Do you know bonsai, a small tree that lives in a small pot? I think most of you know this kind of tree.

In Japanese words, bonsai means an ordinary talents. The opposite of bonsai is tensai, which means many talents, genius.

Nowadays, I saw that children about 1-4 years old could not do simple jobs around the house that is actually easy because without knowing it, parents make their children into a bonsai. Parents always do all things for their children, thinking that “children could not do it”, or “it takes time if they do it by themselves”, or “if I allow them to do it, they will mess up and I have to clean up the rest.”

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Do you ever think about travelling with your honey without leaving your baby? Well I got the same idea as well but don’t have the courage to do that until one day, I went to airport and met many foreigners travelling with their baby! They carrying a big backpack, luggage and their baby on the stroller.

Oh my God.. I miss my journey with my baby…

Then, I thought to myself, how come they dare to travel with their baby while I’m not? I worried about how to breastfeed my baby, how to feed her, how about the food, will it be ok, will she eat the food, will she be healthy to enjoy the holiday, and many other questions popped up in my mind. I started to discuss this thing with my husband and he want to try, otherwise we don’t know the result, right?… Well, this is a good start, so I tried to make a new step in my life, going for a holiday to Bali to celebrate our 6th anniversary…My baby was 15 month years old at that time.

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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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Recently I saw many children became “handicapped”. Well, to make it simple, I’m going to give an example.

1. When children were facing a difficulties, instead of trying, they will ask their mom or dad to do it for them, saying, “I can’t do it. It’s too difficult for me….”

2. When they tried it and fail, they will cry and give up.

3. Before they face difficulties, there are many parents or maidservant who became a helper for them so that children never face difficulties at all, saying that they couldn’t help to see their children facing a difficulties.

If these conditions keep on going, children will lack confident because they never face difficulties at all. So what are you going to do to prevent these condition? Are you going to let it flow? I think it is better to change the condition!

1. Let your child know that at some point, they too can do it themselves. Give them a motivation that they can do it.

2. If your children tried and couldn’t do it, help them until they can continue it themselves.

3. Ask your maidservant to let go and help them only when they really really needed it. Otherwise, let them try it themselves.

If you do it, I believe that your children will find out that they can do it themselves and next time they would like to try it themselves. In that way, they will be more confident in everything they do…

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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Probably most of us know about Peter Pan story, a young man who stays young and live in Neverland. My little baby loves to see Tinker Bell the Fairy in that story and I think most of children will choose to live in a place like Neverland, a place where they can play and find happiness as a child.

When I heard about Neverland for the first time when Michael Jackson bought that ranch, I didn’t really know what it was. I thought  that it was a name for the ranch but I realized it when I read the story of Peter Pan 2 years ago for my baby. That’s my ‘AHA’ moment.

Then, when Michael Jackson died, I heard so many story about how Michael loved to play just like a child, how he wanted to stay young like Peter Pan, and how he built the place to fulfill his dream as a child.

Well, it’s really sad to remember about Michael’s life, that even though he had everything in life, successful career, money, power, children, but there was something missing in his life,… his childhood. He didn’t have enough time to play with other children when he was little, he felt lonely because he had no friend to play with. 

Back to my life here, sometimes I was so mean to my little girl. She always ask me wheter she can play with her friend or not, but at the first time, my answers were “NO” because I thought playing with me is enough for her. Then I realized how happy she was when she played with her friend, playing soccer, ballon, bicycle, or just hanging around doing nothing.

Now, thinking about Michael’s story, I always remember that no matter what life we wanted our child to be, I will always give time for my baby to play with her friends. I don’t want her to end up in sorrow, thinking about her missing childhood. So parents, what do you think about this?

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.