Is it really a Tantrum?

Krishnan raised an interesting question about what we adults refer to as a child’s tantrum in response to my earlier post, “Dealing with your child's stubborn tantrums”.

That set me thinking. I was curious and looked up the definition of ‘tantrum’. Tantrum is defined as a fit of bad temper. Now is it justified to call a child’s behavior of continuously crying to express her frustration or hunger a tantrum? I would tend not to agree. When children are not able to control themselves and resort to kicking, screaming, or pounding the floor, that may again be due to extreme frustration experienced by them because they have been denied something they want, and their parents aren’t responding to their actions either.

I came across this article titled “A Guide to Tantrums: Understanding, preventing and surviving them” by Claire McCarthy, M.D., Harvard Health Publications. Here is the link to the article http://health.msn.com/kids-health/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100211722&page=1.

Claire has written a very well balanced article on this subject that covers why children behave in this fashion, and how parents can help prevent or diffuse the same.

There is one paragraph I would like to quote that I believe is the essence to understanding everything: “The key to preventing or diffusing tantrums is to understand your child's tantrum triggers, and understand what it feels like to be little and out of control.” I think if we as parents really exercise patience in understanding this aspect, that’s half the solution.

In the case of our daughter after one time she was crying loudly for over 5 minutes when she didn’t get what she wanted, when she calmed down a bit I hugged her and explained to her in a very loving manner that I knew why she cried like this, but why we didn’t give her what she wanted.

To which she nodded her head as if she understood what I was talking about completely. We shall see, if not keep trying harder! :-)

Colors, Shapes, Alphabets & Numbers

I was thinking about how, as if by magic, our children grasp the concepts of colors, alphabets, numbers, shapes etc. at such a young age.

For instance, our daughter who will be 2.5 years old in August is able to sing the whole ABCD song, rattle off numbers from 1 to 14, and identify some of the shapes. She is able to recognize alphabets and relate them to objects: for example 'g' for grapes, but she is not able to say the alphabet when asked at random. She has some trouble identifying colors as well. Maybe she is still too young for this.

We do the same things most parents would do: read to her daily; let her watch educational shows on TV; sing nursery rhyme songs along with her whenever she feels like singing, and help her identify and say numbers and colors when there is an opportunity.

I was just curious in general, apart from the above tried and tested methods of helping our child learn, if any parents have come up with unique and novel ways in which to help their children learn to read and recognize alphabets, numbers, colors, shapes, etc.?

We would like you to share them with all the readers so we can make this whole process much more fun than it already is for us and our children.

Sriram

UV protection for Kids

I just read this article as I was browsing the web that I wanted to share with others. Please view http://www.nj.com/news/gloucester/local/index.ssf?/base/news-10/121540572624740.xml&coll=8.

The article talks about how our children always need UV protection when they are outdoors in the sun. I took note since we have been going to the beach during this summer, as our daughter loves the water. Its a little scary how most of the time we don't think of these things, taking a lot of things for granted.

I thought this article would be useful for everyone with kids.

Sriram