Making Waves

Let's be honest; we all secretly want our children to be 'best' at something. It's a natural urge. we always seek for comments like "she/ he is definitely the best."
 
Swimming is one of those things I feel that everyone should know how to do. It is such a huge recreation that to remove it from your options is a major disservice to you and your children.

I was a little slow getting my son into water. When we moved to Australia, seeing other kids doing water activities, I enrolled him for lessons at the local pool. It was then that my son's reluctance, or downright refusal, to get wet became evident. He was terrified. His screams when the instructor carried him into pool filled me with sadness and embarrassment. I noticed the sideways glances from parents whose own children jumped enthusiastically into the water while I pleaded with my son to at least dip a toe in.
Week after week I tried everything-applauding him, begging, bribing him-and sometimes getting angry.
At times I felt like giving up. Then one day, it happened. With the help of tube he started moving around and getting confident. He now doesn't want help. Jumping, playing has become a fun water activity for him.


The first thing one must understand with children and water is if you have a fear of the water, they will sense that and it will affect their ability to move forward. Let me say in here that it is vital that everyone respect the water and a certain amount of fear is not a bad thing. 
The earlier you can get a child in the water the better. You go along with child in water. If they already have a fear of the water you will want to make sure you go VERY slow in your progression. You want to start with splashing, and then build up to blowing bubbles. Don't push the child, but do it yourself so they can see what you are doing. If they go under water clap for them. Children respond greatly to our praise. They love the attention and they deserve it!

Overall for any fear that a child has the first thing you must do is take a serious look at why they have that fear. Is it a fear of the water? Is it an attention mechanism? Are they feeding off your fear? Once you know what it is use patience, understanding and A LOT of praise and they will overcome it!

After seeing my son swimming in water, i started taking swimming lessons to swim with him. And I'm loving it!!

Play in every land!

Play serves a multitude of roles in the development of children. It helps them learn their world naturally. Children use play to test ideas, discover relationships, abstract information, express their feeling and ideas, define themselves, and develop peer relationships.

Active players develop and accumulate their own knowledge about their world and their place in it.

Children should be able to do their own experimenting and their own research. Parents and teachers can guide them by providing appropriate material, but the essential thing is that child should understand, construct and re-invent it.

In play, the key word is "engaged." Children should be actively involved in play. The discoveries during play are going to remain life long with them.

Play, which allows children to choose their learning focus and which fosters a broad range of developmental goals, should be included as an essential learning element.  Play education affords teacher the opportunity to go with the natural flow of learning. It gives children freedom to learn without stress.

The Values of play:

Cognitive Development: Play is vital medium for thinking process and  contributes to cognitive growth by providing exposure, which enriches the thinking.
Play provides many opportunities for children to create , invent and design as they build, draw and dramatize. It develops their creativity, reasoning. They learn probabilities through their repeated observations and fairy make accurate predictions.

Social Development: Children learn to deal with their playmate's feelings and attitudes. They learn how to take turns, be patient, cooperate, share and make friendship.

Emotional Development : Play helps children to express their thoughts and feelings. Play helps to reduce anxiety.


Physical Development: Play Provides opportunity to develop fine and gross motor activities. They develop the concept of body size, which helps them to move through their space successfully.

Taking a risk!

There is trend where parents gave a blanket "NO" to their children who wanted to take risks such as walking on the wall, climbing trees, playing in puddles, sliding on high slides etc. They don't even think "why am I saying no? What is the issue, and is it really an issue?"

Some parents have irrational fears of ' stranger danger' and kids getting hurt have become dominant in their minds, that they no longer let their children push boundaries, or even play on their own at the local park.

The term 'Risk taking' often has a negative connotations, the reality is that the willingness to engage in some risky activities provides opportunities to learn new skills, try new behaviors and ultimately reach our potential.

Challenge and risk, in particular during outdoor play, allow children to test the limits of their physical, intellectual and social development.

The research also shown that kids who have adventurous experiences, where they move beyond their comfort zone, are the once more likely to excel. And not just physically- the ability to take sensible risks can have impact on academic and social success.

Some parents have dilemma to do these sorts of things. They want their children to do such activities. At the same time they have fear of to be deemed to be bad parents.

We have so many examples around us. The great maratha warier 'Shivaji' was allowed to take all sorts of risk in his young age. ( I don't mean by this that our kids to learn all those activities!)
Sachin Tendulkar, at very young age he started making records.

Children who are open to taking physical risks are more open to taking on challenges on other areas. They are happier, academically, to try the more difficult puzzles and tasks, and are more confident about entering unknown social groups.

' If you are used to deal with fear, you can deal with anything.'

All above doesn't mean that parents should just watch children doing things. They should give their children opportunity to take calculated risks, at the same time they should push their child a little.
Parents should find out your own child's capabilities, get then to move out of their comfort zone, not just physically, but socially.

If you help them doing things 2-3 times, they will be confident to do the same of their own, rather they will like to do it of their own. And then it will be hard to say who is PROUDER!