A book recommendation to guide us to look after children's emotional well being

As a starting point, I recommend a book that I recently read. The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind by by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson. I have read the book and found it true to the large number of good reviews on Amazon. For details of the book, please refer to Amazon. In this blog entry, I just want to share briefly why I recommend this book and how I have personally benefited from this book so far.

In summary, this short and easy to read book gives insights to how children’s brains and minds develop and the way parents could help them achieve better emotional well being. The ideas are not exactly new, but they are presented from a different perspective, a combination of neuroscience and psychology. Different to other parenting books that I have read, this book’s ideas are mostly supported by scientific findings. This had made the ideas so much more convincing and easy to remember. There are lots of examples to illustrate the concepts and also a section after each chapter to let you share with your children so that they learn about their own brain and emotions.

I have shared the first two chapters’ ideas with my daughter who is turning 7 this year. I was not too sure whether she understood the concepts. But a few days later, she told me she nearly “flipped her lid” when she was angry with a classmate at school. That phrase is from chapter 3 of the book to describe when we lost control of ourselves. Another example happened yesterday. When she saw my son's tidbits brought back from a school outing, she said clearly and loudly that she envied him. But that's it and she was not really affected after that. This minor thing is quite an achievement in itself for both of us as such envying usually does not end so easily. So in this case she is using what she learnt from this book too, "Name It To Tame It" in Chapter 2, the idea of putting feelings into words will help us calm down faster.

I am very sure that I will read on with her, and will also find time to read with my son. Among all the important concepts that I want my children to learn, a particular important one is “Let The Clouds of Emotion Roll By: Teaching your kids about temporary feelings” , which is presented in Chapter 5. I could only imagine if I have learnt and practiced these concepts since childhood, my life might be a lot happier. But it is never too late to learn!


PS. The book that I recommended is meant for children up to 12 years old. If you are interested in taking care of your teenager's emotional well being, you can check out another book
Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain by one of the author Daniel J. Siegel MD, or other similar books. 

I have not read the book, it seems to include similar concepts as the above book and much more to cater for the more developed mind of the teenagers. 

My thoughts on the importance of children's emotional well being

I have been thinking about the tragic news that I read on Thursday night about an 11 year old boy fell to his death on a normal school morning following arguments with parents. Most of us blame the academic stress placed upon children and parents. We also remind ourselves not to push our children too hard. But I have been thinking is such a self reminder really enough to prevent such tragedy from recurring?

Perhaps there are something deeper that requires our attention. Relating to the recent suicidal case of a secondary school boy alleged of molestation and rising youth suicidal cases in recent years, I felt that these children's emotional well beings may have been compromised to a large extent for such tragedies to repeatedly happen.

I am not a child psychology expert, I could only imagine the intensity of the desperation and helplessness these children might have felt before they took that plunge; these intense emotions were more than what the children could bear and rendered them blind of the otherwise apparent fact that their parents value their life more than anything in the world. I could only assume with a heavy heart that the deep entrenchment in the intense negative emotions were the last feelings of these young and innocent lives. As adults we also get entrenched at times and we walk out of it as our mind came to senses eventually. What about the fragile mind of children? Do they have the maturity required to perceive what has happened objectively and recognize that life is more than what they were experiencing at that moment in time?

I recently read that human being's brains are not fully developed until the age of mid-twenties, especially the part that is responsible for higher level thinking, such as logic, reasoning, self regulating, decision making etc. In other words, children are still children, no matter how rapidly they grow and how well they can read and write. We have placed expectations that are too high and unrealistic upon them. We expect them to be good at study, sociable, sporty, have one or two interests, have good morale values, independent in their endeavor etc etc, the list goes on. In all, we expect them to be perfect or near perfect, but we forget they are just children. (All right, I am guilty of having that long list of the unrealistic expectations and forgetting that my children are just children, often.)

To fulfill our expectations, we have given our children the opportunity to master all the essential skills early in their lives. But have we taught them how to deal with these high expectations and the associated stress and negative emotions? Have we made sure that our children are emotionally well to be able to recognize that the setbacks and the intense emotion associated are only a passing phase of their life and they do not represent his entire being?

There have been focus on developing children holistically, but I think there has not been enough emphasis on taking care of children’s emotional well being. Perhaps such tragedy will serve as wake up calls to the policy makers to devise programs to educate parents and children to take care of our children’s emotional well-being. Such program should include some essential knowledge about human psychology with focus on emotional well being. These programs should help children not only to cope with today’s stress from exams, but also to better prepare them for the future when they start to work and have their own family. These basic knowledge on human psychology should help these future parents to be better equipped to watch out and protect their own children's well being. But I am not sure when that will happen. 

Meanwhile, I think we as parents can do our part to protect our children's emotional well-being right from this moment. If you are interested, you may want to check out this for a book that I recently read and found very useful in this regard. 

Reference
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24173194
http://www.teach-through-love.com/child-brain-development.html

A useful article on how parents should respond to exam results 
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/content/exam-results-how-should-parents-respond

ChildRoad Chinese Digital Library

I tried the above named e-resource from NLB’s website, as it claimed that it has 1000 stories in Chinese with professional read-along audios, suitable for 4-12 years old children. This is a short overview for parents who might want to use these resources to enhance their children’s Chinese reading ability. In short, I found the resource easy to use and the books of decent quality and therefore would highly recommend this free resource.

How to access the resources
Follow the instruction as below:


Note that I scanned these instructions from a small booklet from NLB, so this is official. For those who don’t understand the above Chinese, here is a simple English translation:

1. In your browser, go to http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg
2. Click on “Login"
3. Click on “Browse by A-Z”
4. Click on “C”, then enter “ChildRoad Chinese Digital Library”

Note that you need to have a NLB account in order to access the above resource. Apply for an account for yourself or your children if you haven’t done so. (The account is very useful on its own as there are a host of services available. Users can use it to renew borrowed books or access lots of digital resources on the NLB website, e.g. borrow ebook from overdrive etc.)

I found out that this ChildRoad can also be accessed from AsknLearn, my children’s schools' learning portal. You can ask your children to login to their school’s AsknLearn portal if they have it. After login, at the home page, you can find the “NLB e-resources” in the “Resources” box, which essentially points to the same NLB e-resources url. The advantage of this method is that your children don’t need an NLB account to access the resource, as they already login to their school account.

How to use the resources
Upon login, you will see the below screen. Exploring and opening the books is pretty straightforward.

Move your mouse over a book, the book will pop out of the shelf. Click on it, and you will be able to open it and the read-along starts automatically. Here is an example.

The nice part is that the sentences are highlighted when they are being read, it helps the children to stay on track. You can also turn the page by clicking on the corner of the pages. Using the control bar at the bottom of the page, children can perform various functions such as pause or turn the page. You can leave them to try out.
To go back to the main screen (the bookshelf), just click on the “X” on the top right hand corner of the screen.
There is a button on the top right corner for you to toggle the language of the instruction between English and Chinese.
You may also filter the book by Age or some other criteria. There are three age groups, “4-6”, “6-8” and “8-12”. I browsed the books in the different age groups, and found the content generally interesting and the reading professional. I asked my kids to try it out, and they both enjoyed the reading.

Some minor problems
During the trying out, I found a couple of minor problems.
The first problem is that if you use the scroll bar below the bookshelf to scroll to the right to see more books, the books become unresponsive afterwards. I sent a feedback to NLB and they replied that they will look into the issue. Meanwhile they advised that users can use the scroller located above the bookshelf, i.e. the two faint green arrows at the two ends of the list of icons above the book shelf. They are a bit hard to spot but they are working fine.
The second problem is that the reading sometimes stops half way in the book. As a work-around, you can flip the pages back and forth and use the mouse pointer to point to where it stopped and the reading will resume.

What I liked about this e-resource

1. The feature of read-along with synchronised text highlighting is very useful. This will greatly help those children who are trying to read Chinese books independently.
2. It appeared to me that the quality of the books is high, based on my random sampling in the different age groups. The content is better than some other free online eBook resources that I have tried before. Most of the books are either written by some renowned contemporary Chinese authors or translated from well-known children’s literature in other languages, e.g. Grimms' Fairy Tales, Land of Oz, Long Stockings Pipi, Sherlock Holmes etc. For the younger age groups, these translated books are abridged. There are also abridged versions of the famous traditional Chinese novels such as the 《西游记》Journey to the West , 《三国演义》The Romance of the Three Kingdoms etc.
3. The range of books available is decent, with 1000 titles to choose from (as it claims). So it will sustain the children’s interest for quite a while, if they do become interested.
4. Most of all, it is free! That is, as long as you have a NLB account. To sign up an NLB account is also free! What more can we ask for? :)

Before I leave this post, for those of you who are anxious about your children’s Chinese, I just want to gently remind you to take it easy. Remember, reading story book as a means to improve Chinese is meant to be relaxing and pain free. So let your children explore the resources freely and have fun!

My suggestions to help children’s Chinese learning

Develop the interest. Create an environment for your children so that they have the chance to use it, be it listening, speaking, reading or writing. Do a google search and you will always be able to find some good advice. Here are some sound advice from a blogger mummy.

For those parents who can speak Chinese, please heed the call from late founding PM to speak to your children at home. These are really 金玉良言. I shall not waste my words here, for the obvious reason that I would stand no chance if such a figure of importance have failed to persuade you.

Among the many pieces of advice that you can find, I would think that reading story books is the most effective and sustainable method to hold the interest. Please do note that, by “story books”, I mean the books with engaging story lines that can hold children’s interest. They can be picture books, simple chapter books or even comic books. Those small books with a line on each page used at kindergartens or the reference books with list of phrases to memorise are not that interesting after all.

So we have the definition of story books. The next question is then how to encourage children to read. I know this is easier said than done, especially for those children who have a weak foundation in Chinese. First of all, the child might not know enough Chinese characters to make the reading meaningful. However, if you let your child study hard to memorize the characters without supplementary readings, then the child will soon forget these characters as he/she has no chance to encounter in different context. So this is the chicken and egg situation that I have described in an earlier post. Reading books with Hanyu pinyin does not really help, as the children may be reading the pinyin rather than the characters.

For those parents who can read Chinese well, then it is really up to them to help their children out. Read interesting story books to them while pointing to the words, just like how you read English books to them before they read on their own. Over time, when the children follow your reading, these words become more and more familiar to them and will be retained in their memory naturally. After they become more confident, you can take turns to read the pages. Gradually they will become more independent and be able to read the whole book on their own.

This definitely takes lots of time and patience, but once they started picking up a Chinese book and read independently, both your children and you yourself will be thankful for the effort. Plus, it is a great opportunity for bonding! When the habit of reading is cultivated, you also reap the fruits of the hard labour when your children tide through the Chinese exams in school without much struggle. One important thing to remember though is that throughout the process and even after the children become independent readers, parents need to help provide a steady stream of interesting books to sustain their interest.

For those who are too busy to read with their children or simply don’t know Chinese well enough, don’t panic! There are still solutions. Resources with read-along audios can work too. I recently found a very good resource named “ChildRoad Chinese Digital Library” on NLB website. It provides 1000 titles of good quality eBooks with professional reading to guide the children. Please refer to another post on this blog for more details.

Now I will take a step back here. Although I recommend reading story books as the most effective method to improve Chinese, I do recognise some children have difficulty in developing the habit no matter how much the parents wants to help. Likewise, I do recognize that some parents are just too occupied in other priorities to spend the time required. In such cases, I would not think this is the end of the world either. After all, there is only so much we parents can do. As long as we think we have done our best within our means, then it is better not to add too much stress to ourselves and children. Throughout the journey of parenting, nothing is more important than keeping a healthy relationship with your children.

Therefore it is important to keep in mind that reading story books as a means to improve Chinese should be kept relaxing and pain free. But not being able or willing to read story books does not mean your children could not score well in Chinese exams. After all, there are good reasons for the flourishing Chinese tuition business here.

The struggle with learning Chinese

Learning Chinese has not been the most exciting activity for most kids. That was actually an understatement. More commonly, it has been described as boring, difficult or even trying. Having accompanied my son on his a few years of education journey in the Singapore education system, I concluded a few obvious reasons for the prevailing yet regrettable dislike to the Chinese language. Please allow me to state the obvious.

Firstly there is simply not enough exposure for the children to practise listening and speaking of Chinese, which is fundamental in learning any language. Despite the heartfelt call of the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew, most of the families here don't speak Mandarin at home although the parents have the ability to. At school, kids talk to each other in English too. For most kids, the only time they are exposed to Chinese are during Chinese lessons and tuition classes. This level of exposure is simply not enough for learning any language.

Secondly, Chinese is not easy to learn. Let’s compare it against English. A few lessons on phonics is enough for the children to be able to pronounce most simple words in English. The sight words are not difficult to memorise either as there are only 26 alphabets after all. As such, it is relatively easy for children to be able to read simple story books by themselves once they reach a certain age. For Chinese, it is a different story. To read a Chinese book with a comparable story line is much more difficult. It requires the reader to know most of the words in the book. This proves not easy even for those in the higher primary. The children typically can memorise well the words taught in the current school year. But they soon forgot a considerate number of the words learnt when they advance to higher levels simply because they don’t use the words frequently enough. The memory retention part is the hardest. Some parents asked their children to memorise the words one by one. This approach is ineffective as the words make little sense without meaningful context. Therefore, in my opinion, the only way to keep these words in memory is by using them repeatedly in meaningful context, i.e. reading story books. So this is a chicken and egg problem which is very difficult to solve given the current environment.

The third reason is that there is tremendous pressure for the kids to score Chinese exam well. Learning Chinese at kindergarten age could still be fun, when kids hear simple stories, recognize and write handful of characters, learn some simple phrases and even recite a few poems. Some kids may develop genuine interest in the language. As they progress from kindergarten to primary school, the increasing pressure from school and parents slowly changed all that. It is common sense that the best way to kill an interest is to apply some pressure to it. Instead of story-telling and song-singing, children were given practice paper and assessment books. All of these, of course, is because of the pressure to do well in the PSLE, which I shall not illustrate further.

As a result of the above reasons, most children will lose interest in learning Chinese eventually, and some even develop resentment or fear to the subject. This of course will do little good to their exam scores. Most parents attempted to "solve" this problem by sending their children to tuition. It might have helped to some extent to bring up their exam scores, but for most, tuition does not really bring back the interest lost. Interest and environment, in my opinion, are the most important factors in learning a second language. Language learning after all is really boring, if it does not mean much other than to pass the exam!