ALL TOYS ON SALE!

Toy Spotlight - Bajo Vehicles

I knew when I got the Bajo wooden vehicle collection that little ones would love it. After all, they are specially designed to be held in little hands and the imaginative way that they can play with them is just endless.

When I gave my second child at 3 months one of the small Bajo vehicles, I discovered what a great grasping toy and teething toy it is. The little vehicles are small enough that babies can hold them comfortably in their little hands, and big enough for them to put in their mouths with no worries of chocking, they are also very safe as they are painted with non-toxic paints and are easy to clean and disinfect.

When she was able to sit up, she would love to play with her little cars. By this time she had three of them and she would pass them from hand to hand to mouth.

Now at a year, she pushes them away from her and crawls to them. They are still a fun teething toy for her and after all the 'love' they have gotten from her, they still look like new.

The Bajo wooden vehicles are great for sensory development for babies, fine-motor skill development for toddlers and imaginative play for preschoolers.

Stop by BabyThoughts.ca to see our entire Bajo Vehicle collection. Take advantage of our toy sale of up to 50% off on until October 16, 2011.

How to Raise a Glass Half-Full Child

I wanted to share with you a newsletter article I received titled 5 Steps to Raising Optimistic Children sent to me by Daniel Dwase from Child-Development-Guide.com. There is no doubt that as parents we want our children to be more optimistic, be able work through difficult situations and find solutions to problems that they will run into. Hopefully these simple steps will not only help them but perhaps help us make some important changes.

5 Steps to Raising Optimistic Children

Why should you want your child to be an optimist? Because, as Dr. Martin Seligman explains: “Pessimism (the opposite of optimism) is an entrenched habit of mind that has sweeping and disastrous consequences: depressed mood, resignation, underachievement and even unexpectedly poor physical health.”

Children with optimistic thinking skills are better able to interpret failure, have a stronger sense of personal mastery and are better able to bounce back when things go wrong in their lives. Because you are a major contributor to the thinking styles of your children’s developing minds, it is important to adhere to the following five steps to ensure healthy mental habits in your children.

Step 1: Learn to think optimistically yourself. What children see and hear indirectly from you as you lead your life and interact with others influences them much more than what you try to ‘teach’ them. You can model optimism for your child by incorporating optimistic mental skills into your own way of thinking. This is not easy and does not occur over night. But with practice, almost everyone can learn to think differently about life’s events.

Step 2: Teach your child that there is a connection between how they think and how they feel. You can do this most easily by saying aloud how your own thoughts about adversity create negative feelings in you.

For example, if you are driving your child to school and a driver cuts you off, verbalize the link between your thoughts and feelings by saying something like “I wonder why I’m feeling so angry; I guess I was saying to myself: ‘Now I’m going to be late because the guy in front of me is going so darn slow. If he is going to drive like that he shouldn’t drive during rush hour. How rude.’”

Step 3: Create a game called ‘thought catching.’ This helps your child learn to identify the thoughts that flit across his or her mind at the times they feel worst. These thoughts, although barely noticeable, greatly affect mood and behavior. For instance, if your child received a poor grade, ask: “When you got your grade, what did you say to yourself?”

Step 4: Teach your child how to evaluate automatic thoughts. This means acknowledging that the things you say to yourself are not necessarily accurate.

For instance, after receiving the poor grade your child may be telling himself he is a failure, he is not as smart as other kids; he will never be able to succeed in school, etc. Many of these self-statements may not be accurate, but they are ‘automatic’ in that situation.

Step 5: Instruct your child on how to generate more accurate explanations (to themselves) when bad things happen and use them to challenge your child’s automatic but inaccurate thoughts. Part of this process involves looking for evidence to the contrary (good grades in the past, success in other life areas, etc).

Another skill to teach your child to help him or her think optimistically is to ‘decatastrophize’ the situation – that is – help your child see that the bad event may not be as bad or will not have the adverse consequences imagined. Few things in life are as devastating as we fear, yet we blow them up in our minds.

You can influence the thinking styles of your children by modeling the principals of optimistic thinking.