Darling, Be safe .. !

Safety Precautions

Infants

Your newborn is on a journey of discovery. He depends on you to keep him safe. It is the parent’s sole responsibility to provide & ensure safe atmosphere to the sibling.

Prevent falls : One of the most common accidents for new babies is falling off change tables or other high places when nappies are being changed. You can avoid an accident by keeping one hand on your baby at all times or by changing her on a clean towel or rug on the floor.

Prevent choking : Nothing should enter your newborn’s mouth besides your breast and his own fingers (and a bottle or dummy or safe, chewable toy if necessary). Do a regular scan of the area within baby’s reach and remove small objects.

No shaking : Never shake a baby. Even playfully throwing a newborn or young baby in the air can injure her fragile spinal column and brain.

Pets : Animals can be unpredictable (even a snoozy old cat can surprise with new behaviour). Introduce pets gradually and always under supervision, especially the family dog.

Bathing : Three things to remember here:

1. Use warm water (36° C)

2. Never leave your baby unattended

3. Keep the baby supported in your hands at all times.

Toddlers

To watch your toddler all the time, you would need to grow eyes in the back of your head. However, sensible safety rules will do the trick. The best way to toddler-proof your home is to get down to your child’s level and look about. Here are some other tips:

1. To avoid constantly telling them ‘no’, remove anything you don’t want touched. 

2. Toddlers love to climb so secure your furniture, especially bookcases and TVs.

3. Keep chairs away from windows and balconies.

4. Turn off space heaters when you leave the room.

5. When your toddler is out of your sight for a couple of minutes, you might want to check whether he’s discovered something intriguing but dangerous.

6. Curtain tie-backs and window blind cords can strangle a curious toddler. Remove them or hook them well out of reach.

7. When you make a well-deserved cup of coffee, keep it away from little fingers.

8. Install a safety gate at the top of stairs and teach your child to come down stairs backwards.

9. Keep medicines, cleaning fluids and other poisons locked away in high cupboards.

10. Turn down your hot water system to 50°C to avoid scalding.

11. Keep a well-stocked first aid kit and keep it out of your child’s reach.

12. Check your fire alarms regularly.

13. Deadlocking doors when you are inside the house prevents you getting out if there is a fire. Only deadlock when you are away from home.

Pre-Schoolers

A whole new world has opened up, most of it outside the safe confines of your home. Your preschooler needs to be kept safe while he experiments with his boundless new abilities. While we all are pre cautious to take enough care for our kids in home. The utmost importance is of ensuring outside safety for them.

Outdoor safety

Wheels -risks

Wheels can be tricky . Lots of practise in a safe area will build up his confidence. Falls are part of cycling. Teach your child how to stay safe on wheels

Playgrounds

1. The chance of a playground injury is greater for preschool and primary school children, as they are developing body strength and judgement skills.

2. Falls are the most common injury. The safest equipment for children three to five years is less than 1.5 metres high (no taller than the average woman).

3. Watch your child at all times and stand nearby if he is trying a daring new feat.

Water

To help your child stay safe around pools :

1. Always stay with your child when he is in or near the water, even if he can swim.

2. Remember that drowning can take less than a minute and is silent. Keep an eye on him at all times around water.

Youngsters

All School going children have the right to feel safe, both inside and outside the home. To protect them against danger, you can teach them safety rules. Of course, you still keep an eye on them. Common preschoolers risk factors of outside home scenario suits  also the youngsters. Apart from all those things one very important safety for grown up kids is safety towards internet.

Keeping your child safe on the internet

Your child will be using computers at school. If you are on the internet at home, they might even have favourite sites bookmarked. The internet is an open environment. Anyone can barge in with dodgy content, like pornography, or talk to a stranger in a chat room. These are things that children are to be protected from in the real world. The only way to really protect them on the internet is to supervise them at all times.

Teaching your child about how other people use the internet can also help:

1. Explain what chat rooms are for so he will understand that people online might pretend to be someone different.

2. You might want to make a rule about only entering a chat room if the kid has checked with you first.

3. Teach him how to leave a chat room if someone says something upsetting.

4. You can also teach your child to turn the screen off and tell you if something appears on screen that upsets her. Let her know that it’s not her fault that things appear there for no reason.

The Sensitive Periods in child development-III

Here we are , gonna learn the next three sensitivity periods in child development.

Missed the earlier posts ? Here are the links , click them and you will be re-routed.

The Sensitive Periods in Child Development - I

The Sensitive Periods in Child Development - II

This is the third part and the last 3 three Periods of sensitivity are given here in detail :

4) The Period of Sensitivity for Walking

                   We undoubtedly agree that movement does not support mental development as we often think about people sitting still during intellectual activity. But, a brain does not develop without the solidarity of movement. So, a child’s sensitivity for walking is a significant one.

         A happy child of 2 years of age loves to walk exploring keenly to discover new places and move about. We as adults move only to reach a goal but a child moves frequently to practice walking, climbing or running to perfection. We would have definitely seen young children climbing up and down the stairs carefully and constantly even if we impede their path. Happy Feet 

Happy Feet 

                 When we take children for walks, we misjudge their aptitude to walk thinking they cannot walk long distances. It is illogical, as we should allow them to walk at their own pace. The child not only walks, he also explores his environment. He walks a short distance, stops if he finds something interesting, explores it keenly, and then proceeds after the break. This way he can walk over a mile. The child’s impulse to move about from one place to another relentlessly ascertaining new things, resemble the first tribesman who strolled on the earth.

                   We as educators need to make a principle in our schools to provide scholarly benefits to the little active explorer. This will definitely make the child’s life increasingly rich.

5) The Period of Sensitivity for Small Objects

                   At the age of one year, the child begins crawling and starts to walk on his knees. Then he holds some support and tries to walk upright on his two legs. He practices it proficiently and persistently. Once the child starts walking, he gets a larger area to explore. So he starts ardent investigation on the small objects that he passes on his way. 

Likewise, when he goes for a walk, he stops and surveys each object, and gets attracted to small objects in particular. He examines them carefully, focused to every detail where to tries to build up an understanding with the environment around him. We should appreciate this great effort, which also helps in his academic intensification.

Exploring small objects

6) The Period of Sensitivity to Social Aspects of Life

                   When children become three years of age, they realize that they are part of a group. Social Integration occurs when the child thinks about the success of his group then the individual person’s success. Social behaviour linked with child’s character, should be cultivated in the school itself. 

For example, a Montessori School should be well equipped with one complete set of Apparatus, which is effectively liked by all children. One specimen of each object is enough, which will help the child to develop important social qualities. The child learns to respect others work and wait for his turn. Following this, lot of virtues like patience, discipline, obedience, adaptation to the society, satisfactory behaviour etc … is inculcated in the child’s personality. It is not the teacher who teaches them these virtues. It is the freedom to work in the environment we have prepared carefully that fosters them.

                   After six years of age, children are keen in knowing the laws and customs adopted by Men and also about social communal leaders. Abandoned children get into rebellious gang against adult-made rules and regulations.

                   So, when we talk about conclusion, it is evident, that we need to provide a good environment and right materials for the future adults to work with, for the betterment of humanity.

The Sensitive Periods in child development-II

Further to my earlier post yesterday, ( Click here to view the post ) on the 1st Sensitive Period, lets hop along to learn about the other sensitive periods :

2) The Period of Refinement of senses

                   A crawling child is a natural explorer, who picks up objects and puts them in the mouth. He not only tastes that object but uses all other senses like seeing, touching, smelling etc… Stimulating a particular sense organ causes this co-ordination between senses. So, this Inter Sensory synchronization can be can be improved to perfection by sincere teaching and assistance. The senses act as a point of contact with the environment and the mind becomes extremely skilful from what it grabs from the senses. This sensitivity can be seen unto the age of eight years. 

The Five Senses

                   A number of times, I have observed my daughter reacting only to selected stimuli. She sees, hears, and smells, touches or tastes only which she wants to. She only responds to when her name is called and does not pay attention when I call other people in my house. Similarly, when I watch music channel, she only turns back, to see her favourite song on the TV. This choosy reaction is very essential for preventing our mind from being clogged with stimuli.

                   So, Dr Montessori has felt the importance of giving the ultimate training for the refinement of senses for the child. She has devised good teaching apparatus for this purpose.

3) The Period of Sensitivity to Language

   

                 Language is an appliance of combined thought. Though the child was dumb at birth, his capability to learn a language in a short span of time is really amazing. Activity through language is very necessary for a child’s intellectual development. The child possesses a minuscule teacher within who introduces him to the sounds first and then syllables, words follow and finally grammar. By the age of five years, he is able to use the basic language. He further masters the language during his primary school period.              

             In this sensitive period, the baby has great rational authority to which best attention has to be given. If the supremely sensitive child is prevented from learning the basic language, he may suffer defective intellectual growth, which will become permanent. The best example for this is the “Wild Boy of Aveyron” ( Jean Itard,1801 ), who was isolated from the society during childhood. After so many efforts, he became social but could never speak. 

Victor, the Wild Boy of Averyon

The other three sentivites will be published in the next article that follows. 

The Sensitive Periods in child development-I

   

                       It is widely believed that an infant has a clear mental life since its pre-natal life.  This tendency of sensibility helps the child for the development of various aspects such psycho - motor skills, learning a language, culture, arithmetic etc… Therefore, Sensitive Period corresponds to special sensibilities found in the child during the process of development. They are momentary and last only over a limited period of time until a particular characteristic has evolved. Once the determined ability is obtained through reiteration of actions, the corresponding sensibility vanishes.

                   These sensibilities can be seen in animals, birds and insects too. This can be best explained in insects when the conversion of a Caterpillar to a butterfly takes place, reported as sensibility towards light. Also, in the grubs of a bee, a female bee becomes a queen bee only when it has intense hunger.

                   Similarly, a human child possesses an exalting vigour during physical growth. When the development of the child is hampered due to any obstacles or if the environment hinders the child’s secret working, the child becomes mentally starved or bored or frustrated. Thus the chance of a natural conquest is lost forever. This violent disturbance in the child leads him to a state of “naughtiness” or “stubbornness”. The tantrums of the supremely sensitive periods leave a permanent scar on the child’s psyche if the child is arrested from reaching his goal.

                   Dr Maria Montessori has observed six sensitive periods in child development which are classified as follows:

1)   The Period of Sensitivity to Order 

2) The Period of Refinement of senses

3) The Period of Sensitivity to Language

4) The Period of Sensitivity for Walking

5) The Period of Sensitivity for Small Objects

6) The Period of Sensitivity to Social Aspects of Life

Let us now have a look on the 1st sensitivity as follows : 

1)   The Period of Sensitivity to Order :

          An essential character of very small babies (say 1-2 years) is their LOVE OF ORDER – right things in their right places. Adults can only talk that order is a basic need, but babies cannot live in disorder. Disorder upsets him and it can be a very violent disturbance in the very depths of his soul. The baby may express agitated, desperate cries to show his temper. Here, I would like to share an example taken from my real life.

             

                   My eight-month-old daughter was playing in the cradle one day, when she started crying all of a sudden. I was shocked and checked for all possibilities to find out her despair. She stared at the wall in front of her and cried inconsolably. After a lot of hardship, I found out the apparent reason for her shrieks. I used to show her some picture cards daily, put them into a yellow bag and put it on a hook on the wall, next to the cradle. On the day in question, I had placed the bag elsewhere ! The reason for my baby’s confrontation was that the bag was missing and that bothered her brutally. So, order is only an external pleasure for an adult but a child makes himself out of the elements of his environment. Order provides him knowledge of the arrangement of objects in the child’s environment and he recollects the place where each object belongs to.            

         Thus, Nature bestows the child with a sensibility of order and when the child gets oriented through this perfectly, he conquers his goal. Instead, disorder obstructs a child’s development thus causing lot of aberration.

The Inner Order

                   Every child has two types of sensibilities to order. The outer, as explained above, concerns relations between parts or objects of his environment while the inner order provide him a sense of the parts of his body, their position and movement.

                   The inner orientation has been subjected to much research and psychologists have found out a special muscular memory which enables the child to determine the positions of the various parts of the body.

                   I would once again like to give an example from my real life that my 2 years old daughter cannot go to bed without brushing at night. She feels very guilty the next morning, if she accidentally goes off to sleep without brushing. This denotes that she has an inner order that brushing fights germs and when she does not do it, she feels psychologically depressed.

                   So, a child is the one who drew all the foundations, for us to lead a rich life out of nothingness. He needs to find everything in its place and could go to great heights to put them back if they are out of place. We may conclude that In a Montessori School, Order is an important feature.

                      We will be studying in detail, about the other sensitive periods in the posts that follow ! 

Click here to view the next post ( Sensitive Periods - II )

Famous Quotes of Dr Maria Montessori

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.

The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to 
say, "The children are now working as if i do not exist!".

The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind.

It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists 

who was not made by the child he once was.

Natural Laws of Development - A Note

                       Nature has its own arrangement for all living things. All we need to do is to follow nature’s trail. If nature is altered or tampered with, we have to face serious consequences. Great philosophers have researched that other educational systems do not abide by the laws of natural growth, which result in indolent, exhausted and fed up children. We should neither be stern nor be compassionate in handling children. We just need to practice a new approach towards child education, which paves way for “Natural growth or development “. This can be seen in plants, animals as well as humans.

                   Plants have their own strategy for development. For example, we shall consider a single germ cell growing into a huge tree without depending upon the mother tree. We can also think about a beautiful flower blooming from a small bud, which later becomes a fruit and ripens fit to be consumed. We are now persuaded by this example that an organism develops under our eyes at a programmed period of time.

                   Talking about animals, they too have natural plans for their evolution and development. Let us now regard the development of a chick from the hen’s egg. The mother hen lays eggs in a sheltered and secure place. It makes sure to provide safety and warmth for the eggs by sitting on them and watching it. The embryo inside is only the miracle worker, which develops slowly under the mother’s warmth. The love and care of the mother hen for three full weeks enables the eggs to hatch. Out comes the tiny chick with already fully developed legs walk and bright little eyes to look around.

                   Yet the motherly duty of the hen is not entirely over. She protects her chicks under her wing and teaches them other survival activities. Here, we can see that the mother’s job was only to lay the eggs and help the eggs to hatch. But she cannot claim that she has made the legs or eyes or the softness of the skin which were formed inside the eggshell itself. It is now obvious that it is an apparent task of Self-Activity of the organism, or the chick in this case.

                   Now, it is beyond doubt that growth and development through self-activity is an exact miracle of nature.

                   Let us see about the development of the baby now. A child has great rational and productive energy as he was incapable to move or speak during birth and later on he absorbed the characteristics of his surroundings and shaped himself into an ideal human.

                   A child is undoubtedly blessed or showered with abundant powers, which guide him, and the extraordinary psychic force inside him helps in the development of his intelligence. We need to consent with Dr Maria Montessori, where she quoted “ A Child is the Father of Man “. The power, intelligence and the knowledge, which an adult possesses, is not made by his Parents but by the Infant who transforms him into a Man. Here the Infant’s task was nothing – but to grow.

          A mother cannot say that she had designed or created the parts of her child’s body. In fact, the child has evolved himself. The mother’s part lies only in giving birth and the child utilize his own potentialities to grow himself to reach the capability of an adult.

                   Considering all the above facts, we can summarize that every organism follows nature’s allotted part of self-development and growth, as to what should be done, when and how. Also, we agree that during this period, it is highly impossible to interfere in nature’s force. For example, when a child is in the course of walking stage of development, he overcomes all obstacles that prevent him from walking. Just imagine a child who is busily trying to climb the stairs with great endeavour  If we stop him by carrying him back to his nursery, he makes grave constant efforts to climb again. He does not feel exhausted or bored. If we put a chair to block the stairs, he finds a way by either climbing upon the chair or crawling underneath it to reach his goal.

                   So, we should never obstruct a child’s pursuit for Self-activity. He should be given enough sovereignty to develop WITHIN THE LAWS OF NATURAL DEVELOPMENT.

Five aspects of Freedom

                             We just learnt in the earlier posts that the teacher or the parent has to aid the development of the child. Likewise, the school environment or the household premises has to be prepared carefully with apparatus to interest child development.

                            Apart from this, does the child really have freedom to explore the environment provided ?  In most cases, i would say no ! There have been many restrictions laid and many no-no and dont's are forced on the child. 

                            A child should be given adequate freedom to disclose his growth patterns and personality. There are Five aspects of Liberty that has to be given to the child without limitation :

1)    Freedom of Movement to be given as the child explores his surroundings through his movement. Impulsive movement also causes interest on a specific activity through which the child wins experience and development.

2)    Freedom of Choice is required for a child to select the activity of interest, which also suits his inner developmental needs. This leads to the formation of an important potential ‘Self Motivation ’.

3)    Freedom of Repetition is also required as the child selects an activity of interest and works continually on this until his inner urge is contented. This helps the child achieve excellence. Repetition and perfection together constitute an important character ‘Concentration’.

4)    Freedom of Expression is important for child development as the child needs to express his opinion and sensation freely to interact and merge his ability of spoken language.

5)  Freedom of Socialising should be given to children for development of public relations, problem solving skills, development of helping tendencies, co-operation and respecting others’ work.