Category: Parenting

As we all know, life is full of ups and downs. This is what makes it essential for us to become mentally strong at a young age so that we can deal with whatever life throws at us, no matter how difficult. So why not get started with our kids?

If we allow our children to run away from challenges, failures, and disappointment, then we will be fostering negative qualities and personality traits that will hinder the child mentally as they progress from a toddler right through to adolescence. Facing such things will help them become self-esteemed and mentally strong.

Unfortunately, it’s quite challenging to raise your child in this way but fear not. We have compiled a list of some helpful tips to get you started!

Let Your Child Make Mistakes

Making mistakes is one of the inevitable things in life. You may have heard this phrase, ‘To err is human.’ This applies to kids too.

As a parent, you should let your kids make mistakes and then turn these mistakes into learning opportunities. Instead of yelling at them when they make blunders, you should speak to them and help them avoid repeating these mistakes.

Undoubtedly, mistakes are the most excellent teacher in life. Make sure that you teach them how to learn from these opportunities, and this will go a long way toward them becoming mentally strong and living a better life.

Encourage Your Child Face Fears Head-On

Every child has his/her own fears. If your child gets scared of something, he/she will most likely try to avoid it in the future. Being a parent, you should help your kids to have a positive attitude and face fears with confidence.

Cheer up your kids, their efforts, and help them become fearless and self-developed. If you encourage your kids to handle their fears and concerns in the correct way, they will gain confidence and develop mental tenacity that will serve them well into later life.

Make Gratitude a Priority

We all know that life is full of disappointments. But, parents should teach their kids to appreciate their blessings rather than dwelling on the negative. As a parent, you should encourage your kids to be grateful for the things they have.

Gratitude can boost their mood and help them become mentally strong. Teach your kids to turn their negative self-talk to positive ones. Your kids will focus on problem-solving and become optimistic by changing their perception of adverse situations and unfavorable results.

It would be a good idea to find some videos for kids, focusing on the importance of gratitude. You can show some of these videos to help them develop a deeper understanding of the benefits of practicing gratitude.

Create Personal Responsibility for Them

Accepting personal responsibility helps us in gaining and maintaining mental strength. It’s a requirement that we abide by our own moral compass and keep ourselves accountable for our actions, both good and bad. Your kids should learn to become responsible for their own actions, too.

As a parent, you should teach them to accept responsibilities – don’t let them put the blame on others to hide their flaws.

Teach Emotion Regulation Skills

In order to build up children’s mental strength, they should understand their negative emotions like anger, sadness, and jealousy. By understanding their feelings and emotions, you can teach them how to deal with uncomfortable emotions when they arise.

If your child feels angry, for example, you should try and help your child to understand this emotion so that they can identify it in themselves and stop it in its tracks a lot sooner. Of course, this is easier said than done, but it will undoubtedly get better with age.

Teach them to go for a walk or take some deep breaths to boost their mood. This will increase their confidence level and will promote a more rational state of mind.

Teach Proper Discipline

Teaching proper discipline to your child will best set them up for the stern challenges that life will throw their way. After all, they can’t have it all their own way when they grow up, so why should they now?  There is the possibility they will also need to learn responsibility and independence while away from home.

An ill-mannered toddler may not make good choices in life as he/she may not know how to deal with challenges, particularly rejection.

Be A Role Model For Your Kid

Far too often, parents operate with a “Do as I say, not as I do” attitude to parenting. This rarely works.

You must show your child how to be mentally strong and demonstrate the best ways to develop mental tenacity. As a parent, you should talk to your toddler about your goals and show them how you are dealing with the challenges coming in your way. Make mental strength a priority in your life and encourage your kid to follow the same.

Teach Your Kids the Importance of Character

In order to become mentally strong, one should have a strong character with a sense of morals and values. As a parent, it is advisable to create new opportunities for your children. Once your children learn morals and values, they will become capable of making good choices in life rather than giving up because of difficult situations.

Things to avoid

• Don’t be overprotective
• Avoid comparison between siblings
• Don’t ignore what your child is trying to say
• Don’t expect perfection from your toddler

It takes a lot of effort, energy, and a positive attitude to raise a mentally strong toddler. It’s not as simple as telling them to calm down when they are upset by sitting in the corner with a nice cup of green tea. You MUST be their role model, their leader. Set yourself as an example. It is essential to teach them these lessons mentioned in the article to give yourself the best chance of raising a well-mannered and mentally strong human being.

Read about the 10 memory games to check your mental strength.

When it comes to showing your child the internet, there’s a lot to explore. It can be overwhelming knowing where to start. Just because there are dangers online shouldn’t stop parents from exploring productive and beneficial opportunities for kids to learn. It’s all about finding the right programs to benefit and complement their real-life learning skills.

If you’re not too sure where to begin when it comes to the internet and your child, let’s talk about five things that your child can learn online.

1.     Try a Readability App

A lot of kids struggle to learn to read. Whether it’s at home or kindergarten, for some reason, they’re just not getting it and coming to you frustrated. Teaching them to learn how to read is also easier said than done.

However, there are now online resources that make it a little easier to teach your child how to read. A readability app has a variety of different reading programs to encourage them to persist and learn an important new skill. From pointing out where they make mistakes to encouraging different reading levels, this is a great way to build up your child’s confidence around reading.

2.     Teach Them Math

Math is another tough skill to teach a child, especially if they’re not naturally inclined that way. Luckily, there are a number of different online resources that can not only prepare your toddler for what they will learn in school but can also make learning math fun and interactive.

Whether it’s a math learning game or math training that improves their skill levels, you’ve got many different options to choose from.

3.     Ignite Their Creativity

You may not know it, but there are a lot of resources on the internet for kids that aren’t just mindless games. In fact, there are game apps made for kids with education in mind, designed specifically for the purpose of encouraging their creativity.

Make sure that you find a game and encourage the child to think for themselves and inspires them to use their imagination and get creative.

4.     Learn to be Organized

One of the biggest skills that your child will learn as they prepare to start school is how to be organized and plan ahead. When they’ve got to get up and make their lunch, get dressed, and remember what homework they have to hand in today, having planning skills is going to make all this a lot easier.

There are now quite a few apps that can help your child plan ahead, so they can see their schedule in front of them and not get so overwhelmed by the day.

5.     Improve Language and Grammar Skills

Another essential skill for your child to learn as they get ready to start school is grammar – and, of course, language. These two go hand in hand with reading, so it’s no surprise that there are interactive apps and games that can help improve your child’s grammar and language skills.

While the internet can be tough terrain from time to time, there’s also a lot on offer when it comes to your child learning new skills. Make sure to keep them safe online too, and monitor their activity whenever you can.  There are also methods to help limit your kids screen time to ensure a proper balance between all of their activities.

Around the World Online With Kids

Here’s What Parents Should Teach Their Little Ones… Almost a decade ago, parents and caregivers didn’t have to worry about teaching their preschool aged children’s online safety. It’s the opposite today. Children are now being raised in the digital age.

Today, kids grow up learning how to use technology just like learning how to speak or walk. In fact, if technology isn’t a part of their lives, they would be unusual in society.

Touchscreen technologies have made the internet far more accessible than it used to be. It’s quicker and easier to use on a tablet or an iPad since you don’t need a mouse and a keyboard to navigate.

Some online safety risks for preschoolers

Not all parents believe there is a need to navigate and control how their 4 to 5 years old kids use the internet. Because what can go wrong. They are not using social media and they are barely spelling anything right.

It’s true, preschoolers don’t usually get exposed to as many risks as older children since they are usually using the internet under the supervision of an adult. However, that doesn’t mean parents can excuse themselves from taking certain practical internet safety precautions. Even if your preschooler goes online to play games or watch videos, they are still at the risk of accessing inappropriate content.

Raising Children Au says, there are three kinds of internet safety risk for preschoolers – content, contact and conduct.

1. Content: This includes the content that children might find upsetting, uncomfortable, or disgusting. Examples are images of animal cruelty, violence, pornography or videos that are meant for older children.
2. Contact: Children might come in contact with people they don’t know. For instance, they might end up on a communication app like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp and send some personal photo or video to one of your contacts or even a stranger (on Facebook).
3. Conduct: This risk includes children acting in a way that might hurt others. For instance, they might end up deleting some important file or accidentally make in-app purchases.

Children know more than we think!

If you think your preschooler isn’t smart enough to understand what the internet is, read the results of this study where 70, four-year-old children were asked what they know about the internet. 40 percent of the children in the study were able to describe what the internet is. Their understanding of the internet was associated with the experiences of going online and using technology with their family. They defined the internet as something they use to play games; something that mommy uses for work or big sister uses for sending emails and more.

Internet safety checklist to follow

Before children make up their own meaning about the internet, why not tell them what the internet is? Experts say you can start by teaching them that the internet is a net of technology we used to “talk” to each other. Once they understand that then we can move towards teaching them how to protect themselves online.

Here is a checklist that can help parents teach their little ones about internet safety:

Explore the internet together

Start by exploring the internet together with your children. They will learn when you are exploring with them. Show them interesting websites, ask them to show you how to play their favorite game, or you can even simply talk about the video they were watching.

Be involved

Encourage your children to use devices in the lounge or the kitchen. This will let you keep a close eye on how they are using the internet and monitor what they are watching. Don’t forget to be involved in their enjoyment.

Use password

You must know when your child is accessing the internet and a smart way to do that is to set passwords on all internet-enabled devices. Make sure these devices are out of your child’s reach. They will have to go through the process of asking permission to access the device and making you put the password so that they can play a game or listen to nursery rhymes. P.S. Don’t share passwords with them.

Activate safe search settings

Your toddler will probably use Google and YouTube to do their thing on the internet. Enable safe search settings on both of them. This allows you to apply restrictions on inappropriate search results.

Select the right content

Help them choose safe, educational, and fun games or videos. Research games or shows that would be appropriate for your child. You must be confident about the content your child is watching because they will be learning a lot from it.

Teach them good and bad

It’s totally okay to talk to your child about good and bad content on the internet. Encourage them to come to you if they see something scary or upsetting. Here is how you can start the conversation: “Some videos on the internet can be scary. Tell mommy/daddy if you see something that scary or makes you unhappy.”

Put yourself in control

Don’t be afraid to use parental controls. There are plenty of child monitoring apps that allow you to set parental controls to manage and control what content your child sees online.

Lots of parents take refuge in monitoring apps for children. It’s being used for monitoring and supervising online behavior of preschoolers and older kids alike. In short, it puts you in control of the online activities of your child and ensuring their safety by providing online protection of your little ones:

Manage Web Browsing

Usually, kids directly go to YouTube or the game that’s installed on their tablet. But some are smart enough to browse through Google, too. Parental controls allows you to check the web browsing history of your child’s tablet from a remote location. This feature is also useful if your child is with the nanny and you are just curious about what they are making your child watch.

Set boundaries

It is never too early to set boundaries on how much internet or screen time your child gets access to. Set rules regarding how much time your child spends online. You can set screen-time limitations by locking their digital devices altogether. Practice this when it’s time to eat so that they develop the habit of eating without a screen in front of them or when it’s bedtime so they could sleep without any distraction.

Block Apps

If your children share a tablet or phone, the apps that your older kid uses may not be appropriate for your toddler. With parental controls you can block the apps that you find inappropriate for one or both kids and let them spend the right amount of time on the internet, worry-free!

Monitoring apps as the likes of Xnspy are great for working parents who leave their kids and their tablets with babysitters and don’t know how much time they are spending online or what they are doing online.

Other things to teach

You mustn’t forget to teach your child how to protect themselves one. Tell them to:

• Seek help whenever they see a pop-up in the middle of a game or video
• Be near an adult whenever they are using a device
• Only click on the tabs or apps your parent or babysitter has set up for you
• Don’t share personal information (like photos or videos) with anyone

It makes sense to set boundaries to stay safe from internet dangers.  The internet is a large part of the daily lives of many young ones. They don’t just watch their favorite YouTube clips and play games online but also talk to long-distance relatives over video conferencing. Security and safety begins by teaching kids how to stay safe online from a young age.

Smart hubs. Smart speakers. Smart Assistants. Alexa, Siri, Google Home… These home automation gadgets go by many names, but together they have one major thing in common — they provide a service that is growing in demand and quality by the day. But parents may start to question the impact it might have on their kids.

Are smart speakers safe for kids to use freely? What are your options for controlling what your little ones see and hear? Can these actually be used in a way that will benefit both you and your child?

Luckily, developers are hearing these concerns and taking action. Busy moms and dads including single parents today find that smart gadgets are becoming a useful and fun part of their everyday lives.

So,if you’re considering buying one for your own home, here are some tips to help get you started in your search for the best fit for you and your family.

What are Your Smart Options?

The three main smart speakers on the market today are provided by Amazon (aka The Echo, or Alexa), Google (Google Home), and Apple (otherwise known as the HomePod, which is powered by Siri).

Finding the best smart speaker for your family can mean many different things, depending on your budget and lifestyle. But for the sake of brevity, let’s go over the two most important factors for parents — features and compatibility.

Kid-friendly features, safe search settings, and parental controls

You might want to consider Googling each of the phrases above while you’re doing your research, as each device has so many different offerings.

Google Home, for example, has the Family Link app which allows you to create different profiles for each of your family members, which are identified by the sound of their voice. From there, you can adjust and personalize their settings, including what apps they access, when and how often they can access them, and even activate Google SafeSearch to ensure they are hearing only age-appropriate language and information — much like parental controls on the computer.

The Amazon Echo actually has a “kid’s mode,” wherein Alexa will tell silly jokes, play games, and teach good manners like encouraging them to say please and thank you. If you’re thinking about putting a speaker in your kid’s room, Amazon even has a device just for children called the Echo Dot Kids Edition.

Don’t limit your research to just kid features, though. Many of the most popular features are likely to be the ones you or your kids use most. From basic ones like the alarm clock, to the more advanced ones like Tile Tracker, which can help you find items that are frequently misplaced.

But all these features are changing on a daily basis — much like our cell phones, they get frequent software updates that will be available for both new and existing devices — and there are far too many to list in a single article, so remember this is just the tip of the iceberg. And that’s why you’ll want to do thorough research.

Compatibility with smartphones, computers, and smart home devices

Nowadays, most of us have smartphones and computers that we use daily. And many of us have developed a strong opinion as to what brand or interface we prefer. If you’re an avid Apple user, you’ll be happy to know that the HomePod will sync across all your devices with little effort on your end.

However, the HomePod isn’t the most popular or most compatible across other smart home devices you may want to integrate with, such as automated plugs, light-bulbs, or thermostats. But that’s likely because it’s much newer than the others, so that may change soon.

Even if this is your first time looking into a smart speaker, you don’t want to take compatibility for granted. It’s likely that the device will soon become part of your family’s routine, and you never how you might want to use it in the future.

This is not to encourage families to replace face-to-face time, however. While tech can bring convenience to our lives, it’s important to remember that nothing is more valuable to a child’s development than the time spent learning and socializing with others face-to-face. But as our lives get busier and busier, smart speakers can be a great way to help manage our time and perhaps even make more of it to be spent bonding with our loved ones.

By Andrea Harvey