing to more words as the child
understands. The idea is that parent and child are sharing an
experience around a book.
●
Turn everyday experiences into opportunities to teach reading. When you
go for a walk, there are all kinds of opportunities to develop your
child’s language skills by simply talking about what you see. The more
you talk to your toddler, the more you’re assisting in literacy
development.
●
Have your toddler “write” about what they’ve seen with crayons, chalk or
even their finger in flour sprinkled on a plate. Those squiggles are
very important. Writing comes before reading in language development,
and this is your child’s way of documenting his or her story.
●
Sound it out. Make your pre-schooler aware of the names of the alphabet
letters and the sounds that make up words. This phonemic awareness is
crucial in learning to read. To make the process fun, have your child
find two, three, six things in his room that start with an “sss” sound.
Magnetic fridge letters are good for letter-sound fun—find the letter
that makes the “mmmm” sound. Or, try playing I Spy with letter sounds.
Rhyming books are another good way to have children pay attention to
sounds. Clapping out sounds is excellent too. For example, clap out
the word cat—that’s three sounds.
●
Practice, practice, practice. Young school-aged children need lots of
it. Label objects in your children’s rooms with stick-on notes, so they
can see which letters make up the words. Call attention to new words by
having a “word of the week” and using it during dinnertime
conversation.
2.
Good readers
have better vocabularies.
Most parents talk to their
children in simple sentences that tell them what to do, such as,
“Please, get ready for bed!” But kids need rich, interative
dialogue—just keep it at their level.
And the time to build
vocabulary is before they start school. However, the brutal truth is
that the first year of schooling has no measurable impact on
vocabulary. From Grade 3 on, kids need to learn about 3,000 new words a
year, or about eight new words a day. And it takes at least four
exposures to make a word his or her own. To enrich your child’s word
power, try these tips:
●
Help the child build on thoughts. If she points to a dog and says
“dog”, you might say, “Yes, that’s a big black dog.”
●
Tell stories, especially about your own family. That way, your kids
will get the concept of characters, plot, middle, beginning and end.
●
Encourage play. It’s essential for developing language skills and
giving voice to ideas. For example, having a play restaurant with play
food or labeled pictures of food can help children both to use the
object and to see/say the new word.
●
Read a variety of books, preferably chosen by your child—picture books,
stories with rhymes, science or history books that convey cool new
information. For kids aged three to five, we recommend such titles as
Is Your Mama a Llama or The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and then engage
your child in conversations about what you read together.
●
When you come across a word, explain it—and always encourage your child
to ask what a word means.
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3.
Good readers
are good thinkers.
Good readers predict what
will happen in the stories they read, forming theories they later
compare to the text. In the case of nonfiction, good readers read to
get information for their general knowledge base. As you start a new
book, talk about the cover and title, and flip through and ask them what
they think will happen. Then ask what they liked about the book. This
will help them to summarize—which is difficult for most children.
4.
Good readers
visualize a story in their mind.
Children who do this are
better at remembering details and better at handling exposity text
[think textbooks]. As you read with then, encourage them to notice
what’s being described—a character’s hair colour, for example.
5.
Good readers
connect to what they’re reading.
They can also apply it to
another context—their own lives. Comments from you can help them become
engaged: “This story reminds me of the time…” Talk about the story and
put it within their world. Another tip:- Have kids follow written
directions such as recipes. They connect what they read to real life,
whether it’s conversations about a story or directions for building a
model airplane.
The GREATEST gift a parent
can give their child is to encourage their natural interest in exploring
their language. Kids who struggle over words and have trouble
understanding text read less, putting them at a disadvantage. The good
news is that practice can help them catch up. A study at the University
of Toronto took 20 students from grades 3 and 4 who read at a
first-grade level and had them read 30 minutes a day –ten times as much
as they had previously—over 16 weeks. The kids ended up advancing two
grade levels in reading fluency and one grade level in reading
comprehension.
Of course, academic
achievement isn’t the only reason to nurture reading skills. There’s
also the pure joy of reading. “I cannot imagine my life without books,
says Barbara Joy Clarke, author of Amazing Kids and Lasting Marriages.
“Books are a way of learning and understanding many things and offer an
escape from every day life!”
Reading can give your child
those magic moments and help to foster a love of language and wisdom
found nowhere else.
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