A friend was with her child when the earthquake struck the East Coast the other day. They were still feeling the earthquake aftershocks when the child pounded her with questions that made her more dizzy.

How do you talk to yours kid about an earthquake? If they’re not experiencing this, they can see it happening from watching news on the television, or seeing it online.

First of all, if the earthquake was something you’ve experience, the first thing to teach your child is to remain calm. Your fears can rub off on your children. They can easily pick this up and you may be trigger a trauma that will never go away. Look into the tips from FEMA for disaster preparedness.

Second, if she has any questions about what happened, be patient and answer her questions. If you are unsure about the answers, you can always tell her that you both have to find out more from the news. Watch credible updates together and from there, guide her into what is happening. Don’t overwhelm her with so much information, though. Some kids can have very wild imagination that can compound their fears.

Remind her that earthquakes are something that happen to the earth all the time, it’s just that we don’t feel most of it often. You can also teach her about the earthquake by asking her what she knows and how she feels. Ask her about what she may have picked up form school and then expound these to her even more.

There’s a lot of changes when your infant finally becomes a toddler. His unfamiliar desires, needs and abilities suddenly makes you feel anxious. The following insights will somehow make you understand what your toddler would really like you to know.

• I Know how!

Whether it’s pouring her cereals, fixing her bed or doing a dozen daily tasks, your toddler wants you to understand that she can do it by herself. After she mastered walking, her sense of competence and autonomy was developed. So if she says “Mama I can do it”,  let her do it! It teaches them to be responsible

• Limitations

Toddlers are easily overwhelmed by new situations, so they need a structure “every single day”. You need to be consistent with what they can and cannot do. But make sure that you’ve explained clearly to them why they’re not aloud to do some things.

• Picky eater

It’s normal for your toddler to be choosy with food. But make sure that she eats a couple of items from each food group, and she’ll be fine. Let her enjoy eating her favorite dish. Do not force your child to eat something that she doesn’t like.

• Never get tired of answering

At this stage, toddlers will develop their communicating skills. They will start asking, Why is the sky blue?, Why is your dress red? or Why do I need to eat that? Don’t get tired of answering their questions because It’s all new to her. She’s curious with a lot of things, so be patient.

• Wild imagination

Your child’s imaginations soar, so does her fear, anxieties and nightmare. Don’t belittle them and don’t take for granted their feelings. If your child says “There is a monster inside the closet!” this is because of her imagination. It’s your responsibility to talk to her. Teaching your child how to pray will help her a lot.

These are just few points that you need to know as a parent. Learning to understand your toddler seems hard. But with great determination you’ll surely enjoy every moment with your precious child.

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In one of the challenging and exciting duties a parent has to deal with has to be dressing up their kids for various occasions. Unlike adults, getting the right attire may require some extensive imagination as well as adhering towards how a child would be emphatic when it comes to wearing a new wardrobe. Included in this area are the type of shoes that they wear.

Compared to a boy, girls shoes would be more challenging. They are not as easy like providing them sneakers or leather shoes that boys can wear for any occasion. A girl needs specific shoes, whether these be sandals or the traditional closed shoes. The important thing about girls shoes is that they complement the dress or wardrobe a girl would have, something which some parents may point to as costly and critical.

However, all that is bound to change once they refer to school shoes. Boy or girl, the selection of shoes that they can wear has a limit. Dull as they may seem, school shoes normally have one thing in common black color. After that, the only variant has to be the shoe design which will come in various forms such as straps and shoe sole design.

Kids should have a say on what shoes to wear. Besides, a child has various tastes to which if they don’t feel comfortable wearing such shoes, chances are parents may be buying something worthless. Then again, there are parents who are persistent, insisting that their kids use them and try to “grow in them”. This happens a lot and before you know it, the kids are attached to this design from thereon.

Cost may have a bearing for girls shoes but not for school shoes. There is no such thing as a superior pair of school shoes. They may vary in brand but certainly not in style. Kids will have their say but sadly, they have to do a lot of convincing for their parents to give in to their demands.

Boys shoes may be less of a pain but for the parents who have girls, you can bet that they will need more than one pair of shoes to make sure that their child is dressed well for any occasion. It makes you wonder if a boy would be better than a girl. But this should not be the case if you are comparing a petty issue such as shoe buying.

Computer Intuition is a psycholinguistic-based computer program that analyzes the person’s written or spoken language and retrieves information from the subconscious. In the last 15 years, Computer Intuition was used to analyze focus groups, interviews, and open-ended questions in numerous market research studies.

A while ago, a children’s museum became interested in increasing its membership. To better understand its current and potential members, the museum conducted an online survey. The survey included 29 close-ended/quantitative questions and one open-ended/qualitative question. The open-ended question was the following: “There are several benefits associated with each level of membership. In your opinion, what is the one benefit that gives you and your family the most value?” The survey included a space to type in the answer. We used Computer Intuition to analyze the typed-in answers.

The Computer Intuition program uses psycholinguistics to assign a number, called psytensity (psychological intensity), to every idea found in the analyzed language. A higher psytensity number marks an idea that resides deeper in the subconscious, and therefore, is more powerful in directing behavior and satisfaction.

The analysis assigned the highest psytensity number to the idea of “interactive, hands-on learning” induced by the museum’s displays. Moreover, the idea with the third-highest psytensity number indicated that the parents, in their subconscious, are excited with the effect of the “interactive, hands-on learning” on the kids’ imagination. What can we learn from the parents’ subconscious on how to improve our school system?

The number-one benefit of a children’s museum, according to the parents’ subconscious, is the type of learning promoted by the museum’s environment. In their subconscious, the parents are excited with interactive, hands-on learning, a learning that is active, not passive, initiated by the learner, not by a teacher, self-motivated, not guided, self-rewarded, not graded; a type of learning that stimulates the learner’s imagination and not his memorization. Sure, there is a place for passive, guided, graded, memorized and regurgitated learning, but in their subconscious, the parents wish to see a learning that is more active, self-initiated, self-motivated, self-rewarded, and imagination-enhancing — the one kids experience in a world-class children’s museum.

(Source) Press