Last week, I saw a beautiful program about recycling… about how our paper will stay the same when you throw it away on the ground for 30 years. It is something that is surprising because we, people, tend to think that it’s ok to throw away paper to the ground, but when an American researcher is doing a research about this, the result is really different… it stayed the same!

Can you imagine, our world can be a mountain of garbage if we don’t do anything,…. So there is one thing we can do,… stop throwing our books away…

If you have books that you want to throw away, please send it to me at Jl. Mangga Dua Raya No 8, Gedung WTC Mangga Dua Lt UG blok D /57, Jakarta 14430…. Your book can be a treasure for those who can not afford to go to school. We are going to collect books from all over places and going to make a library in a poor area, a place where children really need education but could not afford the tuition fee….

By doing this, I believe we’re doing a good thing for the environment, while on the other side, we help the educational level of children in the poor area. Education is children’s right and we’re trying to help as long as we can….

We’re looking for your books….. don’t throw them away, please….

We’re thinking more to do with the plastic garbage….

There are many plastic garbage we can’t use for the book,… plastic from bread, from candy, from packaging, from cracker, etc…. what should we do with these plastic garbages?

After a deep thinking, we’re making more baby lines using this…. We cut these plastic into small pieces, … chop chop chop…. and we try to make educational toys using this garbages… There you go…. we put this slices of plastic garbage into the doll… It is not as cottony as usual,… but at least we try to put a plus to the garbage so that the plastic will not end in the water pipe line, or in the river… Just think if we can sell as many as possible doll using plastic garbage, how much plastic garbages got the “plus” point? How much plastic garbage being transferred from the garbage bin into the doll… it will decrease the content of national garbage volume!

For ages we, our parents, our grand parents said, “Throw away the garbage in the garbage bin” … This is like a word passing from generation to generation.

But now… looking at the plastic garbage around us, creating so many problems for the environment, I think we really need to change the statement into “Recycle your garbage before throwing it”

I really concern about the climate change recently. Flood everywhere, the temperature is rising everyday, our environment is getting hotter and many other problems which I can’t explained.

Several months ago, me and my sister start to collect plastic garbage and think how to add a plus to these garbages so that people would like to buy these garbages…. But since we always deal with maternity and baby baby thing, we decided to make educational toys for kids out of these plastic garbages, like these…

It’s educational, it’s fun, it’s helping our environment… would you like to help us by buying it?

Nowadays, there are so many reasons that mommy didn’t want to breastfeed her baby, start from:
* I’m so busy working here…
* It’s difficult to find a place to breastfeed my baby,..
* Breasfeeding my baby will change the shape of my breast
* It’s tiring to hold my baby, he’s heavy…
* I’m gaining weight if I have to eat a lot..
* The formula one is the best according to the ads
* Giving the most expensive one is raising my social status
* I’m so proud that my little one is chubby because of drinking formula milk
etc…

Well, those reasons are false…. Totally wrong! Breastfeeding your baby is still the best. God has created your body and give you the privilege to give the best nutrition for the first 6 month of your baby and you still can continue until she/he is 2 years old..

Right now, I’m collecting stories for my book about breastfeeding from various countries…. Do you have your story? Share it here!

For me, I breastfed my baby Claire exclusively for 6 months and continued until she was 2 years old… It was really difficult for the first time. Neighbors, including my dad thought that I couldn’t afford to buy formula for my baby. I just laugh…. I said to them proudly, ” I gave them my breastmilk because I know that breastmilk is the best for my baby….” Then I started to give them explanation about the importance of breastmilk for our baby’s brain and body growth…. I wrote a book too,… so that those who wants to breastmilk their baby will have courage to stay faithful to the end….

If you have a story,.. please share it here… I will write it down in my book….. Want to be the agent of change???

One way to introduce your child to a new experiment is by becoming an active parents.

My little baby loves to dance and she couldn’t stop dancing when she hears music. She always asks us to watch her performance at home and we have to keep on watching until she finished her performance. After that, my mom said, “Why don’t you ask some Event Organizers to give time for Claire do a performance when they have an event at the mall?”

I thought to my self, well that’s a great idea! I can introduce her to the real world of entertainment and she can gain a self confindence inside of her.

After a long hour of searching, at last I found an event. Actually that is a children event, there are many competitions from morning till afternoon. I asked the EO weather they can give at least 5 minutes for Claire to perform her dance. I said that they will have so much space from one competition to another competition. If Claire can dance within that period, it would be a great mutualism. They don’t have to hire a performer and Claire can show her talent.

The EO asked me to send her a video of Claire dancing. So, I took my handphone and asked Claire to dance. I sent the video right away and got her response immediately.

“Wow, Claire is so cute when dancing. Ok, I’ll give you time to perform her dance. See you on Saturday,” said the EO through the phone.

I leap for joy after the phone…. So you can see her performance at the video…

Start to be more active…

I was so upset when my little Claire peed on the floor instead of in the toilet, but what else can I do? I couldn’t do anything for the things just happened but to clean it. For several times, I advised her to tell me if she wants to pee but still, everything doesn’t always work according to my plan. Or probably there were times when Claire spilt the milk on the floor because she was too focus on the DVD lesson I gave her while drinking milk.

So here I come with an idea, instead of being angry, I gave her a brainy punishment and teaching chores at the same time. Every time she peed on the floor or spilt the milk, I gave her tissue to wipe the floor. After finished wiping it, I asked her to throw away the wet tissue in the garbage box. If she peed on the floor, I also asked her to wash her own underwear. The main thing is not the result since she was only 2 years old, but what can she learn from it?

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Last week, me and my baby got a chance to be the finalist of “Golden Moment Award” and both of us had to do the fashion show. After the fashion show, the judges said that they would like to choose 3 pairs among 10 of us who were the best pair. While waiting, my Claire asked me to put her down and she tried to make friend with other babies.

Suddenly, I heard somebody’s crying and Claire was there with the girl who’s crying. She looked very mad at the girl. I had no idea why, but I think she tried to wave her stick and would like to play together but unfortunately the stick hit the little girl’s hand.

I asked Claire to say sorry about this, but she refused to say so. Then I decided to give an example and say sorry first to show her that we need to apologize for the wrong thing we’ve done. After a few minutes, the little girl still crying and guess what? Her mom came to me and pretended to slap my Claire. After seeing this drama, she stopped crying but I think what her mom did was not good.

What did you teach to your children? Did you teach your children to revenge? Or did you teach your children to forgive and let go? Which one is better? What would they learn if you teach them to take revenge every time there is a problem?

I think the best thing is to give explanation about the situation and try to make them understand, to forgive and to let go. Believe me, little children can learn this from you as parents. If you never teach them to forgive then how they can learn to fit in the social community?

I hope we can teach our children the value of life using daily examples anytime, anywhere. Don’t ask them to learn it from book only, it will be very difficult if you never teach them from their early years….

Do you know that most of our children are smart and intelligent by birth! Probably some of you will not believe it, but if the process went in a normal way, our children are smart. But again, some of you will continue saying that you children are not that smart compared with other children.

Is that their fault? No! It’s our fault as parents, since God gave us the same brain, but all we have to do is to give good nutrition so that the free brain we got can develop in a good way. Other important thing is STIMULATION. Without stimulation, they did not get an opportunity to develop their brain functions in a normal manner.

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Some parents raised their hands when they where asked, “Who said that drawing is not important for children?” Well, what is your answer? Did you plan to raise your hand as well?

Probably some of you will think the same and force our children to learn math and science instead of drawing or playing  music, but the truth is drawing and playing music is really important for children’s right brain stimulation.

To be clever, children MUST have a balance brain, not only left brain, but also right brain. Left brain fungtioned  to control the scientific, analitical, rational and logical thing such as reading, language, math, etc, while right brain fungtioned to control about everything related to art, flexibilty and creativity. If we stimulate left brain more than right brain, children will be less creative in problem solving thing, but if we stimulate right brain more than left brain, it will be difficult to put dicipline on them and they will be more flexible in everything. That’s why we have to stimulate both brain.

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Parents usually want to have a brilliant children but the question is how? To increase children’s intelligences, there are 3 things that are important to remember:

1. Genetics: we could not do anything with it… we can call it a blessing

2. Environment: including

• Nutrition: exclusive breast milk for 6 months and other nutritious food after 6 months of breast milk. The formation of organs and body will not wait for the food, so if the baby is not eating properly, the brain development also will slow down, so giving proper and nutritious food for your baby is a must.
• Stimulation: there are many parents said to me that it is useless to read, to play, to teach baby since they couldn’t understand. For your information, baby’s brain is like a sponge, it’s ready to absorb much information from us, parents. When we give them information, it looks like they don’t understand, but actually, they save the information in their brain and they will use it later when whey grown up.
• Psychological: baby’s brain can develop in a better way if they live in a loving family, where they can be loved, can be hugged, can be kissed without any conditions.

3. Balance brain, left and right brain can work in a balance way.

 With that in mind, I think we can increase our baby’s multiple intelligences.