Parent Zone

Written by: Director of Program Development, Carmen Leung   After the pandemic, e-learning has become inevitable. Parents also download various tablet computer programs for their children to use, hoping that they can learn through interactive or entertaining visuals and sounds. Which animations and applications are beneficial for children’s learning? What should parents pay attention to when using multimedia to help their children learn?   Using e-learning according to age   In the preschool years, as the brain regions responsible for the five senses are developing rapidly, the author does not recommend that children aged 0 to 2 frequently or excessively rely on using television or tablet computers for learning. This is because the images on television or tablet computers are flashing at an extremely high frequency, and the young child’s eyes and brain will constantly receive stimulation unconsciously. Over time, visual stimulation becomes a habit, and brain development is also affected, leading to a decrease in concentration.   Some parents say, “My child is very focused when watching TV and playing with the iPhone, but they don’t have the patience for books, so I bought a lot of educational animations for them to watch.” Have parents ever thought that if the eyes and brain are used to constant stimulation, relatively static things like books and teacher explanations will naturally become uninteresting? If you continue to let young children rely on rich visuals to learn, what will happen when they eventually need to face book-based learning in the future? For children

Written by: Dr Cheung Kit   On television, there are many advertisements targeting the children’s market, including clothing, snacks, formula milk, stationery, and furniture. One of the key points is to make children more intelligent or to help them fully realize their intellectual potential, which is a good selling point. This sales technique captures a key point in the hearts of every parent – that their own child is the best.   Without discussing the truthfulness, logic, and objectivity of this statement, it is a sentiment that most parents, including the author, would agree with. However, in the process of raising children, this “most intelligent” mentality may lead to unrealistic expectations. Therefore, we can take a step back and take a closer look. In our daily lives, here are five behaviors that fathers commonly use to praise their children:   “A 2-year-old child knows many functions of the tablet computer.”   This is because the touchscreen of the tablet computer is controlled by the resistance of the fingers, so a child’s random pointing movements can easily manipulate the screen. Additionally, without the logical constraints of adults, it is not difficult for most children to discover new functions on the device. “A 6-month-old child can observe others’ facial expressions and respond with coy or angry reactions.”   This type of response has been medically confirmed as one of the developmental milestones for all children. This two-way behavioral response, where the child learns by observing others’ reactions, is actually a learning response.

  Written by: Fung Ji Hei, Game Therapist   Little Ying, at the start of the new school year, would sit on the sofa outside the school hall every day, crying and saying her stomach hurt, while tightly gripping her mother’s hand. Psychological experts believe this is a characteristic of children suffering from separation anxiety. If parents want to reduce their children’s anxiety, one method is to help the children through “tokens”. Why can these “tokens” be effective? The author attempts to explain the underlying mechanism from the perspective of child psychological development.   The Invisible Sense of Security   The cognitive development theory proposed by the modern child psychologist Jean Piaget can explain the underlying principle. In the first stage (0-2 years old) of the theory, children can learn to search for hidden objects. This behavior indicates that children have learned the concept of object permanence – even if the object cannot be seen, they still know that it exists, so they will try to find it.   In the second stage (2-7 years old), Piaget believes that children can use language and symbols as representations. For example, children can use the word “dog” to represent an animal with four legs, a tail, and a “woof woof” sound. When children go to school, they experience a similar situation to the first stage, but they do not cry because they cannot see their mothers, but because they cannot generate the sense of security that they had when with their mothers.

Written by: Octopus parent, Mr. Thomas Chiu   Mom: “If Mommy gets captured by the Gruffalo (the monster from the cartoon) and taken into the forest, what should we do?”   Hei Hei: “I will cook a meal for the Gruffalo to eat, because if the Gruffalo is full, it won’t eat Mommy! And Mommy said that after eating the meal, she can have the dishes!”   That was a conversation between the mother and Hei Hei. I greatly appreciate Hei Hei’s creativity, but I am most delighted that he tries to solve the problem with wisdom, rather than immediately resorting to violence to directly eliminate the obstacle, such as beating or even “killing” the Gruffalo and then rescuing Mommy. Or finding the police to arrest the Gruffalo, and then rescuing Mommy – these would be direct methods.   What’s wrong with the Gruffalo capturing Mommy because it was hungry? Does the solution have to be to eliminate it? If we let the Gruffalo eat its fill, it will naturally release Mommy! We should be able to accommodate each other’s ways of living; it doesn’t always have to be a life-or-death situation. I want my child to have their own stance, but at the same time, they need to learn to be tolerant of others, including their actions and even their mistakes. If we do not agree with someone’s behavior, we should try to persuade them with our own words and arguments.   It is always better to solve problems