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How to increase children’s multiple intelligences?

Last Saturday, I got a great opportunity to share about that topic. There were so many teachers and parents came to that seminar and I was so excited to share about this.

Parents usually want to have a brilliant children but the question is how? To increase children's intelligences, there are 3 things that are important to remember:

1. Genetics: we could not do anything with it… we can call it a blessing
2. Environment: including

• Nutrition: exclusive breast milk for 6 months and other nutritious food after 6 months of breast milk. The formation of organs and body will not wait for the food, so if the baby is not eating properly, the brain development also will slow down, so giving proper and nutritious food for your baby is a must.
  
• Stimulation: there are many parents said to me that it is useless to read, to play, to teach baby since they couldn't understand. For your information, baby's brain is like a sponge, it's ready to absorb much information from us, parents. When we give them information, it looks like they don't understand, but actually, they save the information in their brain and they will use it later when whey grown up.
  
• Psychological: baby's brain can develop in a better way if they live in a loving family, where they can be loved, can be hugged, can be kissed without any conditions.

1. Balance brain, left and right brain can work in a balance way.
   

To stimulate our baby, we can use their 5 senses, eyes, nose, ear, tongue and skin.

1. Eyes: try to give primary color for your bed sheet instead of pale color. Give decorations on the wall and try to give baby books, so that baby can see different color in this world. When they are 18 months years old, they can start to play "which one that is the same, which one that is different". Use coins to play with your baby, it's fun. Try to ask them to categorize small items, it is really fun.
   
2. Nose: Try to put fruits in front of their nose and ask them to smell it. Different fruits can give different smell and it is really important for baby to know about this. We can use flowers as well, and when we go to the supermarket, there are many things to smell, try it… soap, tea, coffee…
   
3. Ear: try to find hide and seek with an alarm.. hide an alarm and ask them to find it.
   
4. Tongue: try to eat different kind of foods and from various countries. It will give a sensation in your baby's tongue when they taste it for the first time.
   
5. Skin: try to touch anything you find, table cloth, fruits, flowers, rocks, stones, papers, mats, etc.
   

To balance their left and right brain, ask them to use both of their hands and feet. Swimming is one good example to do it, if they love to crawl, let them crawl. Don't push them to walk. Crawling is good to balance their brain because they will move right arm with left leg, left arm with right leg. That's perfect for brain exercise.

Dancing Claire…

My little Claire really likes to dance,… Every day, she'll ask me to do the dance with her favorite songs and I think she has the talent for it.. Look at her style… it's really entertaining us to see her dancing everyday…

I think dancing is another way to stimulate children's intelligence in music and body movement…. I hope I can help my Claire to fulfill her dream in life…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omyxxoR6ni4

Learning from Touching

In order to learn something, we don't have to use books all the time. Of course books can give us information, but there is another way to learn something by stimulating our senses.

Our brain needs stimulation from all of our senses, from our eyes, ears, skin, tongue and nose. So, by touching something, it will give information to the brain and the brain will receive that information and keep it in the data base. The more we stimulate our brain through our senses, the more information we get! So basically, we can learn from everything around us.

My little Claire likes to find any kind of animals around the garden and she will ask me whether it's ok or not to touch the animal. Sometime she finds a snail and so happy to see it. She touched the snail with her little finger and I can explain about the snail. How does it move, what color is the snail, what is the hard thing on the top of its body, etc. So, she can remember how does she feel when she touched it.

Medutainment – Meals, Education and Entertainment

Recently, I got many questions about how to feed baby….. Actually, that is easy, but really difficult at the first time. So, I'm going to share my experience here.

My little Claire refused to eat when she was 6 months old. For your information, this is very normal because from sucking to eating, baby needs to learn. It is not something that can happen in a minute. You cannot compare it to an adult who can eat and swallow very easily.

At first, I don't really understand this and I made a special food from fish, carrot and spinach. Well, I really wanted to give the best for my little baby so that I didn't really care HOW TO give it in the correct way.

After several days dealing with this problem, I asked my mom and she gave a great answer, "Just open her mouth and use the spoon to feed her." I obeyed her and guess what happened? My baby cried and the worst part was she cried every time she saw a spoon. OH, MY GOD…. What have I done???

I cried as well when my baby cried. I've done the biggest mistake in my life… I even thought that I was a bad mom. But thank God, I stop crying for myself and try to find a solution and I got it!

MEDUTAINMENT – Meals, Education and Entertainment

It is a method to give meals with education and entertainment so that while your baby is eating, she can learn something from it and there is an entertainment as well to increase baby's appetite. The education part is really good so that baby can learn about many things including colors, shapes, imagination, etc. So, eating will be a joyful moment for baby and for you as well! That's the idea.

I'll give you an example. I have a picture of my meal for my baby's lunch. Actually this picture was taken when she was 2 years old, because I don't have any picture when she was younger. I made little soldier with the food. I used carrot as the hand and feet, use the shrimp as the button and tofu as the head. While creating this wonderful meal, I give time for my baby to prepare herself to eat; I told her that it is time to eat, so she will know the schedule. After that, I will explain to her what did I make for her meal, a soldier. I said that this is the head, this is the hand, this is the foot, and this is the body. I can give explanation about color, the carrot and the shrimp is orange and the tofu is white. She looked very happy to see the little soldier in front of her. Believe me, she ate it all!

Other time, I can make cat's face for the meal, or using a shaping I can make stars, bears, dolphin, etc for the rice. I can ask her which one she wanted for her meal, after she chose; I can make the meal according to what she order. And… guess what,.. She'll love it and eat it.

I wrote it down really detail in my book, so if you want to know in detail, please refer to my book.... Ok.. I hope it can help...

Talk Show Smart Baby – Gunung Agung

Last Sunday, I got a great opportunity to share my book in one book store called Gunung Agung, located in Mal Kelapa Gading 3, North Jakarta. In general, I shared about nutrition and stimulation for baby's first year.

After I finished sharing about stimulation, there was a question from the audience. He asked me about his 2.5 years old boy who doesn't like to eat fruit nor vegetable. He said he tried to make juice from the fruit but still the little boy unwilling to drink it. As soon as he tasted the juice, he spilled it out and refused to drink. So, what should he do to give balance nutrition?

This is really interesting and many parents didn't really know about this. According to Joan Beck, a writer of the best seller book in US, all babies have a "sensitive period" in the first year of her life. After drinking breast milk exclusively for 6 months, baby is ready to learn to eat. So this is the perfect period to teach baby the taste of various foods. When baby tastes the food, she will memorize the taste and save it in her brain. Soon, when she grown up, she will recognize the taste of foods she tried in the sensitive period and will eat it happily. Thank God I knew this information before!

If parents never give fruits and vegetables during this period, baby will not have any memory about this. So, no wonder if she becomes a picky eater when she grown up.

So, that's the first thing. And second, as parents, we should give a good example. If we want our children to eat fruit and vegetables, while we never eat one of them, don't yell at your children if they follow your example. They will say to themselves, "Well, my mom and dad never eat that either, so why should I?" Learn to be a good example for your child is another thing to do.

If those two didn't work, try to be creative with the food!

1. Try to make creation with the carrot. Make a flower, butterfly, bug, or anything you can make. You can find a cute cutter in the cooking store department.
   


2. Instead of using chicken, try use cauliflower or broccoli, dip it into egg, pour out bread crumb and try to make cauliflower nugget or broccoli nugget. They will surprise with the taste!
   


3. Make juice with fruits. Make a popsicle with it. They'll love to eat popsicle with natural juice!
   


4. Cut watermelon or melon with a star shape cutter or flower shape cutter and put some ice on the top of it. Who knows they would like to try it.
   

I hope my idea could help you dealing with the food!

Talk Show Bayi Cerdas, Atrium Istana Plaza, Bandung

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I got a great chance to speak at Atrium Istana Plaza, Bandung.

This show was suppose to be for women, but there were many men attended the show.

But taking care a baby is a responsible of parents, not only for mother, so I really appreciated fathers who came that morning.

Actually, this show was more like talk show and I got 1 hour to share about breastmilk and stimulation for baby's first year.

Giving breastmilk is really challenging for me as well. I got many comments from my friends, saying that, " Giving breastmilk will make me fat!", "Giving breastmilk will make everybody think that I couldno't afford to buy formula.", etc.

But this is a big mistake!

God has given us, women an organ to feed our bay, so we must use it to feed our baby!

For those women out there, mothers who breasfeed their baby,.... I'm so proud of you guys.... keep up the good work

One more thing, about stimulation.

Parents usually think that they don't have to do anything for baby since baby couldn't understand anything anyway... but actually, baby's brain is craving for information.... they love to learn. So we need to feed their brain as well... not only their body...

How to do it? You can read it in my book for detail!

Learning with Nature

Learning with nature is a good thing to do and most of all, it's fun!

Try to go to garden, beach, sea, mountain with children and they will love it. Spend some time with them every week if it is possible. They can play on the grass, sit under the blue sky, watch the flower bloom, ride horse, catch fish in the pond, find shell, smell the wood, etc.

Is it really important for our children? They even don't understand. Most of parents told me that excuse. But....

The answer is yes!

Those experiences will become data for their brain and their brain will keep it in memory. One day, when they would like to use some information that has connection with one of the experience that happened in the past, their brain will easily load up the data needed. Could you imagine if they never have experience when they were kid? What would happen? There will be no data in their brain.

So, don't wait,... go and learn with nature...

Story telling at Gramedia Matraman

Wow.... it's raining today but I have to wake up pretty early this morning to have a story telling program at Gramedia Matraman around 09.00.

Around 07.00, I went to Gramedia Matraman with Mr. Agustinus. He said he will pick me up at 07.30 but he came too early this morning, so we went at 07.00. Thank God I've done my make up too.

The idea of this story telling program is to give children a basic idea about reading a story with parents and to make children love books and of course love reading it!

Nowadays, parents are too busy with their own stuff, thus they don't even have time to read a bed time story for their children. Some of them also said that they don't like to read, so they don't want to read for their children. So, because money can buy anything (they said), they will buy an expensive reading machine for their children so that children can learn to read with that machine. Quite good, but still it is not the same if we're doing it with human instead of machine.

What would happen to children if parents keep doing this to them? I can not blame children if they don't like to read, because the reading habit is not on their list when they're growing up.

It is different in America or Japan. One of my friend from America said that reading a bed time story is a common thing in America, it is a time to be with children after having a tiring day and to have the bonding between them. Children can learn new vocabulary from books and learn to love reading books. In Japan, reading also become a habit in life, so you can find people reading books every where, even in the train, in bus, it looks like reading is your life.


Check out children's face when I'm doing the storytelling. They were so excited about the story and when I gave them questions at the end of the story, they can remember all things I said! Isn't it amazing??

So, I really hope that parents who read this will change their mind about reading a story to their children.

Want to have a bright child? Start from yourself, do what you need to do, NOW!

Mom, Dad, I'm not bonsai

Do you know bonsai, a small tree that lives in a small pot? I think most of you know this kind of tree.

But, do you know that bonsai actually is a big tree, but with Japanese way of culturing it, putting it in a small pot, this big tree could not grow up into a big tree.

In Japanese words, bonsai means an ordinary talents. The opposite of bonsai is tensai, which means many talents, genius.

Nowadays, I saw that children about 1-4 years old could not do simple jobs around the house that is actually easy because without knowing it, parents make their children into a bonsai. Parents always do all things for their children, thinking that "children could not do it", or "it takes time if they do it by themselves", or "if I allow them to do it, they will mess up and I have to clean up the rest."

For example, let children open the door, let children put the garbage into the trash can, let children put the dishes in the kitchen, let children put the dirty clothes into basket, let the children clean up the floor, etc...

So, instead of giving a chance for children to try, parents always interfere the process by giving a shortcut for children, "Let me do it for you." So, this tensai children soon will become bonsai.

I hope, as a parents, you could give a chance for children to try these simple things around the house so that you can train them to have a strong spirit and when they can do it, they will be proud of themselves, thus creating a good self confidence.

The reading mother

Oh.... how I love to read books....

When I was still an undergraduate student, I used to stay in the library, simply to read books, textbooks, or just to fell asleep... but one thing I know, I love to be surrounded by books.

Going back home to Indonesia, I really miss my library in Japan,.. I really miss spending time searching books and get ideas from it. So now, all I can do is just go to the book store around the apartment and read some books there, it's kinda fun, you know.

Since I gave birth to my baby girl, I didn't really have time to read for myself and started to read for her. Most of my friend who knew about this will give a short comment, "She doesn't even understand anyway, why should you spend your time reading books for her?"

At first, I think, well, yeah,.... probably that's true. She doesn't understand. But the most important thing is not about whether she understand or not, it is about building a reading habit for my baby. Time passing by, and now, before going to sleep, she always said, "Mom,.... book, book,.." When she woke up, usually I found her reading a book (reading,... or probably just looking... I don't know).

So, can we say that reading for baby is useless??? Certainly no.... IT IS AN INVESTMENT FOR YOUR BABY'S FUTURE.

Now I also know that what I've done for my little baby create something that is called "the Reading Mother"

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be --
I had a Mother who read for me... Strickland Gillilan

Swim baby, swim.....

During my pregnancy, I used to go to a book store to find a perfect book for my reading time. At that time, my husband found a great VCD about human body and he said I should buy it.

Thinking about the price, I thought it was not that expensive anyway so I decided to buy the VCD and watched it as soon as I got back home and I was so surprise to find out that baby can swim inside the water! She can automatically move her arm and legs and there is something inside her nose that can prevent water from coming into the nose.

It was so amazing..... I was thinking about to try it with my own baby as soon as she is born.

So, after I gave birth to my baby, I decided to wait until she is 3 months old and we went to the swimming pool around our apartment. At the first time, I just put her little foot inside the water, to make sure that she's OK with the water temperature. But unfortunately, she cried. Probably because it was the first experience for her.

But later on, I decided to swim together instead of holding her on the side of the pool. I think that way could give her a secure feeling, and see.... she's really fine with me in the water now...

After 2 years of practicing,... you can see her swimming on her own, on the 1.5 m deep swimming pool....She really enjoy to swim on her own,....

So, parents,... Don't be afraid to take your baby to swimming pool... They will enjoy it.

Most of all, because swimming will force baby to use both of their hands and feet, it will increase their brain performance.



So,... what are you waiting for,.... jump into the water with them.... don't delay....!