February 2010

My Toddler's Thinking Skills

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Published February 26th 2010, in Cognitive Development, Development, Toddler Years

Try, try and try again – that is the motto of a toddler. During the toddler years, your child learns through trial and error.  It helps the toddler that he can now recall things that happened hours or even days earlier.  Children begin to understand cause and effect and anticipate consequences.  If I drop the toy when I am sitting in a high chair, mommy will bend down and pick it up – again and again…

We can notice their cognitive growth even in their play.  Children start to pretend play.  In their pretend play they often imitate adults’ actions and language.  We often only become aware of our own unique little habits when we see our children imitate us. Where a lot of the childrens’ play were directed earlier at objects, it now shifts to people and events.

Your toddler’s language skills develop quickly.  They can give names to certain objects.  They understand words and commands given to them, and can respond appropriately to those commands.  It is important to remember during this phase, your child understands more than he can express – which leads to immense frustration when he cannot convey what he feels accurately.  Because his attention span increases, he can concentrate for longer and can recognize and identify familiar objects in storybooks with your help. He can also match similar objects or pictures. At 19 months a average child would be able use about 20 words accurately.  This increases to 100 words at 24 months.  A two year old starts combining his words to form two word sentences.

During the toddler years he starts recognizing himself as a person apart from his mother.  He forms a sense of self, becomes more independent and starts exploring his environment with enthusiasm.  Being not connected to his mother, he can start imagining threats and become clingy. Often toddlers become fearful of strangers due to an overactive imagination. A toddler becomes aware of his own body and can usually identify different body parts accurately.

In addition to these skills, they also develop certain practical skills:

  • They can throw things out of containers
  • They can tear paper
  • They can pull things over
  • They can put things in containers and take it out again
  • They can solve simple problems and
  • They can throw objects.

A parent needs to watch a toddler with hawk eyes – they are quick, innovative and extremely daring.  Some people will even go as far to say toddlers can be innocently destructive in their behaviour – who can be angry with the child drawing his first picture of him and mommy on the wall?

What my Baby Looks Like After Birth

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Published February 25th 2010, in Baby Years, Development, Physical Development

The neonatal phase is the period that stretches from directly after birth and encompasses the first two to four weeks in the life of the child.

Contrary to most parents’ descriptions, newborns are not exactly pretty – they have a swollen bluish and reddish face, a broad flat nose, swollen eyelids and ears that seem somewhat misplaced.  Sometimes the shape of the face is misshapened due to the long path down the birth channel.  The little body is covered in a white substance, vernix caseosa, which protects the baby from infection and dries off in a few days. Some babies are still covered in fine hair, lanugo, which falls out during the first month. Newborns exhibit prominent external sex organs and both sexes’ nipples are swollen due to high amounts of estrogen in the mother’s blood before giving birth.

In addition to these features, the body proportions of newborns differ substantially from the proportion of an adult body.
The head makes up one fourth of the total body in contrast with the eighth of an adult’s. The neck muscles are not able to keep the head up at this point in time.

The average weight of a newborn varies between 2.5 and 4.5kg, with most weighing between 3 and 3.5kg.  Girls tend to weigh less than boys at birth and firstborns tend to be lighter than siblings.

Most parents experience that their infants lose up to 10% of their body weight in the first couple of days in hospital, but will regain it with a week or two once feeding is established. Boys tend to be taller than their counterparts, with the average length being around 45 to 56cm. A newborn baby’s heartbeat varies between 120 and 150 beats per minute, going up when stressed and down when resting.

The apgar-scale is used to evaluate an infant at birth.  This evaluation gets done twice – one minute after birth and again 5 minutes after birth.
A:     Appearance (Colour)
G:    Grimace (Reflex irritability)
P:    Pulse (Heartbeat)
A:    Activity (Muscle tone)
R:    Respiration (Breathing)

Each of these aspects gets scored as zero, one or two, with zero being the worst score and two the best score. The scores get combined with a maximum score of ten.  Most babies score 7 or more.  A score of 4 is indicative of further evaluation and treatment.

What my Baby Should Eat

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Published February 25th 2010, in Baby Years, Breastfeeding, Development, Nutrition

Most of the babies’ awake time is spend on feeding in the first two weeks of his life. Time devoted to feeding differs from baby to baby, but it is commonly between eight and fourteen times a day; giving the mom/caregiver breaks of between 1 and a half and 5 hours at a time.

The debate between breastfeeding and bottlefeeding is ongoing with the proponents of breastfeeding pointing out the following advantages:

  • The anti-bodies in breastmilk provides the baby important immunity against various illnesses like allergies, bronchitis and pneumonia.
  • Breastfed babies tend to have healthier teeth and are less likely as adults to develop arteriosclerosis early in life.
  • Breast milk has the advantage of being easily digested by babies and the fat in mothersmilk gets absorbed almost 100%, while on average only 80% of the fat in formula gets absorbed.
  • The risk of obesity in bottlefed babies is higher than for breastfed babies.    The most commonly accepted explanation being that babies being breast fed stop sucking when they are not hungry anymore, whilst a mom bottlefeeding might believe that the bottle should be emptied.
  • Breastfeeding is more practical – being more economical, always available and at the right temperature. This mother also does not to carry all the preparations necessary for bottlefeeding when leaving the house.
  • Breastfeeding can give the baby an extra sense of security with the advantage of better bonding.


Their counterparts believe:

  • That bottlefeeding can give a similar bond between mother and child and does not hold any negative consequences for social relationships in the future.
  • It gives the mother a feeling of physical freedom which the breastfeeding mother does not have.
  • Substances like tabaco, alcohol and medicines can be transferred to the baby via breastmilk. This will not happen when the baby is bottlefed.
  • Some mothers cannot or do not want to breastfeed.  If these mothers can bottlefeed without the negative association with breastfeeding, the bonding process can continue unscathed.
  • The threat of transferring HIV to an infant should also be considered as a potential draw-back of breastfeeding.
  • It gives the working mother the opportunity to continue with her career, knowing that her child is getting sufficient nutrition.
  • Babies can be affected negatively by certain foods, and may even be allergic, this impacts on the mother’s ability to choose food and can lead to alot of anxiety around food choices.

The group of people supporting bottlefeeding are not by any way saying that  breastfeeding is bad, they would just like more tolerance and respect for mothers who decide to go the route of giving their child formula.

Milestones for Babies

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Published February 25th 2010, in Baby Years, Development, Physical Development

The neonatal phase and baby years are the first two years in a child’s life. It is a period of rapid change physically and psychologically.  The child moves from being completely dependent to becoming more independent.  During this stage a child forms bonds with significant people in their lives – the nature of these relationships have a lasting effect on future social relationships.  During this phase the uniqueness of the individual becomes apparent. Through socialization the child learns that certain actions are acceptable while others are not allowed.

In the first two years of a child’s life he has to master certain tasks:

  1. He learns to walk.
  2. He learns to ingest solid food.
  3. He learns the basics of communication through language.
  4. He starts to learn to use the toilet.
  5. He falls into a routine of sleep, eat and interacting.
  6. He develops an emotional communication with his parents and siblings.

The degree of success attained depends largely on the opportunities the child gets and the help and direction the child receives from significant others.

My Baby's Personality

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Published February 25th 2010, in Baby Years, Development, Social Development

No two children are alike.  As a parent of two daughters, I have noticed just how unique and different children can be, even when the parents and social surroundings stay the same.  Temperament is the result of the combination of genetic and social factors that determine your child’s personality foundation.

Most parents will be able to describe their baby as one of these three temperament types:

  • The Easy Child :  This is the child whose parents walk around with a smile on their faces the whole day long.  These parents cannot fathom why other parents burst into tears from frustration and tiredness, because their baby is such an angel!  This baby is able to easily adapt to her surroundings and is generally in a good mood.  About 40% of parents are lucky enough to report their babies to be “easy children”.

  • The Difficult Child :  These parents basicly sleep walk and have dark rings under their eyes.  They often feel guilty for not enjoying their child and question their parenting abilities. This baby has irregular sleeping and eating patterns, finds it difficult to adjust to a strange environment, reacts intensely to any stimuli and cries alot.  About 10% of parents feel their child is “difficult”.
  • The Slow-to-warm-up Baby :  15% of parents report that their baby falls into this category.  This child is inactive, reacts slowly or little to stimuli and is experienced by the parents as somewhat negative.

The remaining 35% of parents felt their children had a combination of behaviour patterns.

Temperament affects the relationship between the parent and the child and as a result of that also the bonding process between them.  Three different types of bondedness have been identified:

  • Secure Bonding : This baby uses her mother as a security base from which she can discover the world.  When separated from her mother she will show unhappiness and will be delighted when reunited.  She loves physical contact from her mother, and when she comes into contact with strangers she will react positively when her mother is around.
  • Avoidant Bonding : This baby seems unaffected when her mother is around, barely taking notice of her.  She does not become upset when her mother leaves and avoids her when she comes back. She doesn’t explore her world when they are together and seems indifferent to the presence of strangers.
  • Ambivalent Bonding: This baby becomes anxious even before her mother leaves her.  When the mother does leave, she becomes extremely upset. On her return the baby behaves ambivalently – on the one hand she tries to make contact, while on the other hand she cries, kicks and hits her mom.  These babies are anxious and will not dare to explore their environment.  They do not like strangers even when their mother is present.

The way in which you bond with your baby is very important.  This is the first relationship that she forms in her life and it will affect future relationships.  The stronger the bond with the parents, the easier it will be for the child to leave her parents.  Babies also form important relationships with their fathers, siblings, grandparents and other care takers.

During the baby years, parents find themselves constantly scolding their baby and the word “no” seems to be a recurring theme.  This is the process of socialization where parents teach the young one what is right and what is wrong, what is expected from her and what is generally acceptable in their society.   The mother becomes the teacher.

Babies from as young as six months start interacting with their peers – they smile, touch and make little noises to communicate with each other.  These interactions are important in the socialization process.  Interaction between children evolves from being centered on a object like a toy to trying to elicit reactions from the other babies to being able to change roles with each other (for example giving toys to one another).

As parents we should foster our relationship with our baby and encourage positive peer interaction.  This should give her a good basis for future relationships that she will need to form through out her life.

How Toddlers Grow

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Published February 24th 2010, in Development, Physical Development, Toddler Years

After witnessing the amazing growth of your baby his first year, you enter a phase of slower growth combined with lots of energy.  This is the recipe for the terrible two’s where children have immense willpower, but have not reached the physical maturity to master everything they want to do.  Toddlers experience great frustration when they cannot execute their plans.

In addition to your one year old growing slower, you will notice that he eats less at mealtimes, but like to snack through out the day. Toddlers are very mobile and explore their environment through all five senses.

During the second year most toddlers will master the following milestones:

  • Walk independently without support.
  • Be able to walk backwards.
  • Climb step.
  • Start to feed themselves.
  • Drink from a cup when helped.
  • Build a tower with blocks.
  • Scribble with a pen.

As they become more confident in their own abilities they start to become even more daring, testing parents’ nerves to the limit.  From age 2 to 3  children should generally accomplish the following:

  • Walk confidently
  • Run
  • Climb stairs
  • Dig
  • Throw and kick a ball
  • Jump with two feet together
  • Take things apart and reassemble it
  • Screw and unscrew lids
  • Become aware of toilet habits.

Mastering one milestone enables your child to move on to the following learning experience.  It should be kept in mind that children are unique and achieve milestones in their own time, we cannot rush growing up.

How a Baby Learns to Communicate

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Published February 24th 2010, in Baby Years, Development, Language Development

The ability to communicate with your child through language opens up a whole new world of relationship enriching opportunities to parents.  Parents battle to understand the needs of a crying baby, but through language they can understand exactly what the problem is.  Developing the ability to use language is a complex and creative process that takes time.

Before a baby can speak, they are able to understand language.  In the process of acquiring language, a baby goes through different phases of vocalization:

  • Undifferentiated crying (from birth to one month): During this phase the baby uses crying as a call for attention.  The cry is undifferentiated, because the listener cannot differentiate between a cry indicating hunger, thirst, fear, discomfort or pain.  This tyope of cry is seen as a reflex.
  • Differentiated crying (from about 2 months): During this phase the parents are able to distinguish between the different types of crying.  The baby uses different pitches and sound patterns to indicate their needs.
  • Cooing and Babbling (from about 2 to 6 months): Cooing refers to the throat sounds babies make when they are happy and content or even excited.  Babbling refers to the repetition of simple vowel and consonant-combinations, for example “da-da-da” or “ma-ma-ma”.
  • Seven to Eight Months: The baby repeats words and sounds that he hears. This repetition is accidental or incorrect, but forms a necessary foundation for communication.
  • Nine to Ten Months: This is the phase where you find repetition of words and sounds.  Here the sounds and words are more correct and purposeful.
  • Single word sentences (from one year onwards): During this phase the baby starts saying understandable words.  He uses these words to communicate with others.  Single words are often meant to communicate complex ideas or requests, for instance the word “bottle” can mean “I am hungry” or even “I finished my bottle of milk”.
  • Use of Sentences: This is the final stage of language development.  Two word sentences is the first  sentences used, for example “Baby hungry” or “Mamma gone”.  Baby starts using more words in sentence construction, but often with grammatical mistakes.  Gradually the child becomes able to use more complex sentences to communicate with those around him.

A child of two years generally have a vocabulary of about 300 words.  At three it increases to 1000 words, at five  2000 words and when going to school he can use 3000 words accurately.  Girls tend to acquire language faster than boys, as well as children of higher social economic groups.  Intelligence also plays a role in language development.

Your Baby's Thinking Skills

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Published February 24th 2010, in Baby Years, Cognitive Development, Development

Each stage of development requires that certain tasks are mastered. Piaget, a psychologist and father, observed his own children and identified the following milestones to be achieved in the baby years:

  • Through the first two years in a baby’s life it is important to integrate perception and action. Babies learn how to use visual, auditive and tactile inputs to direct their grabbing and walking.
  • During this period the baby starts to form the concept of object permanence.  This refers to the fact that the child will keep on looking for a toy even if they cannot see it anymore.
  • Children learn to imitate and copy others.  This means that a child develops symbolic thought.

Piaget divided the first two years into 6 stages:

  • Stage 1: The use of reflexes: This period is from birth to one month. Babies respond automatically to people, events and objects in their environment through crying, suckling or grabbing.
  • Stage 2: Month 1 to 4: During this stage the infants learns how to use his inborn reflexes on the basis of experience.  Reflexes turns into learned habits.  The baby is primarly focused on his own body, but have the ability to when he accidentally discovers an action, to deliberately repeat it.The child starts to react to external stimuli and will turn his head in the direction of a sound.  The baby starts to realize there are objects outside of himself.At this stage there is no sense of object permanence, if he cannot see a toy the toy does not exist anymore.
  • Stage 3: Month 4 to 8: At this stage the baby starts incorporating external objects into his behaviour.  If he drops his rattle and hear the sound, he will repeat the action by picking up the rattle and dropping it again.Object permanence develops to the level where he is able to recognize the object even if only part of it is revealed.  If the toy is dropped he will look in the direction of where it fell and if his play with the toy is interrupted, he will return his attention to the toy again.The baby now starts imitating behaviours from others.  These behaviours are however limited to his own observable body parts and actions that he has mastered before.  He will not be able to imitate his mother’s facial expression, because he cannot see his own face.
  • Stage 4: Month 8 to 12: The child now develops the skill to execute goal oriented behaviour.  If for instance there is a bottle between him and his toy, he would be able to push the bottle out of the way and grab the toy.  He combined two actions in order to achieve his goal.Object permanence developed to such an extent that he will search for an object that he cannot see.  He wil go and search first in the place that he is used to retrieve it, even if he saw someone else placing it in a different spot.  This is because he was not responsible for that action, and remembers his previous action.At this stage imitation has developed to the point where he is able to imitate actions like facial gestures.
  • Stage 5: Month 12 to 18: This is a stage of discovery and experimentation.  The child is able to walk and therefore comes into contact with a wider world.  He is able to vary certain actions in order to observe different results.  He will for instance drop a ball from different heights to see how the ball’s bounce is affected. Through this he learns that different objects have different qualities and properties.Regarding object permanence, a child is now able to search for a toy in the place he has seen it being moved to. The child is able now to imitate behaviours that does not form part of his own behaviour repertoire.   The model has to be present in order for him to imitate behaviour.
  • Stage 6:  Month 18 to 24: Children start to develop complex solutions to problems through combining different actions that has been mastered in other contexts, to this particular problem.  They master symbolic representation.They are now also able to copy or imitate behaviour that they have seen previously.  This can be in the absence of the person they are imitating.

The period from birth to toddlerhood, shows immense development – from a child that can only use reflexes to interact, to a child that can solve problems on a concrete level.

How to Choose the Right Nursery School for your Child

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Published February 24th 2010, in Education, Nursery Schools

It takes time and dedication to match your child with the right nursery school which will meet both your child’s needs and your needs.  Researching this decision includes speaking to other parents, looking at the children in the school environment and interviewing the teachers.  You have the right to insist to drop by at any time and observe how things are done at the school.  This will give you an idea of what the atmosphere at the school is – whether most children are playing and laughing or whether they are scared, intimidated and crying.

In interviewing the teachers from the schools, ask about the following issues:

  • Discipline strategy . This is very important to optimize your child’s adjustment and development, seeing that discipline consistency between home and school gives structure to your child’s learning. This does not mean that if you believe in spanking, that the teacher has the right to punish your child in the same way. I have found that nursery schools that focus on reward rather than punishment have better results with the little ones.

  • Routine. Having your child at home with you or a significant caregiver probably ensured that up to now your child had plenty of stimulation and attention during the day. It is important when sending him to a nursery school that he does not now become bored. Therefore, ask about how how they incorporate stimulation that is developmentally appropriate. Remember there is a big difference in level of maturity between a 3 year old born in January and a 3 year old born in December of the same year.
  • Child -Caregiver Ratio . How many children are in the care of one person. Being a parent you will know how unfeasible it is for one person to give proper care and attention to 20 two-year-old’s. The older the children the bigger the ratio may become.
  • Qualifications of Caregivers . You are entitled to give your child the best education possible. Education does begin in nursery school, it is therefore not too much to ask for someone with more than just practical experience. Even though your grandmother raised 5 children and 10 grandchildren does not guarantee that she is up to date with research and what is developmentally expected of children today. It is wonderful if you can find someone with both recent qualifications and practical experience. Remember that it is not important that the caregiver has to be a parent in order to take care of your child – most courses make room for enough practical experience as part of the grading process.
  • References . Ask the school to give you the names of other parents to contact. Often when interviewing a school a much rosier picture will be painted. By talking to parents you will get a true feeling of the school.
  • Philosophy . Schools may follow the teachings of Maria Montesori, Jean Piaget, Rudolf Steiner or a combination of these. It is important that you are in agreement with the fundamentals of this philosophy.
  • Staff and student turn-over . This will be a true reflection of parents and teachers feelings toward the school environment.

In constructing your shortlist of possible schools for your toddler, it is important to take the following  into consideration:

  • Cost
  • Distance from your home or work
  • Do they provide aftercare
  • Do they provide nutritional meals or do you have to pack lunches and snacks.
  • How do teachers effectively communicate with the parents
  • Are any extracurricular activities available.

The final step is to take into account all of this information that you gathered and make an informed decision.  Do not ignore your intuition – even though one school have the highest quality of educational material, it might be lacking the warmth and care you experienced from other schools’ teachers.

How to Deal with Primary School Bullies

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Published February 23rd 2010, in Education, Primary School

After taking the time to decide on the right school for our child and seeing the little one sitting behind a big desk with only pigtails sticking out – we go home with a tear in our eye and a warm heart.  You have put in the effort, paid the money, interviewed the teacher, prepared your child; now she will be safe and it is a matter of learning and doing homework for the next decade.

Your perfect dream comes to an end when your first grader comes home during the first week in tears, telling you about the horrible child in her class.  He makes jokes about her hair, he calls her dumb, he teases her for wearing glasses and takes her lunch treats from her bag when the teacher is not watching.  Not once did you up to this moment consider the possibility of school yard BULLIES….

Every child – bully and victim have a right to be at school.  The rights of the children do vary though in the sense that all children have a right to be educated and play in a safe environment.  They have a right to experience a sense of community within the school, feel a sense of social value and feel that they are being listened to.  The bully makes his victim feel small, weak, alone and useless. They do not treat their victims with dignity and respect that they deserve, therefore stripping them completely of their rights.

The bully’s attack can be verbal or physical or both.  He/she tends to like the students who are timid , shy and struggle to stand up for themselves.  Ironically they like scaring others, because they are scared.  They exert power over others in order to feel less powerless.  These bullies have a fear of being dislikes and abused and therefore rather put themselves in the abusive role than make themselves vulnerable.  Quite often they have been abused by classmates or adults.  They have an intense fear that others would make fun of them – so they will pick on weaker children to look cool.  Their behaviour becomes so entrenched that they need someone to help them break the pattern.

If parents suspects that their child might be bullied look out for the following signs:

  • Minor ailments in the morning before school, for example headache or stomach ache.
  • A constant theme of not wanting to go to school in the mornings.
  • Requests to be driven to school instead of taking the bus or walking to school.
  • A refusal to take part in school activities.
  • Noticeable cuts and bruises, a loss of money and property or damages to his school clothes or property.
  • If your child becomes withdrawn, develops a lack of confidence, struggles sleeping and experiences nightmares.
  • If he suddenly starts wetting his bed.
  • Starts requesting money on a more regular basis or even talking money without your consent.
  • If your previously responsive child do not want to discuss what is wrong in his life currently.
  • A sudden increase in aggressive and irrational behavior
  • When he is obviously hiding the truth behind unlikely excuses.

Some practical advice for children dealing with bullies:

1.    You have to be courageous to confront a bully.
2.    You have to put your foot down and say: “That is enough!”  If you cannot say it, ask a friend or an adult to say it for you.
3.    Bullies like to get to you when you are alone.  Try and make sure you always have a friend or two close by.
4.    Ask for help.  If you are too shy, write down the bully’s name and what he does that you do not like and put it on your teacher’s desk.  Someone needs to know.  If he is bullying you, he might be doing it to others as well.
5.    Do not try to fight with a bully.  Violence is not the answer. You are beter than him!
6.    Talk to yourself – tell yourself that you can stand up to him.  Say it over and over and over again.  Soon you will believe it!
7.    Always stick to the facts and avoid your feelings when you talk to the bully.  You do not want to give him more ammunition.
8.    Lela Davidson said it is OK to BAIL, when BAIL stands for

  • B – Be direct: “I do not like that! Please stop.”
  • A – Avoid bully
  • I – Ignore bully
  • L – Laugh at bully. Make a joke along with bully to disarm him.

It is important that parents keep the following in mind when dealing with a bullied child:  The child needs to feel valued.  The bully strips him of his worth, makes him small and weak.  Parents need to reinforce that the child is needed in the household, he has a purpose, his life is meaningful and most of all he is loved unconditionally for the person he is.  Do not try to overcompensate by buying gifts or codding your child – he needs unconditional acceptance.  It is important to focus on the child’s happiness and comfort at home and at school.  Lastly it is very important that in addition to the school community that the child belongs to, the alternative safe communities (eg. Church, scouts, art clubs,etc.) are found where the child will feel accepted and learn other coping mechanisms.

Unfortunately the victim’s parents live with worry over their child and the bully’s parents usually with a combination of worry and embarassment.

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