Category: 家長園地

Parental education, willing to learn and dare to do

Post author By system
Post date 11/04/2024

Parenting Tips

Parental education, willing to learn and dare to do

Written by: Dr. Chi-Yuen TIK, Chief Executive, The Hong Kong Institute of Family Education

In the journey of parental education, I love to listen to parents share their experiences and reflections on disciplining their children. Exchanging and encouraging each other is the most comprehensive content of parenting education. There is no place in the world that requires parents to pass an exam before they can have children. Everyone is learning as they go, realizing things later on, and gradually becoming “experienced” parents. Children have expectations of you, society has demands on you, and parents themselves cannot afford to be lazy, so they actively learn theories and techniques for disciplining their children.

I remember a father sharing how he dealt with his son’s request to buy sneakers when the son was in the eighth grade. He told his son he would give him four hundred dollars. Naturally, the son felt it was not enough, but the father told him that four hundred dollars could buy a pair of sneakers, and if it wasn’t enough, the son would have to figure it out himself. In the end, the son bought the sneakers he wanted, but the price was saving his breakfast and lunch money to make the purchase. He said although his son was happy with the new sneakers, he also experienced days of hunger, and in the future, he would think carefully before making a purchase. The father expressed that it was tough for him to see his son go through this, but he thought it was important for his son to understand the principle of living within one’s means, even if it meant letting his son experience it firsthand.

During a lecture on how to cultivate self-care abilities in young children, a mother of a K3 student shared that her son always relied on her to pack up his homework. Over time, her son’s dependence on her increased. After much reflection, the mother decided to apply what she had learned from parenting seminars. She told her son that he needed to take care of his own things and that she would no longer pack his school bag for him. She was also mentally prepared for her son to be reprimanded by the teacher for not handing in his homework. As expected, to avoid further scolding from the teacher, the son started to pack his school bag by himself every day. Although he may not yet fully understand the importance of taking responsibility for his own affairs, he has begun to take his own matters seriously and no longer relies on his mother’s “help.” The mother also stopped providing unconstructive help and care for her son.

After all, classroom learning is enjoyable, but practical application can be painfully insightful, with a mix of joys and challenges. While applying parenting techniques, it is also a challenge to the parents’ personal values and life experiences. Parents also need to have a balanced mindset and self-awareness. This is precisely the purpose of parenting education.

Hot-tempered parents

Post author By system
Post date 11/04/2024

Parenting Tips

Hot-tempered parents

Written by : Marriage and Family Therapist Rachel Ng

Children easily become timid, reticent, and lack confidence when dealing with hot-tempered parents. However, some children may learn to solve problems in an aggressive manner, mimicking their parents. Obviously, both patterns are detrimental to a child’s personality development! Can parents improve their hot-tempered nature?

Personality tendencies and life stress

It’s undeniable that a part of one’s temperament is innate, which we cannot overlook. Just like children have different traits, some parents are naturally more sensitive, react quickly, and have lower adaptability. These types of parents, when entering the stage of raising children, often coincide with a critical period in their career development. Due to their low adaptability, they easily become anxious due to changes in the environment, work demands, and their own career advancement, requiring a lot of time and energy to cope. At home, the various temperaments of children and their growing needs already pose many challenges to parents. Therefore, parents who are impatient and have low adaptability can easily lose their temper, using it as a way to vent their unease and attempt to control the situation, hoping to restore order and reduce their own anxiety.

Trauma from the Family of Origin

Some parents are not inherently impatient, but if they experienced neglect, abuse, and damage to their self-esteem and personality during their upbringing, these parents are likely to perceive their child’s disobedience, tantrums, and other challenging behaviors as personal rejections, triggering their own childhood traumas and leading to emotional instability and frequent outbursts of anger. Parents often fail to recognize that their anger at the moment is largely a hypersensitive reaction stemming from past hurts, attributing the cause of their anger solely to the child’s behavior, resulting in disproportionate emotional responses and excessive punishment of the child.

Conflict with Spouse

Parents who are quick-tempered find it difficult to remain calm during conflicts with their spouse, leading to strained marital relationships and a discordant family atmosphere. Sometimes, they resort to quick but superficial solutions to ease conflicts, leaving the underlying issues unresolved. As resentment between spouses builds up over time and remains unaddressed, parents may vent their accumulated negative emotions on their children when they misbehave, leading to hurtful remarks and creating more complex family issues.

Trauma from the Family of Origin

Conflict with Spouse

Parents Zone

Did not take medicine when sick, waiting for the body to recover on its own and then develop antibodies?

Post author By system
Post date 08/12/2023

Parenting Tips

Did not take medicine when sick, waiting for the body to recover on its own and then develop antibodies?

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：Pediatric Specialist Doctor, Chiu Cheung Shing

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What is interactive reading? What are the techniques and steps for engaging in interactive reading with children?

Post author By system
Post date 08/12/2023

Parenting Tips

What is interactive reading? What are the techniques and steps for engaging in interactive reading with children?

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.

Interactive reading also follows a framework called ‘PEER.’

The first step is ‘Prompt,’ which refers to the types of questions asked. The second step is ‘Evaluate,’ where after asking questions, you can provide responses to the child. ‘Evaluate’ involves giving positive encouragement to the child, such as praising them when they answer correctly, saying, ‘You did a great job; you listened very attentively.’ If they answer incorrectly, it’s still important to encourage them, saying, ‘You tried very hard!’ and then attempt to find the answer together in the book.

Next is ‘Expand’ (E), which means expanding on what the child says. If a child’s response is brief, you can add adjectives or other details to make the sentence richer. Finally, there’s ‘Repeat’ (R), where after listening to the story, the child repeats the story, which can help improve their oral language skills.

“Seize the Golden Opportunity to Train Concentration and Learning Ability – Achieve Your Child’s Future” Parent’s Talk (For New Students)

Post author By system
Post date 23/09/2022
Sticky post

“Seize the Golden Opportunity to Train Concentration and Learning Ability – Achieve Your Child’s Future” Parent’s Talk (For New Students)

Children are the golden age of senses from birth to six years old. They stimulate different senses through free play, so that the brain nerves have the opportunity to learn and develop. Due to the impact of the Covid-19, children always stay at home and seldom go out to play games. How can we solve the problem?

The Principal of our kindergarten Ms. Kwan Pui Yan and Occupational therapist I of TWGHs Ho Yuk Ching Educational Psychology Service Centre will be the speaker for parent’s talk. He will provide professional advice to parents to help their children grow and develop well so that parent can prepare their children for school in the future. Details are as follows:

Date：27th Oct,2022 (THUR)

Time：10:30 am to 11:15 am

Subject：Seize the Golden Opportunity to Train Concentration and Learning Ability – Achieve Your Child’s Future

Speaker：TWGHs Ho Yuk Ching Educational Psychology Service Centre Occupational Therapist I

People：Parents who have enrolled in the 2023/24 kindergarten class

Mode：Zoom

Fee：Free