Bhavana's space

 

Contrary to the common belief, traveling can be quite a learning experience for your kid.

However, most parents avoid traveling with children. This is because parents get extremely worried about the child’s behavior when they take them out. But with some care and instructions, traveling with children can be lot of fun.

 

Parents traveling with infants and toddlers are especially cautious because it does out a lot of pressure and demand on them. In fact with so many people having bad experiences traveling with their children, most parents avoid involving their children in their travel plan. However, it is possible to have a safe, hassle free and an enjoyable trip with your kids.

A good way to do this is to involve your children in planning the vacation. Teach them the names of various places in a map and tell them about the scenic beauty of places that you have already visited. Encourage research on the part of the child, incase his or she is capable of doing that. This way you will find that your children are more cooperative even in visiting places. Children love to visit beautiful gardens, palaces, museums etc. Hence plan a trip that involves a lot of viewing and learning.

While planning your trip, get your child excited about it and warn him about his behavior. Tell him that his behavior will determine whether he can come for the trip or not. Most kids will take this up as a challenge and will strive for excellence in behavior. It works!

Get a piggy bank for your kids and ask him to save money for your trip. This can also be a good way to teach your child the importance of saving and budget planning for the trip. For inculcating good reading habits in your child, buy him a book or two on the place that you are going to visit. It will surely make him super excited when he will actually view the place. Traveling with children is indeed an experience you must cherish!

Children only need to exercise if they are overweight. However the truth is that along with exercise, there needs to be a control on your child’s diet. And vis-à-vis even a slim child needs exercise to maintain health and be fit.

 

Children need to rest after a busy week. In reality children have a lot of energy that moms think that they have. Encourage your child to play a sport rather than playing computer games and watching cartoon for hours on television. This is anyways not the right way to relax. Ask your children to help you during weekends. This can also be a relaxing experience for them.

 

As long as children are fit, they can eat anything. Being slim is not an indicator that your child is fit. Your child’s health is dependent on his or her diet to a great extent. Hence, pay special attention to what kind of food your child intakes. If you are a vegetarian, make sure your child is supplemented with extra milk or more vegetables. Avoid giving fried food and processed foods to children.

 

Healthy food is expensive. Not really! It only needs some amount of research to know how easily healthy food items can be prepared at home. Items like til chikki, nachni laddoo, oat honey biscuits, almond pista kheer, fruit salad etc can be easily prepared at home and serve as a healthy option to other kinds of foods that may harm the body.

Everybody loves to munch on biscuits. Children and adults like to indulge themselves into creamy flavored biscuits. But most nutritionist and dietitians suggest avoiding these lip smacking bakery products as they have high fat content and refined flours like fine flour which is not a very healthy option. Here is the thus a good option of home-made healthy biscuits. Biscuits are not too difficult to prepare once you learn the art of making them. As far as home-made biscuits recipe are concerned, you can take care of the calorie intake per biscuit. Though most recipes indicate high calorie weightage to biscuits, one can supplement them with low calorie equivalents. There are so many biscuits that are available in the market today that can be easily made at home like soya biscuits, oat biscuits, whole wheat biscuits etc. Every biscuit needs a basic flour, soda, salt and sugar. Once that is in place, there are some quick biscuit making recipes to lure ones tongue. Biscuits can be made in a variety of flavors by adding different essence and tangs to it; depending on what is one’s preference and choice. Biscuit making can really be quite a fun with such easy and quick biscuit recipes. Your kids will love it if you involve them in the process too. Once you will delight your taste buds with home-made biscuits you will surely get hooked on to them wanting to make them each time you feel like eating cookies.

Nutrition during the first three years of birth are both crucial for lifelong health and well-being for any new born baby. In infancy, no gift is more precious than breastfeeding. It is the best source of nutrition for newborn babies. It helps to establish the baby's immune system. It carries digestive enzymes, too, which help to digest the nutrients in the milk, helping the baby's immature digestive tract. A nine month infant may just need three to four feedings of breast milk. Protein rich food like cereals, vegetables and fruits can be consumed by the baby one or two times a day. You should give well-cooked and strained food. Mothers should start to offer soft foods at this age. Infant toddler nutrition usually consists of three meals and two snacks with rich dairy products. At this age it is important that parents don't force a child to eat. The child's appetite has to determine what the child eats. Parents should just make sure that the child intakes food that has nutritional value. Avoid giving large amounts of sweet desserts, soft drinks, fruit-flavored drinks, sugarcoated cereals, chips or candy, as they have little nutritional value. Also avoid giving foods that your child can choke on, such as raw carrots, peanuts, whole grapes, popcorn, chewing gum or a hard sweet. It is necessary that parents gather all kind of infant nutrition information. Some parents also learn about making baby food at home so that they are ensured about the ingredients that are being used are fresh and healthy.

Mothers are usually complaining of quality time that they should have for themselves or even time to complete other work. Having a baby is indeed a huge responsibility. You are constantly juggling and hopping here and there and at times you do lose a sense of direction because it becomes difficult to multitask after a point. Hence, one of the ways to find time for yourself is to keep your baby occupied so that you can do your work peacefully.

If toys are not working with your baby and he or she is refusing to play with them, try a home kid gym. There are so really new gym equipments that are specially designed for children. Children can jump, run and perform certain activities with the help of these equipments. This will help mothers to spend some time for them as their kids are busy with the playful activities.

Rather than making your child sit in front of TV, try giving them paint book or simply give them new toys. Some of the toys that involve the babies into some activity work well. For example, certain toys demand kids some activity based on which the music in the toy plays. This will keep the kid engaged for a longer period of time than the time he plays with his old toys. If you have more than one child, put them both in the playpen together. You can also call other kids home so that they play together.

Who will not agree that pastel is a great medium of art and is one of the best for children? So are you ready to do a pastel picture: - Here are some of the steps which will guide children in coloring a better picture. Parents can help their children with using pastels.

The first step is to sketch an initial outline onto your paper. Now the next step is to start applying some pastel crayons onto the paper. Use soft pastels for easy blending. Now what and how you will colour will depend on your subject but for e.g. if you are coloring sky, then you will start towards dark shades and slowly come down to the light blue shades. Remember to blend the colours at every instance. Blending can be done through your fingers as well.

Take care while coloring and see to it that they do not smudge in areas where they are not supposed to smudge. Now continue coloring all the objects that are included in your drawing. For example if you are painting a tree care should be taken that while coloring the branch, the colour does not reach the leaves!

While drawing objects that require too much detailing, care should be taken that the edges are clean and that the detailing is prominent. Use tip of the colour for detailing.

Remember to be patient and tactful. Most kids are not good at this.  Do not overuse the colour or blend it too much. Take it step by step. Express yourself pastels and frame your pictures in your room.

It is mostly in the teen years that your kids feel that they have grown too old to tolerate you and your advice. They also start enjoying their new found freedom. Suddenly, from the cute and the all-abiding and the innocent child has grown into a rebellious teen! This is the case in most homes. Kids start arguing with their parents for silliest of the things and parents do not know how to deal with all this. They are always looking for solutions for their friends and immediate family members to solve their issues with their kids. Here, communication is the key. There is no point in arguing with your kids. Whenever, an argument arises just quietly walk away and later talk to your child in private. Try to sort out the issues when both the parties are in the mode of a discussion and settling the issue. Some parents also face the problem of fulfilling their kids’ demands. There is just no end to it. Rather than pampering your kid every time, learn to say a No and be firm on your decision come what may. In reality, teen age life is not easy-leading. It is an age of discovery, battling with your own thoughts and thoughts of the world and things that parents tell children and things that teen want to do themselves. They want to experience life and have fun and parents get extra conscious letting their child be on their own. The idea is hence to strike a balance – don’t be too strict and don’t agree to all that your child tells you/demands from you.

Stomachache is one of the most common complaints in kids. Stomachaches indicate indigestion, presence of worms, intestinal allergies, constipation, inflammation of the abdominal lymph glands, kidney disturbances etc. Most parents assume that the pain in the stomach is because of the food that the child has eaten. However, this may not always be true. Stomachaches can be a symptom for a variety of illnesses. Stomach aches are often associated with anxiety and apprehension. Hence most students face stomach problems especially during exam times when they are stressed or nervous. Constipation is another common cause of stomach ache. It is said that including jeera in the child’s diet can help to cure stomach ache. Vomiting and diarrhea accompany the stomachache in the case of intestinal infections. Mostly these are symptoms of food poisoning. Canned food, road side food or poorly cooked food can be the cause of food poisoning. Serious illness arises when stomachache is the one that is due to appendicitis. The appendix is a small offshoot of the large intestine. The appendix sometimes becomes inflamed and in the worst case scenario it can burst hence the inflamed appendix needs to be operated. Children who complain of stomach ache around the region of the navel, can have appendicitis. However, the symptoms of appendicitis differ from child to child. Some children vomit, others lose their appetite, some develop fever, some have the problem of constipation etc. It is best to visit the doctor at an early stage to avoid any serious problems later.