Money Management to Children

For a number of parents, talking about money and finance itself is a big anathema! Most parents never talk to their children about the money and its management. Children ask for money and parents just oblige with them! As per recent surveys, many children who are growing into adults get themselves into a situation of debt by the time they reach the age of 20! Apart from parents educating their children about food, school and hygiene, it is critically important that they also teach their children about the importance of money and financial literacy. Understanding and learning about cash and credit is very important for all children so that they can learn to be responsible with their finance.

Is it possible to teach financial literacy to our children? Can we teach our children how they can conserve and save the money? When we educate our children about the importance of money, we will be empowering them to keep more of the money they get and do a lot more with the money they spend for things. Parents need not be financial experts to teach about money and its management. However, parents must understand the fundamental goals and lessons that they are trying to teach. Caring about the money and understanding its amazing characters are two of the most critical things that children should remember.

A child armed with the basic knowledge of money management will succeed in his or her future life when compared to those children who spend money in a reckless manner. Educating and empowering our children in their young age will help them grow as responsible and financially secure adults.

"Rich Dad Poor Dad" is one book that I found amazing. It brings out some fundamental ways to teach about money to our children. Parents must read this book to teach their children.

ISP: The Art of Parenting

Children are God-given gifts and we are sure that they are spreading joy and cheer all around. It is towards this end that we have developed a systematic approach called the " Infant SSY Program" (ISP). It is now acknowledged that the true potential of child can be fully realized if the child develops Physically, Mentally, Socially, Emotionally and Spiritually.

Do you know?

Your 3-4 years child can ...
- Read like yourself
- Understand 10 or more languages.
- Do binary functions in Maths.
- Operate computers
- Play the piano, violin, harmonium or any other instrument.

The ISP guides parents on how to bring up children right from the stage of conception to 8 years. It specially deals with improving all the 8 types of intelligence of children. It also deals with the overall development of the child covering the Physical, Mental, Social, Emotional and Spiritual areas.

ISP uses various brain stimulant methods like Flash Cards, Dot Cards, Encyclopedia Cards, stimulation of five senses etc. We have practically implemented that the aforesaid techniques on the children in the age of 6 months (with Mothers) to 6 Years at our School MET's Rishikul Vidyalaya - at Bandra(West) Mumbai.

Just give a thought how many times we say "NO or Don't do" to our child, which can affect right brain development. This program guides parents on creating a positive environment for the child, and making parenting a joyful journey.

The Infant SSY Program (ISP) is a byproduct of the Siddha Samadhi Yoga (SSY) Program. Guru Rishi Prabhakar is the founder of the SSY and the Infant SSY Program. The Program has been developed & enhanced by Shri Raviji and Manoj Lekhiji.

Learning Styles

Learning styles form an excellent method to assist upgrade our children's quality of learning. By knowing our children's personal learning styles, we can make them adapt to the intricate process of learning lessons and syllabi. Each child has his or her own way of learning their class lessons and other useful things of life. Most children possess a delicate mixture of learning styles and techniques. Some of them may possess a dominant style of learning with lesser use for other styles. On the other hand, most of the children use a judicious mix of different learning styles. In fact, we can never have a right or perfect kind of mix. In many cases, learning styles keep changing during the course of brain development in children.

Most of the schools always use two types of dominant learning styles - linguistic and logistic methods. They also use a few numbers of other learning styles and methods. It is a very common fact that people tend to label those children who always use these traditional styles and methods as gifted and endowed with scholastic abilities. People also tend to label those children who use far less liked or used learning styles as ordinary. However, scholastic abilities alone do not count while assessing the overall personality of a child. By recognizing and understanding our children's learning styles, we can easily enhance their learning potentials. When we use optimized learning methods, we can make your children's speed and quality of learning better and result oriented.

Children's learning styles can have far more serious effects than you can imagine. The most preferred learning style can lead the way in which our children learn and understand. Available research displays us that each of the learning styles used by children uses different sectors of the brain. When our children use and involve all areas of the brain, they can easily remember what they learn and understand. Enhancing the learning styles in our children is a sure way to make them scholastically brilliant and mentally smart and intelligent.

Reading skills in Children

Our children are created naturally to speak words. However, they are not created to read or write. Reading and writing are two of the most important life skills that come by learning, practice and repetition. With intense teaching and consistent practice, our children can easily learn how to read and understand printed words. Almost all children learn to read and write at the age of about six. However, teaching our pre-school children about the value of reading is very critical. When our children know the basics of reading at an early age, they can become better readers when they reach their primary school age.

Poor reading skills and abilities can affect our children's future in a number of ways, while excellent reading skills can ensure unqualified success in whatever the field of activity our children prefer to choose. Reading skills are the important keys for learning. Anything that exposes our children to the basics of language in a meaningful and understanding manner will contribute immensely to their learning of the art of how to read.

Reading words and text in printed form is a latent ability that almost every child possesses. However, to develop and master the art of reading, the role of parents is very critical, as they are first mentors and teachers, who can initiate the actual process of developing the reading habit. Parents may wish to ensure that their children can read, write, spell and pronounce words in a manner that can propel them to the path of definite success. Have a nice day!

Thought for today:

"To get what you've never had, you must do what you've never done." - Anonymous

Curiosity in Children

Children are always very curious! They want to know about everything that happens around them. They want to touch different objects, feel them and learn about their shapes and characteristics. Other children may badly want to know how a car engine works or what makes the car to move on its wheels. There are hundreds of different questions, some of which are very simple, while the others are very difficult. One thing is sure - that all children ask too many questions about things and events that happen around them, every day and throughout the year. A sense of curiosity makes your children ask all these questions.

So, what is curiosity? It is a psychological ability that comes almost automatically to your children. It helps your children solidify ideas, clarify questions, seek answers to all queries and probe them in all possible angles. It also encourages your children differentiate how things and scenarios could be different. Curiosity is a state of mind that helps your children actively explore immediate environment, ask the right type of questions, probe all possibilities and express a sense of deep wonder at those things that are amazing and surprising.

With curiosity, your children can easily find solutions to problems that almost center on such expressions as "why" and "how". Questioning will lead your children to deeper-most levels of knowledge that eventually helps them to create a meaningful equation between different aspects of life. A sense of heightened curiosity will also help your children become better citizens and responsible individuals.

Is it possible to develop a sense of curiosity in your children? Although, curiosity is natural gift that comes automatically to your children, you may still need to nudge or slow-push them to find answers to the most curious questions of life. As a parent, you may also wish to answer their questions with a sense of deep purpose, which is to make them empowered with the ability to find out solutions to critical problems of life.

Curiosity can quench the thirst for acquiring useful and practical knowledge. It is also the pathway to heightened mental and brain development. When your children are curious, they can be the most productive people on the planet. Have a nice day!

Thought for today:
"Winners are losers who got up and gave it one more try." - Dennis DeYoung

Stimulating Brain Power in Children: Simple Things Parents Can Do

Before you want to stimulate your child's brain functions, you will need to know and understand a number of basic activities of brain. Brain is a mysterious organ that can play an important role in your child's success. Structure ad functioning of brain in an optimal manner is a necessity to lead a life of contentment and satisfaction. Your child's brain works based on some core principles that are too important for normal brain development. Some of these are:

1. Your child's brain is in fact an efficient parallel processor of various nerve cells and neurons. It means that your child's brain can perform several functions at the same time.

2. Learning is a life-long process for any human! In fact, learning involves the entire body not just mind alone!

3. Plain information is actually useless while meaning of these bits of information is actually very important.

4. Learning in your child always happens because of challenge and a willingness to learn. Learning may never happen if your child is under severe stress.

5. Brain can store primary information in different forms in different places within the brain. Your child's brain can easily retrieve these stored information bits by using the complex network of nerve cells.

6. Emotions in your child's life can play an important role in streamlining a number of basic functions like attention span, memory and memory recall.

The above-mentioned parameters are necessary, if you want to make your child smart and intelligent. Stimulating your child's brain is a complex process of training and streamlining combining these parameters and inducing them in your child with utmost care. No parameters are exclusive, but they are inclusive and complimentary. You will need to combine all these parameters to develop your child's brain functions.

Shower Love and Affection: Ensure that you shower utmost love and affection on your child. Appreciate them from time to time to spruce up their emotional platform. Ensure that you are setting up a caring, concerned and loving environment within your home. Make sure that you are inducing an encouraging environment in your home.

Result and Outcome:

• Better and quick memory and recall

• Efficient thinking, reasoning and problem solving skills

• Better and proper behavior patterns

• Better learning ability

Regular Breakfast and Nutritious Food: Breakfast is obviously the most important source of nutrients. Skipping breakfast is dangerous to your child's health; in fact, it can lead impaired memory and inferior academic performance. Among other effects of bad nutrition are decreased attention span and learning ability, lapsed concentration levels, reduced body energy levels, less enthusiasm and overall poor brain development. Better nutrition can easily provide a number of benefits; oatmeal is perhaps the best breakfast cereal with its amazing nutritional properties.

Result and Outcome:

• Increased or enhanced ability to learn and understand

• Better comprehension and understanding of issues

• Superior cognitive abilities

• Superior and sharp spatial memory

• Enhanced logical abilities

Enough Sleep: Your children need adequate sleep to get the required amount of rest. Adequate sleep ensures memory enhancement, better performance in subjects like math and arts. Sleepless nights may result in tiredness and lethargy.

Result and Outcome:

• Well controlled emotional management

• Scholarly academic performance

• Superior learning skills

• Absence of behavioral problems

Creative Play: Creative playtime assists your children in learning and mastering a number of core academic skills and abilities that are so important for reading, comprehending writing, phonetics and problem solving. You can allow your children to engage themselves in a number of creative games and activities.

Result and Outcome:

• Quick development of spatial and logical thinking

• Acquisition of important hand to eye coordination

• Better creativity and inquisitiveness

Culture and Arts: Music teaching, extra-curricular activities and painting are three of the most desirable activities that can develop your child's brain. Study of a foreign language is another activity that provides an opportunity to develop cultural relationship.

Result and Outcome:

• Appreciable academic achievement

• Enhanced spatial thinking and reasoning skills

• Enhanced problem solving skills

Brain building in children is a specialized activity that needs lot of preparation and hard work from your side. As a responsible parent, you should allot enough time to educate your children in all aspects of brain development. Available research studies suggest us that we can easily influence our children's brain power, though the care and support we give, the games we play and activities we do with them, the nutrition we provide them and the sum of positive choices we make for them. Never ever, forget the importance of feeding the right type of brain foods like Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, green leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds and a range of other foods that help in the increased production of phospholipids, fatty acid molecules that lead to the development of brain's messaging network.

Stimulating Brain Power in Children

Most of our children are smart and intelligent by birth! It is just that, they are not using their natural talents and skills. Most probably, they did not get an opportunity to develop their brain functions in a normal manner. Of late, brain development in small children is gaining immense prominence among educators and parents.

Your children are undergoing a number of mental and physical changes every day. Brain develops at a very rapid rate in short cycles of bursts. These changes are very critical and play an important role in the overall development of brain.

Developing very critical brain functions in your children seem to be far more important than any other activities. As you touch, sing lullabies, hold, hug, rock and sing to your children, you can expect their brain functions to improve in a remarkable manner. These simple actions will help your children develop highly critical network of brain cells, neurons and nerve fibers. How quickly and efficiently these network connections occur can significantly influence the rate of efficiency with which the brain acts and functions.

You should be aware of early brain development in your children. However, it is also important that you should not worry too much about it. What you need to do is to follow very simple methods and guidelines to make your children's brain smarter and efficient. Just remember that your children are actually born smart and intelligent. It is just that they are yet to go through that elusive "brain-nurturing" process. Your children are yet to learn a number of skills, techniques and process in their childhood. As a parent, you can give a boost to those processes. Brain boosting is an intricate process of transforming an already equipped brain into a full-pledged and efficiently working system.

An ability to provide varied experiences and invaluable brain building activities to children is the hallmark of an influential parent. You may wish to work hard to provide these experiences to your child to make them brain smart. All the best!

Thought for today:
"If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe