Category: <span>Family</span>

A lot of people don’t realize that kids emotions – and adult emotions – are neither good nor bad in themselves. It’s how we act on them that counts. They are an important part of who we are as human beings, and they act as a safety valve on a very basic level to protect us from some physical and mental illnesses.

It is important for children to understand their emotions, and to learn to express them in a way that is healthy for them and for others. Even adolescents sometimes have trouble expressing feelings in a socially acceptable way, which is why it is important to have patience with them.

Your Example As A Parent

One of the most important ways children learn about their emotions and how to handle them is by observing their parents. Kids emotions are patterned by parents, simply by watching them model how to respond to various life situations, whether in a positive or negative way. For instance, if a child sees parents constantly fighting and acting out in physical aggression, he is more likely to follow this negative behavior in his own life.

Parents often are riddled by guilt because of the wrong choices they have made in their own lives, and they worry about whether their children will follow them. It’s important to remember, though, that children can learn as much from your mistakes as from your right choices, if you allow them to do so.

Communication is the key to helping children learn from your mistakes. For instance, if you lost your temper with a child unnecessarily because you had a bad day, you can sit down with him or her and apologize, then explain why you felt and acted the way you did. This gives children an opportunity to learn something very important, which they will use many times in the future: how to apologize, and how to forgive others.

Children Learn From The Reactions Of Others

Kids emotions and behavior are also shaped by the way people react to expression of positive or negative emotions. A baby will quickly learn that if he cries long enough and hard enough, someone will pick him up eventually, and give him what he needs at that moment, whether it’s a hug, a bottle, or a change of diaper.

When children are young, they have difficulty understanding and sorting out their emotions. Children learn by experience which expressions of emotion work and which don’t, so it’s important for parents and other significant adults in a child’s life not to unwittingly reward bad behavior.

It’s often helpful for parents to sit down with a child who is having a fit of anger and help the child to verbalize what he is feeling. Saying such things as, “It’s okay to feel angry with your brother right now, but it’s not okay to hit him”, helps the child to understand the feelings he has, and how to vent them properly. Passive forms of discipline, such as giving the child a needed time out, can help to curb bad behavior.

Sometimes kids’ emotions are uncomfortable. A child will often act out to try to get rid of an uncomfortable feeling. You can teach them other, healthier methods, like expressing their feelings through arts and crafts, or venting through physical exercise and sports.

Parents should also be quick to reward right behavior when they see it in their children. Since children love to be praised when they do the right thing, this can have a heavy impact on their actions.

Teaching Children Empathy For Others

Empathy is an important trait to develop in your children. It helps them to realize that how they express their emotions can affect someone else in a negative way, and teaches them to care about the feelings of others. How do you break children of the feeling that their own needs are more important than someone else’s?

One way is to describe your own feelings and the feeling of others about their behavior to them. Since children innately want to please their parents, it helps them to understand that wrong expressions of feeling cause pain in others.

It’s also helpful to model for children the importance of reaching out to others in the family or community who may be in need. Teaching volunteerism to children and adolescents, and encouraging them to respond selflessly to the needs of others, helps children to see that there is something important beyond themselves.

Teaching children how to properly deal with emotions isn’t easy, but it is an important tool they will carry with them to use the rest of their lives.

Do your kids like making things with art and craft toys? Most kids do, if their efforts have always been praised. What are the benefits of children creating arts and crafts and playing with toys in this genre? There are a multitude of developmental effects that enhance a child’s creativity and thought processes.

The ability to make something from nothing is a skill that cannot be denied. It has become less popular in recent years due to the rise of technology toys like kids tablets and video games, but it can still have a huge effect on a child’s self esteem when you find good (and honest) things to say about something they have made. Arts and crafts is a pastime from late 19th and early 20th century in Europe and America that can still be relevant in today’s society.

One of the prevalent benefits of arts and crafts in a child’s upbringing is a rise in self-esteem. The activity of creating a simple craft, drawing a painting or making a birdcage out of popsicle sticks can attest to this. There are so many different ranges of capability, something simple can be made or something complex. Even toddlers can participate in various types of arts and crafts.

There are also those children who find out they have knack for things in this arena and it can flow over into the rest of their life. Allowing and encouraging a child into creating something might just be the discovery of what they are supposed to do with their life.

Another benefit of toys that are in the arts and craft genre, even if kids are not specially gifted creatively, is the development of fine motor skills. This means things like using fingers for detailed work. Being able to manipulate a pencil to draw a picture takes time as a small child, and kids can find out how to do so more effectively with practice. Picking up small objects, glueing things together, stringing beads together or even coloring can all help a child to improve his or her fine motor skills.

The ability to plan a project from start to finish can even help a child to develop business skills. Conscious focusing, relying on memory when needed, and attentiveness to the task at hand is something that can flow over into success in the professional and academic world.

So keep this in mind the next time you pull out the crayons, paper, glue, macaroni, scissors, and any other objects needed for the craft. Do not worry about the mess it might make or if the child is thinking outside of the box and creating something different then intended. Creating a plan of action can be a good idea; and other times just giving a child the tools to make something and letting them allow their imagination to roam free can be best.

Children will have different approaches and this is fine, encourage them in the pursuit and exclaim over any finished products. It is fine to hand over feedback, but make sure that is constructive so that the child figures out how to incorporate it into his or her psyche in a positive manner. If you give criticism or suggestions for improvement, be sure to sandwich it between praise before and praise after. You can always find something positive to say, perhaps beginning “I like the way you have …”

Processing of visual patterns and information is something that seems to come naturally as an adult for most people. But where were was this skill learned? Often at the arts and craft table, a child learns how to notice and comprehend how a group of things constitutes a pattern, different colors, and identification of shapes.

Thus, encouraging your child to create arts and crafts is something that can benefit him or her in manners of self-esteem, execution of fine motor skills, the ability to following a plan of action, and visual processing capabilities.

Here’s a great tutorial for kids on how to make beautiful butterflies:

There are many potential benefits of buying tablets for kids however, there are also several drawbacks of letting your child use one. Depending on your child’s age, he or she may handle this powerful and versatile minicomputer in a rough manner. For parents, this is a big issue since they spent a lot of money to buy this device just for it to be mistreated.

One of the major issues of buying tablets for kids is how your child will use the device. Most parents will just tell their child to use it with limitations but they don’t really know what’s running into their child’s mind. Their child can use it as music or a movie player all day long and this will discourage them to go outside and play since they are satisfied with what they already have.

Also, there are some tablets that don’t have strict parental features and if this is the case, then the parents will have no control as to what their child will be able to access especially in the internet.

Obesity should also be one of the biggest concerns that parents should be able to know today especially when they are planning to buy a tablet for their child because it will mean less exercise since their child is going to sit all day using the device. There may be some applications that their child can download which teaches them about fitness but there is no assurance if their child is going to use it.

Another big disadvantage of buying a tablet for your child is the pressure of choosing the right one since there are a lot of tablet brands that has different features for both the hardware and the software. Of course, parents should be able to compare tablets for them to choose the best one and for them to not regret what they have bought in the long run and this is certainly not an easy task to do.

Your child’s attention span could be shorter when buying your child a tablet since they will focus more on what they are doing with it. This will cause less bonding time for the family which is definitely not healthy.

Parents who are concerned of giving the best things for their child should consider these several major drawbacks of buying a tablet for their child. They should also be aware that a tablet is not a cheap device which is why they should really think twice or thrice before buying one for their child.

Finally, if you have decided to buy one, you should make sure that your child is going to use it for several years to come and it will provide them more benefits that disadvantages so that you won’t regret buying it.