Month: April 2025

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Parenting Tips

Exercise to strengthen the brain function. Three moves to make children love sports

Parenting Tips

April 2025

Written by: Fung Ji Hei, Game Therapist

I participated in a professional development exchange program for teachers in Taiwan earlier, and I was inspired by the emphasis on sports in Taiwan education, which I would like to share with parents. One of the schools on the exchange was the “Tiger Forest Elementary School”, a version of the Sports Institute Elementary School. As soon as we entered the school, the students welcomed us with a gymnastic exercise promoted by the government. They moved their hands and feet together to the beat and made all kinds of warm-up movements, which made people feel that they were as lively as the old tigers, and I was like entering a forest full of old tigers.

Sports can strengthen children’s learning ability

Principal Lau of Tiger Forest Primary School said the school is a government priority school, focusing on the physical development of students and believes that sports can strengthen their learning ability. Based on the research of John J. Ratey, MD, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, they promote a zero-hour exercise program. The program encourages students to be physically active at all times, i.e., Anytime. During recess, students run to the playground to play sports. They play dodgeball, climbing frames, or badminton, and all students enjoy every moment of exercise.

Benefits of Exercise to Strengthen Brain Function

Exercise is known to be physically stimulating, but in Ratey’s research, he points out more benefits of exercise for the brain. He describes the brain as a message processing center that transmits messages through different transmitters (chemicals) in different pathways. When exercising, the brain can effectively produce more transmitters and strengthen the pathways, allowing messages to travel faster and more accurately.

Applying the theory to learning, students use exercise to strengthen their brain function, which in turn improves their learning performance. Studies have shown that exercise improves students’ concentration and memory, both of which are necessary for successful learning. In addition, exercise enables the brain to produce Dopamine (a chemical that makes students feel happy), which makes learning more enjoyable and leads to better grades.

How can I get my child to love sports?

In order for children to enjoy the time and benefits of sports, parents need to get their children to love sports. Here are three suggestions:

  1. Sporadic exercise

Give your child more opportunities to play sports, such as providing the right time, tools, and place, and make sure the environment is safe for parents.

  1. Healthy exercise

Teach your child to do exercise for the love of health and mention the health benefits of exercise.

  1. Exercise together

Enjoy the moment of exercise with your child and enjoy the good time of parent-child relationship.

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Is it really necessary to establish the authority of the father?

Parenting Tips

April 2025

Written by Mr. Leung Wing Lok, an octopus parent

Since I got a Kim Jong-un haircut by a hair stylist, I have been thinking about whether I should implement “Kim Jong-un style of discipline” at home to a pair of children, and to authoritatively promote my personal hero worship to my father, so as to regain my status and authority in the family, and to implement the “Great Father Leader”, and I am planning to hang my own magnificent pictures in all rooms and play the “Love Daddy” song, but unfortunately, it has been a failure before implementation.

 

Should you build authority in your children from a young age?

Many of my friends would remind me to build authority while my children are still young, otherwise we will not be respected when they grow up. The friends’ good intentions are based on how they were “taught” or “lectured” when they were young, and then they “respected” and “feared” their fathers, and had a good relationship with their fathers when they grew up, so they concluded that “filial children come out from under the rod” and “don’t be disobedient”.

A friend shared his personal story of being beaten “because he was beaten every day, both big and small, he was already used to it”, and one night he felt strange because he had not been “taught a lesson”, and before he went to bed, he did not forget to remind his parents “to beat or not to beat? If not, I will go to sleep ……” is full of black humor. But fortunately, my friend is a kind-hearted person who grew up without a vengeance and did not become a murderer.

Dismantling the true power of fatherhood

The question of how to establish the authority of a father is a perennial problem, and I ask “Why must we establish patriarchal authority? Is the purpose to facilitate management? A command was given and all the children obeyed. Or how much of it is to satisfy one’s own desire for power, “I am the father, you are the children, you must listen to what I say. Or even more, “I say one is one, and my children have no right to say two. I believe that if I were such an “authoritarian” father, I would not be happy either, because my father is not so domineering, and has never “dictated” my decisions on further education, employment, etc., except for when I scored near zero in exams and dictations when I was young, I would be given a harsh “What are you doing? I think this is the power of patriarchal authority.

Teaching by example is more important than discipline

Back to my “Kim Jong-un discipline”, my eldest son, Hay, is always angry because of changing clothes, and the conversation often goes like this, my wife or I: “Change your clothes! We’re going out! “ I kept doing my best to show my fatherly authority (pretending) and said angrily, “Go change your shirt, go, go, go! He was so disturbed but did not do anything. My wife couldn’t resist: “You haven’t changed your shirt yet? Is there anything wrong! Hay replied, “Daddy won’t help me change my shirt! I said : “I’d help you change, but you didn’t. Come on over” He is furious: “I want to change myself “ Normally I will be so angry but before the fake role became a real anger, Hay came to me and hugged me and said “Today is Father’s Day, Happy Father’s Day! I feel a sense of déjà vu…. Teaching by example is more important than discipline, and “Kim Jong-un’s discipline” is even less necessary and is automatically set aside.

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Failure to adequately address anxiety in young children may exacerbate separation anxiety

Parenting Tips

April 2025

Written by: New Horizons Development Centre, Certified Educational Psychologist

                   Pang Chi Wah

As the school year begins again, many children cry when they first go to kindergarten. However, there are also children who can go to school without any adjustment period because their parents can prepare them mentally and practice simulations. For children, entering kindergarten may be their first major challenge because some children are separated from their families for the first time when they enter kindergarten, but once they have enough time to become familiar with the school environment, they will feel safe in kindergarten life and will not cry.

What bothers parents and teachers the most is that after a few weeks of enrollment, children continue to cry or expressly resist going back to school. In better cases, they may not like to participate in extracurricular activities, and in more severe cases, they may refuse to go to school, and in some extreme cases, they may not allow their parents to leave their sight. These are all separation anxiety problems.

In fact, there may be deeper reasons why children do not adapt to being separated from their families that need to be understood in depth. For example, some children are admitted to the intensive care unit when they are newborn because they are underweight or have physical problems, or they need to be hospitalized or undergo surgery because they are sick. Although such medical support is necessary for them, it may also lead to traumatic psychological experiences for them, and since then they may be afraid of strangers or unfamiliar places and easily develop separation anxiety, and their sense of security is lower than other children.

In some even worse cases, parents are not allowed to work, or that the child needs to be left with a babysitter, but the children do not want to be left behind, so the parents consider the reality of their needs and have to forcibly separate from them or lie to them. As a result of parents’ misuse of inappropriate methods, their feelings of insecurity during infancy and early childhood are reinforced. The so-called traumatic experiences are actually events that cause them to be psychologically afraid.

The main reason for the lack of security in young children is the separation from their families and the failure of parents to handle the situation properly. Ironically, some caregivers do not provide a safe and adequate living environment in their daily lives, and more importantly, there are frequent changes in caregivers or places, and there are strong contrasts in caregiving practices, causing them to go through psychological adjustment tests before they start school.

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