Category: Parents Zone

Source：Pediatric Specialist Doctor, Chiu Cheung Shing

When children get sick, some parents may become very anxious and immediately take their child to the doctor or give them medicine. However, some parents believe that if they wait for a while, the child will naturally recover. In reality, this approach is somewhat correct to a certain extent. For mild illnesses like the common cold or cough, allowing the child to rest can help them develop some antibodies that can protect them from future infections. However, parents should be aware that not all illnesses can be treated this way.

For some strong bacteria, waiting for a natural recovery can be dangerous. For example, with bacteria like Streptococcus pneumoniae or Neisseria meningitidis, if you wait for natural recovery, there can be serious consequences. Within 24 hours of infection, 1 in 10 people may die. Even if death doesn’t occur, 1 to 2 individuals may end up with lifelong disabilities or complications. So whether you wait for natural recovery or not depends on whether the illness is mild or severe.

Source : Registered Clinical Psychologist, Yiu Fong Lee

 Some parents may notice that their children, aged 4 to 5, often have trouble staying focused when playing with toys. For example, they may play with one toy for only 2 minutes before switching to another, and they might take out all the toys in the room without cleaning up afterward. Parents may worry that if their children are so unfocused now, how will they fare in exams or when studying in the future?

 It turns out that when children’s brain development is not yet mature, their attention span can be a bit short. Research has found that mindfulness can help improve children’s focus, especially by training their frontal lobes, which can enhance their attention and concentration.

 There are some mindfulness games that can be used as a reference. For example, parents can use certain apps with visual cues. Children can follow these apps, for instance, there might be an image of a balloon that inflates when they breathe in and deflates when they breathe out. This way, by following their breath, children can improve their ability to concentrate. Additionally, there’s a practice called ‘Statue,’ which many parents might remember from their own childhood. In this exercise, children must sit still and watch an app or a timer for a specific duration to see how long they can remain seated calmly.

Source: Educational psychologists, Shum Ka Man and Tang Wai Yan

 Interactive reading is when parents and children engage in reading through conversation. The main difference between interactive reading and traditional reading aloud lies in the fact that traditional reading aloud often involves parents telling stories to children or, in some cases, parents’ intention to teach children to recognize words, focusing primarily on word recognition. However, the advantage of interactive reading is not just about word recognition; it aims to foster a positive parent-child relationship and help children express themselves through conversation.

 In interactive reading, children take on an active role, where they can ask questions and guide the conversation through these questions and answers, thereby enhancing their reading comprehension skills. When parents engage in interactive reading with children, they should consider what questions to ask and what steps to follow. There are various ways for parents to ask questions, and we teach them a prompting framework that includes five different question types, abbreviated as ‘CROWD.’

 C stands for Completion, where questions can be posed in a fill-in-the-blank manner. R represents Recall, encouraging children to remember what happened earlier in the story. O denotes Open-ended questions, allowing children to speculate about what might happen next. W represents Wh questions, covering the six Ws: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Finally, D stands for Distancing questions, which prompt children to relate the story to their own life experiences, asking how the story connects to their daily lives.

 Source: Educational psychologists, Shum Ka Man and Tang Wai Yan

 The techniques used in dialogic reading, including questioning and the subsequent interaction between parents and children, can actually be applied and practiced not only in reading but also in everyday life.

 For example, during playtime or when encountering something new while out shopping or seeing objects around, these questioning methods can be applied. As for the steps, we engage in a conversation and exchange with the child. For instance, if we are playing with trains at home, parents can use a questioning approach like, ‘When we’re on transportation, what do we usually ride?’

 These methods can encourage children to express themselves more and foster greater interaction with their parents. Besides play, children often enjoy drawing. During the process of drawing, you can also employ dialogic reading techniques. For example, ask questions like, ‘What is the content of this drawing?’ ‘What is this?’ ‘When did you see this? Could it be related to the playground equipment we saw at the park last week?

Written by Marriage and Family Therapist, Child Play Therapist, Rachel Ng

When my son was in the first grade, I often encountered the same group of parents at the pick-up and drop-off station. One of the parents had a son who coincidentally attended the same school and grade as my son, so we gradually became acquainted. It was also during that time that I began to witness what was called “monster parents”!

She would frequently ask about my child’s extracurricular activities because her son was enrolled in various classes every day, sometimes even attending two in a single day. On the other hand, I struggled to list many activities for my son. He enjoyed exploring and creating games at home, finding his own joy. I also saw that he was able to grasp the lessons taught at school, so I felt that there was no need for him to participate in additional extracurricular activities. Always, my wish for him was to be happy.

However, gradually, when most of the parents around you gather and chatter about what their children are learning, what levels they’ve achieved in music and language exams, and so on, I, who originally believed in the “go with the flow” approach, began to feel anxious. I couldn’t help but question whether I was a lazy, unambitious, and neglectful mother who didn’t plan for her child’s future!

Written by: Speech Therapist, Lee Wing Yan

 With the advancement of technology and material abundance nowadays, it’s not hard to see that tablets are being used as “electronic pacifiers” for young children. Regardless of the occasion, whenever parents bring out this “electronic pacifier” and play YouTube videos, children sit quietly, and adults can focus on their tasks. Since tablets and smartphones can calm young children and provide educational games and videos for learning, does that mean they are quality toys?

 The key to selecting “quality toys” lies in whether young children can genuinely learn from them. Indeed, educational videos and interactive games can offer the cognitive concepts that preschoolers need to learn, but we also need to consider how preschoolers actually learn language.

 Recent foreign research explores the impact of the parent-child interaction pattern on language development one year later (i.e., at age 3). The study found that the presence of “connectedness” between parents and children during interactions most influenced the child’s subsequent language development, including whether both parties participated in the same activity in turns. Additionally, children’s learning of verbs, such as “I eat” in “eat” or “Mom drinks water” in “drink,” directly affects their future language development (from the three examples above, it’s clear that to form complete sentences, children need to recognize a certain number of verbs).

 Seizing everyday life opportunities to teach verbs through activities

 So, can tablets and smartphones achieve the mentioned “connectedness”? Based on my daily observations, children tend to use tablets and smartphones alone, and they resist it when parents want to intervene. Furthermore, most of what children learn from videos are limited to English alphabets, counting, nursery rhymes, cartoon character names, or specific dialogues from cartoon characters. But what about verbs? Verbs are often easily overlooked in videos because children can learn them more effectively by doing them in real situations! For example, teaching a child the action of “brushing teeth” doesn’t it involve singing a nursery rhyme “Up and down the brush,” repeatedly emphasizing the action of “brushing,” and brushing teeth together with them? In daily life, whether during bath time, cooking, playing with toys, or going to the park, parents can take the opportunity to teach relevant verbs used in different scenarios through interactive activities.