Education Blog for Mommies

Have you ever had an argument with your spouse? Perhaps you and your spouse did not fully acknowledge your differences in the early stages of your relationship; or perhaps you felt that time and love would solve the problem. But love is not just saying "I love you". Love needs commitment and action.

In normal cases, arguments will make the one or both of the partners feel hurt. It doesn’t matter if you and your spouse have differences in opinion or preferences. What matter is, if you can’t avoid having arguments, do it the "right way". How you deal and resolve those differences will determine the health of your marriage. Here are 10 rules that you must follow should you choose to argue:

1. Avoid abuse and physical violence. If things get too hot, take a break.
2. Avoid making your partner wrong. Instead let your partner knows how his/her actions made you feel.
3. Be responsible. Don’t argue about one thing if something else is bothering you.
4. Don’t take thing personally. What ever your partner said, it is not about you or what you have said.
5. Give up the need to be right. You might win the argument, but you’ll have to pay the cost. Instead focus on resolving the issue.
6. Misunderstood is a common thing in verbal communication. To avoid unnecessary fighting, repeat to your partner what you understand about his/her motive or what he/she said.
7. Don’t let any argument to escalate into a fight by bringing up hurtful events from the past. Let past be where it belong, that is in the past.
8. No name calling please. It definitely will make the argument out of control.
9. Give up the urge to invalidate your partner. You might feel satisfied but it won’t last and will cost you the affinity.
10. Before you go to sleep, forgive your partner and yourself too. You’ll have peace of mind and wake up fresh and energetic.

So, learning how to resolve problems is the deciding factor between reaching conclusions which both spouses can happily live with or allowing every difference to be a power-struggle of who wins and who loses. The fact of the matter is that in a marital relationship, if differences are settled by power-struggles, everyone loses.

As a parent, teaching your child to read and write is one of the most important things that you will do for them. Through taking the time to do this before they go to school, and continuing to offer support while they are there, you can help your child to have the foundations necessary to learn, share and communicate with others.

Teaching a child to read and write is a harder task than many parents expect, not least time consuming. Many parents are concerned about trying to introduce their child to reading at too young an age, below 4 years old, however this is not something to worry about – the truth is that it can only help.

When you are starting to teach your child how to read, you should not concentrate on pronouncing capital letters first. The reason for this is that learning lower case letters is easier to aid learning how to read. This is because lower case letters represent how one speaks, and through combining lower case letters you start to understand how you can formulate words stemming from them.

When you are teaching your child how to read and write, you should be careful to limit the vocabulary that you aim to teach. The more vocabulary that you introduce; the more confusion and the more overwhelming the situation will become.

When your child starts writing much the same applies as with reading. The key is to teach your child to associate a character with a sound, and therefore to be able to graphically represent the spoken word.

Teaching your child to read and write is something which should go beyond preparing them for going to school. Further more, through making reading a fun and recreational exercise for your child you can ensure that their reading skills and ability to digest information will be much greater than it otherwise would be.

The play has many more functions for toddlers than for adults. For toddlers, play is not just a way to relax but it is also the best way to learn and perfect skills like walking, balance and controlling the hands. Through play, the child discovers the objects and their functions and learns some social behaviors. His work "tool" is the toy. If for the little baby the toy is mostly a decorative object, for the toddler who is just starting to walk and talk, toys are absolutely necessary.

The parent must make sure to offer his child adequate toys to his age and skills level. The most indicated toddler toys are the functional ones, who develop and stimulate different processes and mental activities (knowledge, inventiveness, imagination).

Moving games are one of a toddler’s preferred activities. Small sized slides, wooden or plastic material cubes, arranged in a pyramidal shape helps toddlers develop their musculature and agility. Another open-air game for toddlers that requires manual skills is sand play. This game requires the toddler to make different sand shapes and even complicated constructions. Sand play is so important, that I advise parents to arrange a sand box inside the house!

A toddler also requires toys to play inside the house. For the interior, the most important toys for toddlers are the cubes. They are used by the toddlers as load for toys trucks. These cubes will later take part in construction games that help develop hand maneuverability, the capacity to concentrate and the imagination.

Toddlers, both boys and girls, love animals and dolls made of different materials. It is a mistake to believe that at this age dolls are specific only to girls. Dolls help toddlers to identify the role of the mother and father in the family and learn the different body parts that a person has.

From the list of toddler toys, we must not exclude books. For toddlers, beautiful colored books, with few images but well outlined, help enrich the vocabulary and verbalizing perception. As a parent, you can create short stories based on these images, using words that the toddler can understand, with similar activities and experiences to the ones the child has experienced. After showing him the images and explained what they are, we can ask the toddler "What is this?" "What does it do?" This way you test the things he learned. Besides enriching his vocabulary, this game wakes up in him feelings of trust and security.