Do children need to take nutritional supplements?

Source: Senior Dietitian, Ng Yiu Fun

Many parents ask me, “Does my child need to take supplements?” For example, would fish oil or DHA be better for him? I have children myself, and I don’t let them take any supplements. But some parents say, “Is it really smarter to take supplements?”

In fact, if you have a balanced diet, you don’t need any supplements. Why? For example, if you take too much fish oil, it will have an excessive blood-thinning effect, and you will easily bleed out. So we say that if you take too much fish oil, it may not be good for your child.

We may have to figure out how to add a little bit of fish to our food. For example, if he doesn’t like eating fish, we can dip the fish in batter and bake it to make it feel crispy and tasty. Or when cooking spaghetti, you can add some crustaceans, such as clams, which are easy for children to absorb. Also, simple foods such as seaweed have ingredients that make them smarter.

As for the parents, they may think that if they take more calcium supplements, their children will grow taller. This is also not necessary, because if you take too many calcium tablets, it will be very easy to give him kidney stones. We can let children drink milk, tofu, or soy milk to help them absorb calcium without the need for special supplements.

Growing up, but not willing to walk. How to improve the children’s twisting and hugging habits?

Source: Psychotherapist, Lee Wai Tong

At the age of one, children gradually learn to walk. At first, children will be very excited to explore everywhere. But gradually, they will ask adults to hold them and not be willing to walk by themselves. Parents will be feeling headaches, sometimes the child may be really tired, and sometimes they just want to be held out of a sense of affection. What can parents do when their children ask for a hug?

Some parents have mentioned to me that their children couldn’t walk when they were one year old, but they wanted to walk very much. When they learn to walk later, they especially like to walk at that time. The parents were happy that the stroller could be left at home, thinking that the child would walk in the future. However, after the children became familiar with walking, they would want to be held by their parents, and even the parents would need to take a stroller and go everywhere in the stroller.

If you don’t have a stroller, it’s a big test of the parents’ physical strength. Of course, parents want their children to walk again, and some parents say, “If you don’t walk, we won’t go out.” Parents actually want to go out with their children, have fun, and walk around, so why not set a goal with them? For example, if you go there, you will hold them, and if you go there, you will walk, and you will make this commitment before you go out. For example, when the child is just out of the lift door and says he wants to be held, we have just said that we have to go downstairs, from the entrance of the estate down to the gate, before we can hold him. We have a goal for the child; the child moves naturally downstairs to hug, and the parents promised to carry him to the gate and place the child back on the ground. 

Sometimes children would suddenly say they wanted to be hugged; parents could tell their children to walk to the other side of the light before hugging. On the one hand, we all enjoy parent-child fun, and secondly, children have a goal, know where to walk to hug, and are naturally more willing to walk a little more. Sometimes children are really tired, or the feeling of hugging is actually very intimate, so they want to hug to get the intimate feeling. So we need to let the children know that we will hug them, but there is a goal, for example, to walk there and hug them at that time, so that everyone will be happy.

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Parenting Tips

How should parents express their love for their children?

Source: Parenting Specialist, Ken Sir,

Some mothers often ask me, “How should I show my love for my children?” Will it be spoiled by expressing too much? I think that Chinese people are more introverted and are often afraid to express their love. Especially when you want to express your concern for him but end up with a different attitude.

I once saw a mother and her little child lost in Shatin and then reunited. How did the mother behave after the reunion? She grabbed him by the hand and hit him while saying, “I just couldn’t see you; do you know how scared I was?” I am very worried about you. What can I do if I can’t see you?

In fact, everyone knows that his mother loves him, but the child cannot feel it. I often share an example of how to express love in my lectures. When I was a child, my father ordered a drink, and since he didn’t have much money at the time, he asked the waiter for an extra cup after ordering a hot drink. He kept pouring the drinks around in front of me, trying to get the drinks cold as soon as possible so that the kids wouldn’t burn their mouths when they drank them and they could drink them faster, but I found that if the kids asked their parents or I asked many of the student’s parents, they would all answer, “This will get cold faster.”

When responding to children, parents should express their deepest feelings, such as “Because I love you, how would I do this thing if I didn’t love you?” Do I do it for the one next to me? In fact, there are many things we can do in life to express love, but there is one thing we must remember if we are to avoid causing spoiled, you must remember the following two points.

The first point is that if a child can do something, he should be allowed to do it; you should not fight to make him do it. The second point is that when a child makes a mistake, we should correct him. In the process of correction, we should be gentle and firm, and serious when we need to be serious. However, remind the child that he or she should be told the solution, not just no or wrong. If so, the child will not improve.

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Three steps to teach children to eat on their own

Written by: Senior Parenting Specialist,Bally

When children go to school, they have to eat on their own. It is not an easy challenge to    teach children to eat well, as they have to eat attentively and refrain from playing with      food. In fact, parents only need three steps to teach their children to eat on their own.

First, parents need to teach their children to eat on their own. Parents are frequently          anxious for their children to finish their meals quickly, fearing that they will not eat and    will have to be fed by their parents. In fact, starting at 6 months of age, children should get used to using their own hands to put food in their mouths, with parents only assisting them.

Parents should let their children pick up the utensils and eat by themselves so that they do  not just get fed but also get a sense of participation and motivation to eat.

Second, help children with hand-eye coordination. Sometimes children may not be able to  hold the utensils properly because of their own hand-eye coordination issues and may be angry and not eat. Parents can use words to remind children how to move the utensils           backwards and forwards, or they can train children’s coordination skills on a daily basis so  that they can cope with the challenges of eating on their own and reduce the difficulties they encounter.

Third, give praise and encouragement. Children will inevitably encounter difficulties and   frustrations when learning to eat. If parents keep scolding, “Why is it so messy?” “Why do you eat so slowly?” Naturally, children will not be able to enjoy food and will not eat on    their own initiative for fear of being scolded when they see food.

If parents provide encouragement at this time and praise their children when they do, they will continue to be courageous and overcome the frustration of learning to eat. Parents      should also remember that when children are eating on their own, don’t clean up after them, as this will prevent them from trying to eat on their own.

In addition, parents often misunderstand that their children do not eat. In fact, children just don’t like certain dishes, and if parents force them to eat, it forms a vicious cycle.

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Parents Zone

Why will children pamper?

Written by:Dr. Wilbert Law, an assistant professor in the psychology department at Hong Kong University of Education and a registered educational psychologist.  

How do parents react when their children coax and pamper them, ask for different things,  or play with them in a baby-like voice? Do you think children are troublesome? Or do you feel that your child is just messing around, doing nothing serious?

But why will children pamper? Research has shown that adults are particularly sensitive to the sound of pampering, so it is easier to catch their attention. It is possible that the child is pampering his parents because he needs your attention at that moment. Sometimes adults are so busy with their lives that they may neglect them, so children will pamper their parents when they see them.

Another possibility is that when children are tired or feel powerless, they may pamper or   act like babies. These behaviors are very common in the growing-up stage.

How can parents respond when their children are pampering their parents? In fact, when   we understand the possibility of our children’s pampering, we know that they are not        deliberately provoking parents, they can try to sit down and talk with their children to       understand their needs, especially if the child is pampering because he or she is tired. We  can help them express themselves with some words. For example, ask your child, “How do you feel?” “Are you very tired?” “What can I do for you?”

Of course, you may also want to reduce your child’s pampering behavior by encouraging   them more, using age-appropriate words and behaviors, and praising and affirming them  more often. When they are pampering you, do not scold or mock them.

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Before becoming enraged at their children, parents should ask themselves these three questions

Written by: Caritas Rehabilitation Services,Clinical Psychologist, Yu Kwok Ting

Some parents may be more impulsive and even have a habit of blaming their children for  problems such as disobedience, deliberate anger, or naughtiness. When children fail to do  what they want, they become angry with their parents, but this will gradually alienate them from their parents, which will damage the parent-child relationship in the long run.

Parents’ personalities, families of origin, and parenting methods learned in different ways  will affect parent-child relationships. And the adults’ thoughts will influence their mood. If adults find themselves in frequent conflicts with children, which affect the parent-child      relationship, we can ask ourselves three questions.

  1. Whether there are other possibilities

If a child is not able to do all the homework required by his or her parents, the first thing   the parents think is that the child is just having fun and not doing homework, but the real    reason may be that they do not know how to do it and need parental guidance. If parents    take preconceived notions as facts, they may ignore the needs and difficulties of their children and damage the parent-child relationship

2. Whether one’s own thoughts have been confirmed

Some parents often say that their child is “deliberately annoyed” and then see their child’s  behavior as disobedience, but perhaps the reason for the child’s behavior is carelessness,    but the parents are influenced by their subjective feelings and misunderstand their child.

3. Are your thoughts helpful to the goal?

If a parent’s goal is to mend the parent-child relationship, but he or she often holds the idea that the child is “deliberately working against him or her,” is this thinking really helpful to his or her goal? Parents can try to find more realistic and justifiable ideas to help them achieve their goals.

Three steps to teach children to eat on their own

Written by: Senior Parenting Specialist,Bally

When children go to school, they have to eat on their own. It is not an easy challenge to    teach children to eat well, as they have to eat attentively and refrain from playing with      food. In fact, parents only need three steps to teach their children to eat on their own.

First, parents need to teach their children to eat on their own. Parents are frequently          anxious for their children to finish their meals quickly, fearing that they will not eat and    will have to be fed by their parents. In fact, starting at 6 months of age, children should get used to using their own hands to put food in their mouths, with parents only assisting them.

Parents should let their children pick up the utensils and eat by themselves so that they do  not just get fed but also get a sense of participation and motivation to eat.

Second, help children with hand-eye coordination. Sometimes children may not be able to  hold the utensils properly because of their own hand-eye coordination issues and may be angry and not eat. Parents can use words to remind children how to move the utensils           backwards and forwards, or they can train children’s coordination skills on a daily basis so  that they can cope with the challenges of eating on their own and reduce the difficulties they encounter.

Third, give praise and encouragement. Children will inevitably encounter difficulties and   frustrations when learning to eat. If parents keep scolding, “Why is it so messy?” “Why do you eat so slowly?” Naturally, children will not be able to enjoy food and will not eat on    their own initiative for fear of being scolded when they see food.

If parents provide encouragement at this time and praise their children when they do, they will continue to be courageous and overcome the frustration of learning to eat. Parents      should also remember that when children are eating on their own, don’t clean up after them, as this will prevent them from trying to eat on their own.

In addition, parents often misunderstand that their children do not eat. In fact, children just don’t like certain dishes, and if parents force them to eat, it forms a vicious cycle.

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News

Carol Singing Festival 2022

20th December,2022 – Before the Christmas, the K2 and K3 students of our school will participate in “Carol Singing Festival 2022” Christmas performances at Shatin New Town Plaza.

有關「聖誕頌歌節2022」事宜

12月20日 – 聖誕節前夕,本園低班及高班學生將前往沙田新城市廣場參與「聖誕頌歌節2022」活動,藉此讓幼兒參與多元化的表演活動。

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News News

“K3 children visit The Mills” Activity

30th November,2022 – In order to match the picture book “Tom the Dress Maker”, our  school will arrange a visit to The Mills-CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textiles) , make good use of the resources of the community to let children learn the historical stories and arts of textiles, and appreciate the ever-changing expression techniques and artworks of textile materials.