What To Do When Your Kids Fail?

All parents want their kids to perform well in academics. It is natural to desire growth and success for your kid. But what if your over-ambitious nature turns into a curse?

Yes, kids may do well some times and may fail at times. There could be many reasons for academical failure and its okay to fail.

Failure is a part of life and that is what you may need to tell your kids instead of punishing them. Now, here are some more reasons why you may need to digest your kid's failure and help your kid improve.

 

Failure Is A Steeping Stone For Success If your kid fails in the academics, find ways to make him or her get through the exams next time. That is the only solution.

Only Encouragement Motivates Kids Pointing out the failures could only make your kid feel unworthy and depressed. On the contrary, encouragement could motivate your kid to achieve more. If you want your kid to progress well, choose a positive approach.

 

Punishments Cause Fear Many studies claim that punishments breed fear in the kids. Fear may prove counter productive as your kid may hate academics in the future.

 

Bitterness And Resentment May Cause Hatred What if your kid grows up to hate you? Well, repeated insults and punishments could break the bonds between the parent and the child.

Self Esteem Issues When you link the identity of your kid with academic performance, he or she may soon suffer low self-esteem issues especially when academic performance issues arise. So, raise a healthy kid by treating him well irrespective of academic performance.

Expert Parenting Tips If You Have Children With Intellectual Disability

Parenting is one of the most responsible and difficult jobs of all time; and if you have a child who has some sort of a disorder, it can be even harder. So, there are some tips that can help if you have a child with an intellectual disability. Intellectual disability, previously known as mental retardation, is a neuro-developmental disorder, in which the affected person has impaired learning, cognitive and behavioural functions.


This disorder usually becomes evident when the child is about 3 years of age, when certain normal functions are delayedsuch asspeech, movements, etc. Intellectual disability is a genetic condition, in which the children are usually born with the condition. The causes for intellectual disability can be various such as heredity, iodine deficiency in the mother, complications during pregnancy, malnutrition, exposure to lead, chromosomal abnormalities, etc. Children with mental retardation can face serious problems, as their daily lives, social/learning skills and other activities are hampered to a great extent. So, it requires a special set of parenting skills to take care of a child with intellectual disability. Here are a few expert tips that can help you deal with a child with intellectual disability, read on.

Tip #1 Parenting tips to deal with a child with intellectual disability involves accepting the fact that your child has special needs and you should do everything you can to help him/her.


Tip #2 Another parenting tip for intellectual disability is to be prepared for certain tantrums by the childthatisusually a symptom of mental retardation.


 

Tip #3 Ensure that your child receives special education at schools that serve children with special needs, as regular schools may not be of much help.

Tip #4 Another important tip for parents with mentally disabled kids is that the parents must lookout for signs of abuse and bullying that their children may face, as the children may not be able to express certain things. 

Tip #5 Ensure that you take your child to see a therapist or a professional on a regular basis, as cognitive behavioural sessions and medications can help control the symptoms.

Tip #6 Another important tip for parents with an intellectually disabled child is that they must think carefully before planning to have another child, as a child with special needs can take up a lot of their time and energy.

Tip #7 It is important to treat your child like he/she is normal and indulge him/herin a few regular fun activities that he/shemight like, once in a while.

Infections During Infancy Cause Childhood Obesity

Infections during infancy, rather than antibiotic use, as previously suspected, are associated with an increased risk of childhood obesity, a study has found.

According to the study published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, children diagnosed with an infection during their first year of life who had no antibiotic use were about 25 per cent more likely to become obese compared to those without infections.




There was a dose-response relationship, meaning that higher numbers of untreated infections were associated with a larger increased risk of obesity.

In contrast, there was no increased risk of obesity associated with antibiotic use during the first year when compared to infants with untreated infections.




"In previous studies, antibiotics used to treat infant infections have been associated with weight gain. However, we separated the two factors and found that antibiotics do not, themselves, appear to be associated with childhood obesity," said lead researcher De-Kun Li, epidemiologist at the Kaiser Permanente in California, US.

The type of antibiotics used (broad or narrow spectrum) did not influence the outcomes.

The study, in which researchers reviewed 260,556 births between 1997-2013, has shown that energy imbalance (calories consumed versus energy expenditures) cannot account for the entire increase in obesity in childhood.

Both infections and antibiotic use have been shown to influence the composition of intestinal micro-organisms -- the intestinal microbiome can affect metabolic processes and the immune system which can, in turn, affect metabolic processes, growth patterns and weight development.

Our study is one of the largest analyses of the interplay among infections, antibiotic use and childhood obesity, and adds important evidence on how the microbiome, or gut bacteria, may be affecting children's development," Li added.

The researchers recommended focusing efforts on reducing infections in infancy while being careful in prescribing antibiotics. 

Omega-3 Supplement May Improve Reading Skills In Kids

Supplements of fatty acids found in fish oil, seafood and some algae may improve reading skills of schoolchildren, says a study. Children with attention problems, in particular, may be helped in their reading with the addition of these fatty acids, the study said. "Our study suggests that children could benefit from a dietary supplement with a special formula," said Mats Johnson from Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The study included 154 schoolchildren from Sweden in grade three, between nine and ten years old. The children took a computer-based test (known as the Logos test) that measured their reading skills in a variety of ways, including reading speed, ability to read nonsense words and vocabulary. Omega-3 Supplement May Improve Reading Skills In Kids The children were randomly assigned to receive either capsules with omega-3 and omega-6, or identical capsules that contained a placebo (palm oil) for three months. The children, parents and researchers did not learn until the study was completed which children had received fatty acids and which had received the placebo. "Even after three months, we could see that the children's reading skills improved with the addition of fatty acids, compared with those who received the placebo.

 

This was particularly evident in the ability to read a nonsense word aloud and pronounce it correctly (phonologic decoding), and the ability to read a series of letters quickly (visual analysis time)," Johnson said. No children diagnosed with ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) were included in the study, but with the help of the children's parents, the researchers could identify children who had milder attention problems. The findings published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry showed that these children with mild attention problems attained even greater improvements in several tests, including faster reading already after three months of receiving fatty acid supplements. Polyunsaturated fats and their role in children's learning and behavior is a growing research area. "Our modern diet contains relatively little omega-3, which it is believed to have a negative effect on our children when it comes to learning, literacy and attention," Johnson said. "The cell membranes in the brain are largely made up of polyunsaturated fats, and there are studies that indicate that fatty acids are important for signal transmission between nerve cells and the regulation of signaling systems in the brain," Johnson noted.

How to Critique Your Photos Accurately

In general, photographers are very good at deciding how much they like someone else’s photo. It isn’t hard — your first reaction to a shot is either positive or negative, and it typically doesn’t change much after that. Things get more complicated, though, when you’re talking about your own work. For me, at least, I find it tough to judge the quality of some photos I’ve taken. Sure, I know when a photo is awful, but what about the other shots? This article covers some tips for looking at your work with a better critical eye.

 

1) Separating the Event from the Photo

Do you ever find yourself at an incredible location for sunset, camera in hand, after an incredibly difficult hike? Or, maybe you’re photographing a basketball game, and you captured the exact moment that the ball left a player’s hand to score the winning point.

In both of these cases, the situation surrounding the photo is incredibly powerful. In the first example, you feel like you have accomplished something — it took a lot of effort, but you made it to an incredible landscape in time for the best light. In the second example, you managed to capture the defining moment of a basketball game, timing the shot exactly right.

Unfortunately, neither of these cases actually means that you got a good photo.

Maybe, in the first example, your composition simply doesn’t do the scene justice. That’s certainly happened to me; even at a beautiful landscape under the right light, I don’t always come back with a good shot. Or, in the basketball case, there may be other distracting things happening in the photo that take away from the moment you captured.

In situations like these — where the experience of taking the photo is strong — it is very difficult to judge your images objectively. Perhaps you did capture everything that you wanted. But, sometimes, that won’t be true.

Quite often, I take a photo that requires a lot of effort to capture, and then I immediately think of it as my new best shot! That happened with the photo below. To get here, I spent a full day hiking up a mountain, then climbing on a glacier. The whole hike was beautiful and memorable, as well as exhausting — the perfect recipe for a photo that is difficult to judge accurately.

NIKON D800E + 105mm f/2.8 @ 105mm, ISO 100, 1/5, f/16.0

I don’t think this is necessarily a bad photo, and that’s the point. It isn’t awful, and it took a ton of effort to capture. That combination — hard to take, and not immediately worth deleting — made it very difficult for me to judge it accurately.

In hindsight, I can look back and tell that there are some problems with this photo. There isn’t a clear subject, for one, and the foreground is empty. These issues should have been obvious at first, but my memory of taking the shot was so strong that I overlooked them. (Obviously, this is all subjective — you may hate the photo or love it, and that’s fine. This is just my own perspective on the shot, which will be different from yours.)

A month or two later, of course, it became easier to critique this photo accurately. A lot of times, that’s how it happens — you need to wait a little while before you can see things with an unbiased eye. That’s also why I try to wait at least two weeks before posting a new photo on my website or on Facebook.

Sometimes, of course, the opposite is true: your opinion of a photo actually improves over time. Generally, this will happen when one of your quick snapshot photos turns out surprisingly well. Since you don’t have a clear memory of taking that photo, it may be a while before you can judge it accurately (a good reason to revisit your archives).

Again, the best way to solve problems like this is just to wait a bit. Over time, your memory of taking the photo won’t be as strong, and you’ll be better at judging a photo based on its internal qualities. I know of some photographers who, for this exact reason, actually refuse to look at their photos until a month after they’ve returned from a trip. Although I don’t have that much self-control, I certainly understand why they do it.

2) Dealing with Ambiguous Photos

Even if you wait a while, it still isn’t always possible to judge your photos accurately. This is especially true when a photo straddles the line between “decent” and “worth displaying.” One day, you may decide that the photo merits a spot on your website — the next, you might decide that it doesn’t quite make the cut.

Photos like this are always very difficult to judge, and there’s no easy way to tell how good they really are. Still, you have a few ways to try.

To start, as mentioned above, you can give yourself a better perspective if you wait a few weeks before critiquing the shot. If you’ve already waited, though, consider showing your photo to other people — your social media followers, or, ideally, a photographer whose work you respect.

If you decide to put an ambiguously-good photo on your Facebook page, see how many interactions it gets compared to your normal posts. More? Less? The same? This isn’t the best gauge for the actual quality of a photo, but it helps you judge how other people like it. If one of my photos gets half as many interactions as usual, it’s easy to tell that people don’t think it is as good as usual.

For a more accurate critique, though, it’s better to show your work to professional photographers. This could be online or in person, but the goal is to see how another photographer sees the photo. That said, you have to make sure that you talk to someone who isn’t afraid to tell you when you’ve taken a bad shot — although it can hurt at first, it ultimately helps to be as accurate as possible.

Another tip, one of my favorites, helps after you’ve been editing and looking at a particular photo for a long time. When an image is strongly ingrained in your head, flip the photo horizontally. You can see a mirrored version of the shot, and it tricks your brain into seeing the photo as if it is completely new. (Only do this for photos that you have looked at for a long time — otherwise, the effect doesn’t work.)

NIKON D800E + 35mm f/1.8 @ 35mm, ISO 100, 30/1, f/16.0
Is this photo worth displaying on my website? It took me a long time to decide that it is, but I’m still conflicted. If you check my site a year from now, it may not be up any more — or, it may have an even more prominent spot.

3) Conclusion

The best way to critique your photos is simply to look at them as objectively as possible. You should have extremely stringent standards — you don’t want to show anyone a bad photo that you took, unless you work for a photography website and are doing it to illustrate a point :)

Most of your photos will be pretty easy to critique, and you’ll generally have a good idea of a photo’s quality after you’ve taken it. However, there will be cases that are more difficult to judge. Typically, this happens because you have a strong emotional response or memory of a particular photo, making it tough to see the image for its actual quality.

When this happens, the best option is to try waiting a while. The longer you wait, the easier it is to separate your memories from the photo itself. If that still doesn’t work, try showing your image to other photographers or flipping it horizontally in post-processing.

Although it’s not easy to critique some photos, it’s always worth the effort. You shouldn’t show your audience mediocre photos, but you also want to display a good shot when you get one. Hopefully, these tips can help you make the final decision.

Parental Absence May Lead To Early Smoking, Drinking

Parental absence in early childhood as a result of death or relationship break-up is linked to an increased risk of children starting to smoke and to drink alcohol even before they reach teenage years, says a study. "Associations between parental absence and early smoking and alcohol consumption may operate through a range of mechanisms, such as reduced parental supervision, self-medication, and adoption of less healthy coping mechanisms," the researchers said. The researchers from the University College London drew on data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study, which has been tracking the health of almost 19,000 children born between 2000 and 2002, in regular surveys. The first of these was carried out nine months after birth, with subsequent surveys when the children were three, five, seven and 11 years old.

 

At the age of 11, the children were also asked whether they had ever smoked or drunk alcohol, and whether they had ever consumed enough to feel drunk. Parental absence was defined as the 'loss' of a biological parent before the child was seven years old. In all, the researchers had complete data for almost 11,000 children, more than one in four of whom had experienced the 'loss' of a parent by the age of seven. Analysis of the data showed that children who had experienced parental absence before the age of seven were more than twice as likely to have taken up smoking and 46 per cent more likely to have started drinking alcohol by the age of 11.

കുട്ടികളിലെ അമിതവണ്ണത്തെ ചെറുക്കാന്‍...

മുതിര്‍ന്നവരില്‍ മാത്രമല്ല കുട്ടികളിലും അമിതവണ്ണം എന്ന വില്ലന്‍ പലപ്പോഴും ആരോഗ്യപ്രശ്‌നങ്ങള്‍ സൃഷ്ടിയ്ക്കും. ഇതാകട്ടെ മുതിര്‍ന്നവരിലുള്ളതിനേക്കാള്‍ അല്‍പം കൂടി ഗുരുതരമായിരിക്കും. ഇന്നത്തെ കാലത്തെ ജീവിതശൈലിയും ഭക്ഷണരീതിയുമാണ് ഇതിന്റെ പ്രധാന കാരണം എന്നതാണ് സത്യം. അമിതവണ്ണക്കാരായ കുട്ടികള്‍ക്ക് ആരോഗ്യം കുറവാണെന്നതും ഒരു പ്രധാന ഘടകമാണ്. എന്തുകൊണ്ട് വളരെ ചെറുപ്പത്തില്‍ തന്നെ കുട്ടികളില്‍ അമിതവണ്ണം എന്ന പ്രശ്‌നം ഉണ്ടാവുന്നു എന്ന് നോക്കാം.

 

 ഹൈപ്പോതൈറോയ്‌ഡിസം വന്ധ്യത വരുത്തുമോ?

 

 മുലപ്പാലിന്റെ അഭാവമാണ് കുട്ടികളുടെ അമിതവണ്ണത്തിന്റെ പ്രധാന കാരണം. കുട്ടികളില്‍ ആരോഗ്യമുണ്ടാക്കാനുള്ള ഏറ്റവും നല്ല വഴിയാണ് മുലപ്പാല്‍. ഇതിന് അമിതവണ്ണത്തെ തടയാനുള്ള ശേഷിയുണ്ട്. ഇത് കുട്ടികളിലെ മെറ്റബോളിസത്തിന്റെ അളവ് കൃത്യമാക്കുന്നു. കുട്ടകിളില്‍ ഒരു പ്രായം വരെ മുലപ്പാല്‍ നല്‍കേണ്ടത് അത്യാവശ്യമാണ്. 

 

കുട്ടികള്‍ ഭക്ഷണം കഴിയ്ക്കാന്‍ തുടങ്ങിയാല്‍ പെട്ടെന്ന് ദഹിക്കുന്ന തരത്തിലുള്ള ഭക്ഷണം കൊടുക്കാന്‍ കഴിവതും ശ്രമിക്കുക. കുട്ടികള്‍ക്ക് വളര്‍ച്ചക്കാവശ്യമായ പച്ചക്കറികളും പഴവര്‍ഗ്ഗങ്ങളും കൊടുക്കാന്‍ പ്രത്യേക ശ്രദ്ധ പതിപ്പിക്കണം

 

 

 ധാന്യങ്ങളും കുട്ടികളുടെ വളര്‍ച്ചയ്ക്ക് അത്യാവശ്യമാണ്. അതുകൊണ്ട് തന്നെ ഒരു പ്രത്യക പ്രായമായാല്‍ ധാന്യങ്ങളും കൊടുക്കാന്‍ ശ്രദ്ധിക്കുക. ഉയര്‍ന്ന കലോറി അടങ്ങിയ ജങ്ക്ഫുഡിനെ അകറ്റി നിര്‍ത്താന്‍ പ്രത്യേകം ശ്രദ്ധിക്കുക. ങ്ങ സോഡയും സോഫ്റ്റ് ഡ്രിങ്കുകളും ഒരിക്കലും കുട്ടികളില്‍ അടുപ്പിക്കരുത്. പ്രത്യേകിച്ച് കുട്ടികള്‍ക്ക് അമിതവണ്ണം വരുത്തുന്നതില്‍ ഇത് മുന്‍പിലാണ്. നാരുകള്‍ അടങ്ങിയ ഭക്ഷണം കൂടുതല്‍ നല്‍കാന്‍ ശ്രമിക്കുക. ഇത് കുട്ടികളുടെ വളര്‍ച്ചയ്ക്ക് അത്യാവശ്യമാണ്.

 

 

അമിതഭക്ഷണം എന്ന ശീലത്തെ കുട്ടികളില്‍ നിന്നും മാറ്റിയെടുക്കുക. വിശപ്പിനാവശ്യമുള്ള ഭക്ഷണം മാത്രം കൊടുത്ത് ശീലിപ്പിക്കുക. ആവശ്യമില്ലാതെ അമിതമായ രീതിയില്‍ ഭക്ഷണം കഴിയ്ക്കാന്‍ നല്‍കുന്നത് ഒബേസിറ്റിയുടെ പ്രധാന കാരണങ്ങളില്‍ ഒന്നാണ്.

വീട്ടില്‍ നിന്നും ഭക്ഷണം പാചകം ചെയ്ത് കൊടുക്കുക. പുറത്ത് നിന്നുള്ള ഭക്ഷണശീലത്തെ ഒരിക്കലും പ്രോത്സാഹിപ്പിക്കരുത്. ഇത് കുട്ടികളുടെ ആരോഗ്യത്തെ വളരെ പ്രതികൂലമായി തന്നെയാണ് ബാധിയ്ക്കുക.