It's often difficult for parents and kids to get together for a family meal, let alone spend quality time together. Here is a section for more effective parenting, child-rearing tips that can help you feel more fulfilled as a parent by Vidya Shankar, a Child Rights Practitioner and a Montessori advocate for children. Founder of CASCADE Family Learning Services.
Ages: Children aged 3 to 6: Temper tantrums usually occur when the child is upset about something which can’t be effectively verbalized. The language of peace could be introduced before such an event. A space must be allocated in each home, on what we can call a “peace place”. If one of the children (above 6 years) show temper, please encourage them to walk over to the peace place to have a dialogue with you. Our effort must also go into finding out what a younger child is attempting to communicate. It might be a movement or an opportunity. Once we find that out, we need to make an objective judgment whether that opportunity can be provided for that child or not. If yes, you can provide it with natural limits (like time or space) included. If not, explain the same to the child and tell him it is ok for him to be upset. Give him/her the moral support until he comes out of the period by staying with him/her if he /she cries.
Children aged 6 to 11 years: Acknowledge that it is very disappointing to lose a game. However, the next immediate step is to draw attention to the results of playing such a game. Some lose, some win and the joy is in enjoying the company of playing. This has to be done during neutral moments, elaborately, and anecdotally as a story. Before the game starts, its good to draw the attention to such probabilities, by showing the toss of a coin, a few times, as an example, to show that not all the time a single face appears. This if done once, the child will realize that the winner is by a good playing effort, and by chance too, which could happen to her / him also. If the child is not ready to accept it, you can ask to pause for such games, that she/he is unable to accept losing. But stressing on the efforts in the game, the child will know that the chances are equal for all players.
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