Top 10 Reasons Your Children Aren’t Speaking Your Language
A note from Yalda: though I am not a big proponent of screen-time for children (television, dvds, computers), I do think that in some situations, families will benefit from the use of media to support their efforts at home. Please note, I do strongly believe that children under the age of three should have no exposure to television and video programming.
May 18, 2010 By Corey Heller
Source: Multilingualliving.com
Wondering why your children aren’t speaking your language? It is hard to say why one child will gladly speak a second (and third and fourth) language while another will resist it. Below are the top 10 most likely reasons. Do some of these resonate with your multilingual family’s situation!
Let’s start the countdown… (more…)
What We Get When We Give
By Christine Carter, PhD, February 18, 2010
If you do a nice thing for someone else knowing you’ll reap some benefit yourself, is it still a good deed? What if your primary reason for doing it is because of the benefits it’ll bring you?
Researchers spend a lot of time debating whether any altruistic act is ever truly selfless because we benefit so much when we are kind to others. I think of kindness like laughter: we might be laughing because we want someone else to feel good about their joke, but mostly we laugh because it feels good. Like laughter, kindness is a terrific happiness habit, good for both our physical and emotional well-being.
Did you know that kinder people actually live longer, healthier lives? People who volunteer tend to experience fewer aches and pains. Giving help to others protects overall health twice as much as aspirin protects against heart disease. People 55 and older who volunteer for two or more organizations have an impressive 44 percent lower likelihood of dying—and that’s after sifting out every other contributing factor, including physical health, exercise, gender, habits like smoking, marital status, and many more. This is a stronger effect than exercising four times a week or going to church; it means that volunteering is nearly as beneficial to our health as quitting smoking!
We feel so good when we give because we get what researchers call a “helpers high,” or a distinct physical sensation associated with helping. About half of participants in one study report that they feel stronger and more energetic after helping others; many also reported feeling calmer and less depressed, with increased feelings of self-worth. This is probably a literal “high,” similar to a drug-induced high: for example, the act of making a financial donation triggers the reward center in our brains that is responsible for dopamine-mediated euphoria. (For more on the “helper’s high,” check out this essay by James Baraz and Shoshana Alexander, published this month on Greater Good.)
Finally, nearest and dearest to my heart, kindness makes us happy. Volunteer work substantially reduces symptoms of depression; both helping others and receiving help is associated with lowered anxiety and depression.
This may be especially true for kids. Adolescents who identify their primary motive as helping others are three times happier than those who lack such altruistic motivation. Similarly, teens who are giving are also happier and more active, involved, excited, and engaged than their less engaged counterparts. Generous behavior reduces adolescent depression and suicide risk, and several studies have shown that teenagers who volunteer are less likely to fail a subject in school, get pregnant, or abuse substances. Teens who volunteer also tend to be more socially competent and have higher self-esteem.
It isn’t just that kind people also tend to be healthier and happier, or that happy, healthy people are more kind. Experiments have actually demonstrated again and again that kindness toward others actually causes us to be happier, improves our health, and lengthens our lives.
So if we want to raise kids that are happy and healthy, one of the best things we can do is teach them to be kind. Next week I’ll be giving some tips for HOW to raise kind children, but for starters, we need to think about kindness and generosity as a skill that we teach kids, and practice with them.
What do your kids do to practice kindness? How have you encouraged kindness, generosity, and altruism in your children? Please post your ideas in the comments and I’ll incorporate as many as I can into next week’s posting.
© 2010 Christine Carter, Ph.D.
Source: Greater Good Magazine, a personal favorite of mine! y
Positive discipline
How do we ensure that we are not inadvertantly squashing our children’s self esteem with our methods of discipline? Below is a link to a good resource for how to use positive discipline techniques to help your child(ren) understand the consequences of negative behavior while builing self-esteem.
- yalda
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By the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education
How do young children learn self-control, self-help, ways to get along with others, and family and school procedures? Such learning occurs when parents and teachers of infants, toddlers, or preschoolers are continuously involved in setting limits, encouraging desired behaviors, and making decisions about managing children.
When making these decisions, caregivers often ask themselves these questions: Am I disciplining in a way that hurts or helps this child’s self-esteem? Will my discipline help the child develop self-control?
Click here to read methods and language that can be used in handling common situations involving young children.
Raising Bilingual Children: Common Parental Concerns and Current Research
By Kendall King and Lyn Fogle, Georgetown University
Summary of study:
In responding to parents’ questions or concerns about raising bilingual children, professionals should warmly encourage the use of two languages in the home. We know that parents’ use of their first language is important in providing children a rich linguistic environment (Snow, 1990) as well as in promoting bilingualism, which can become an important resource for the child, family, and wider community. Parents should be directed to practical resources such as The Bilingual Family Newsletter (www.bilingualfamilynewsletter.com) and the Why, How, and When Should My Child Learn a Second Language? brochure (www.cal.org/resources/brochures/whyhowwhen_brochure.pdf). Perhaps most importantly, parents should be encouraged to be aware of the quantity and quality of their children’s exposure to both languages and to think about creating a “safe space” for the minority language to flourish at home.
To read the entire article, click here.
The No Game: Get Your Bilingual Child Talking!
By Corey Heller, Multilingual Living, May 2010
What child, bilingual, multilingual or monolingual, can resist responding to a parent who is clearly wrong!?
Want to find out if your bilingual child understands what you are saying? Want to get your bilingual child to respond to you?
Then play the No Game!
It will be hard for your child to not answer you when you go out of your way to be totally and completely wrong!
During the day make statements to your child that are clearly wrong. For example, when pointing to a cat say, “Oh, look, there is a dog!” Or in the morning, say to your child, “Good night.”
You can encourage even longer sentences and discussion based on your statements and questions. For example, you might say, “Your math teacher, Mr. Smith, sure did give you a lot of reading homework!” when you know that your child’s math teacher is named Mrs. Kennedy and the reading teacher is named Mr. Hill and neither gave any homework on that day.
What multilingual fun can be had by just being very, very wrong as much as possible!
Source: multiLingualLiving.com
Golestan featured in The Monthly Magazine, May 2010
Excerpt from Persians Find their Place: How Iranians in the East Bay hold their heritage.
By Maggie Fazeli Fard
Nowhere in the East Bay is the Iranian-American “melt” more apparent than at 1808 5th St. in Berkeley, the home of Golestan Kids.
Golestan, named after the Farsi word for “garden,” is a full-immersion Iranian language and culture program, offering full-day pre-school and after-school classes based on Waldorf and Montessori teaching methods. While Farsi language classes have been offered in the East Bay at locations like Nima Farsi School in Albany and the Andeesheh School at Oakland’s Islamic Cultural Center, Golestan is the first school to offer a daily program of not just language instruction but also science, math, nature, art, music, dance, cooking, gardening, and even yoga—all in Farsi.
Launched in 2005 as a playgroup for Iranian-American children and their parents, Golestan is the brainchild of those parents, including founder and executive director Yalda Modabber, whose sons Manu and Kian currently attend the school.
“Manu and Kian only speak Farsi to each other; they even fight in Farsi,” she says. This is a challenge for her husband, an American who doesn’t know Farsi, and Modabber often finds herself playing the part of translator. But it’s a small price to pay, she says. “If it weren’t for Golestan, my boys wouldn’t know Farsi. I’m sure of it.”
Like her own children, most of the students at Golestan are of mixed heritage, says Modabber. “Except for one, who has no Iranian in him at all. Both his parents are American, but they really just loved the program.”
“Being Iranian means something different to everyone,” says Modabber, who left Iran with her family in 1979, when she was 9 years old. “There is the poetry, the music, the language. But there is also a warmth and generosity of our culture. There is a fear that when our kids enter American schools, they will lose that. We want to teach them to love their Iranian heritage.”
For full story, please click here.
Making Stock!
By our chef, Natalia.
Making vegetable stock is truly one of the simplest ways to get the most out of your produce. Scraps that are normally fed to the compost can be used to create a rich and nutritious stock that you’ll find useful in practically any dish you prepare!
*What I’ve found to be the most efficient way of keeping stock on hand is to keep a bag in the freezer of all the skins, peels, stalks you’ve accumulated throughout the week. Once the bag us bursting, or when you’re in need of stock, simply drop all the contents of the bag in a pot of simmering water and wait for the aroma to fill your house! Try substituting stock in place of water when cooking grains, soaking beans or making soups & salad dressings.
INGREDIENTS:
Everything but the kitchen sink! Well, almost. Here are just a few examples of ingredients for a tasty stock: onion and garlic skins, leek tops, fennel fronds, broccoli stalks, the seeds and rinds from winter squash, stems from fresh herbs such as parsley, cilantro, dill, thyme, rosemary and mint. There are chef’s who even put olive pits in their stock!
DIRECTIONS:
1. Fill a large soup pot with cold, pure water and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and add 4-6 cups of vegetables, along with a spoonful of whole peppercorns, two whole Bay leaves and a few crushed garlic cloves. Let simmer on very low heat for a half hour to an hour. You will see small bubbles on the surface and very little movement of the vegetables. Be careful not to boil the stock or else it will become bitter.
2. Taste the stock for flavor- it will be subtle. If you prefer a rich stock, allow to simmer on very low heat for an additional 15 minutes before straining.
3. When you’re ready to strain the stock, place a colander over a large glass jar. Strain the stock and allow to cool to room temperature before placing in the refrigerator. Stock will last for up to three weeks.
Our chef Natalia featured on Iranian.com, on what it’s like to work at Golestan.
I am passionate-borderline obsessed- with food. My philosophy: if you can make it, why buy it? I jump fences to pick lemons, I make my own apple cider vinegar, I own nine aprons, and I’ve been known to swoon over the vibrant leaves of my garden’s purple potatoes. I’m stubborn in my ways of healthy eating and I (used to) think white rice is akin to a bowl of sugar. However, in the past several months, I’ve learned not only how to tame my convictions, but that above all else, food is celebratory.
To read full article on Iranian.com, please click here.
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