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 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.

Baby’s brain is like a sponge, it will absorb everything, every information you gave them and here is the proof of it.

Claire can finish 80 pieces of puzzle within 9 minutes 53 secs!

At first I couldn’t believe that she can do the puzzle but we practice almost every day and within 5 days, she can do it for the first time for 15 minutes. And from that time on, she showed a great improvement with her record is 9 minutes 23 secs. So this is a great example that if you stimulate your baby, she will absorb every thing and she will store the data in her brain, use it again when she needs it.

Step by step to introduce puzzle to baby:

1. Introduce her with 2-3 pieces of puzzle for the first time.
2. Show her how to put the puzzle in the right place so that her brain will make connection. By the time you repeat, she will understand how to put the puzzle in the right place.
3. Learn about color is a great step to do.
4. After she can differentiate color, ask her which part has the same with the color she holds at that time. When she learn about color, she can have a great improvement for doing the puzzle.
5. After that you can use the 6 pieces, then increase the number to 9 pieces, 12 pieces, and so on.
6. After several times of doing it, I believe your baby will be much brainy than ever!

Give a try and tell me how it works for you!

To see Claire doing it, click here.

In order to learn something, we don’t have to use books all the time. Of course books can give us information, but there is another way to learn something by stimulating our senses.
 

In the past 3 years, I’ve been trying to read for my baby, but my baby is still 2.5 years, how come? Well I read since she was on my womb.

“That sounds so silly, is that really working?” said most of my friend laughing at me for doing that.

When I was pregnant, I was living in Japan and my doctor gave me a bunch of articles about communicating with your baby since she was in the womb. There is a tool as well to make your voice louder for baby’s ear, but at that time, I didn’t buy it because it was so expensive, but I still playing music using earphone and put in on my belly, after that I read for her.

After 3 years of doing that, I think I can give a proof that teaching your baby to read is really working! 

At first, I didn’t really realize, but several months ago, when she was 2.5 years old, she can read 1 book of 8 pages.  That’s amazing since I’m not a native English speaker and I’ve been speaking with my baby with 3 different languages, even so, she still can memorize the words I’m saying when I read for her.

Check her on YouTube link here

Claire swimming

During my pregnancy, I used to go to a book store to find a perfect book for my reading time. At that time, my husband found a great VCD about human body and he said I should buy it.

Thinking about the price, I thought it was not that expensive anyway so I decided to buy the VCD and watched it as soon as I got back home and I was so surprise to find out that baby can swim inside the water! She can automatically move her arm and legs and there is something inside her nose that can prevent water from coming into the nose.

It was so amazing….. I was thinking about to try it with my own baby as soon as she is born.

So, after I gave birth to my baby, I decided to wait until she is 3 months old and we went to the swimming pool around our apartment. At the first time, I just put her little foot inside the water, to make sure that she’s OK with the water temperature. But unfortunately, she cried. Probably because it was the first experience for her.

But later on, I decided to swim together instead of holding her on the side of the pool. I think that way could give her a secure feeling, and see…. she’s really fine with me in the water now…

The question is, why we should take our baby to swim? Is that really important? 

Here, I will give some explanations about this:

1. It is healthy. If she’s healthy, you can teach her anything and she will absorb it right away.
2. When baby is swimming, she will move her entire body and the oxigent will flow into the blood circulation and the oxigent in the blood will flow into the brain. In this case, the brain will get more oxigent which is very good for the brain development
3. Baby will move her left leg with right right arm, right leg with left and it will balance her brain. Baby who has a balance brain will be cleverer than a baby who is stronger in her left brain or right brain only.
4. Swimming will increace the bondage between you and your baby
5. Baby will learn to trust you wholeheartedly and become a full confident baby.

Looking at those advantage, don’t wait anylonger…. let’s go swimming…

Claire Likes to Read

Oh…. how I love to read books….

When I was still an undergraduate student, I used to stay in the library, simply to read books, textbooks, or just to fell asleep… but one thing I know, I love to be surrounded by books.

Going back home to Indonesia, I really miss my library in Japan,.. I really miss spending time searching books and get ideas from it. So now, all I can do is just go to the book store around the apartment and read some books there, it’s kinda fun, you know.

Since I gave birth to my baby girl, I didn’t really have time to read for myself and started to read for her. Most of my friend who knew about this will give a short comment, “She doesn’t even understand anyway, why should you spend your time reading books for her?”

At first, I think, well, yeah,…. probably that’s true. She doesn’t understand. But the most important thing is not about whether she understand or not, it is about building a reading habit for my baby. Time passing by, and now, before going to sleep, she always said, “Mom,…. book, book,..” When she woke up, usually I found her reading a book (reading,… or probably just looking… I don’t know).

So, can we say that reading for baby is useless??? Certainly no…. IT IS AN INVESTMENT FOR YOUR BABY’S FUTURE.

Now I also know that what I’ve done for my little baby create something that is called “the Reading Mother”

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be –
I had a Mother who read for me…

Strickland Gillilan