Why Are Children Easily Frustrated - Part 4

Assalammualaikum all!

Praises to Allah, we are still continuing with our mini series "Why Are Children Easily Frustrated?" which explores the reasons to why our children get easily frustrated and what are the things we can do to help them.

Let's see what the 4th point says!

Here is something not all children would like to do - chores! Most of us perceive that doing chores means doing work, and children are calculative when it comes to performing chores. On the contrary, performing chores can actually help children in several ways. Research shows that children actually feel happier when they feel they have contributed to the family and would have a sense of ownership and responsibility. Without this sense of ownership and responsibility, a child is more likely to feel frustrated when they are asked to do something.

Monotonous work like chores may not seem exciting or give instant results, but it definitely has an impact on the child's development in the long run. Practicing chores from a young age develops the child's basic life skills. This essentially will make the child grow into a more independent and competent person later in life.

What can we do to encourage our children to do chores?

One effective way to involve children with household chores is by doing it together. Doing chores together will give parents the opportunity to spend time with children and provide first-hand guidance and help. This will also develop the children's abilities to work well with others.

Another thing to remember is to make the chores manageable and fun. This method will make the children associate doing chores with positive thoughts. A great example would be cleaning up their toys once they have finished playing. While putting the toys back into the boxes, parents and children can start singing songs or play a simple game like keeping the blue toys first, and then the red toys, and then yellow toys. The next time they are asked to clean up, they would not be so reluctant anymore, inshaa Allah :)

Hopefully this tip finds you well. Try it out and let us know how it goes!

May Allah bless our efforts and deeds.

Why Are Children Easily Frustrated - Part 3

Assalammualaikum all!

We have come to our third point in our mini series "Why Are Children Easily Frustrated?". Inshaa Allah, we will keep exploring reasons to why our children easily get frustrated and what can be done to improve the situation.

Let's see what the 3rd point says:

Do you remember when you were little, Mom and Dad would constantly and consistently remind us of a lot of things, like finishing up our homework on time, or reminding us that we need to go to bed no later than 9 o'clock? As children, these may seem as instructions or orders from parents. However, there is actually a very good reason to why parents instruct their children to complete certain chores on time or be somewhere at a certain time; this is practice for self-discipline.

Self-discipline is an important element in a child's development. Children with self-discipline are able to control impulsive behaviour, cope with emotions in a healthy way, and are able to make healthy choices for themselves. Children who do not learn self-discipline tend to struggle with managing healthy habits, school work, and time management. This might result in parents and teachers getting angry or disappointed at them, making them feeling sad and frustrated.

What can we do to help our children with self-discipline?

A great way to train self-discipline is to place structure in our children's day-to-day activities. Have some household rules that must be followed by everyone in the house with no exceptions. Practice the same consequences every time the rules are broken. This will teach children to expect what is coming and aid them to make better decisions in future.

Placing structure comes hand-in-hand with education. Education here means letting them know the reasons behind every rule so that they are able to make better decisions. For example, children need to know they can only have one cookie a day because too much sugar is bad for them, not because "Mom told me to do so". In the long run, this encourages children to question things as they grow up instead of just blindly following something.

May Allah bless our effort and deeds, inshaa Allah.

Voice Away With DD Animation!

Assalammualaikum all!

Today was super exciting as we had a voice-over audition session. The voice-over audition is done by DD Animation, the wonderful animation house behind DIDI & FRIENDS was held at our Headquarters in Taman Tasik Prima, Puchong. The audition is meant to scout for voice talents for a new Islamic animation coming out soon.

The audition aims to look for talents who can speak Malay, English, and Arabic. Selected talents will fit the main characters of a 6-year-old boy, a 4-year-old girl, and 2 parents (Mama and Papa).

By the time everything was set up for the audition, the atmosphere was positive and everyone was excited for their turn! :D

Several students (and some very excited teachers too!) came by to audition this morning, including 2 of Genius Aulad's Taman Tasik Prima alumni. Welcome back kids, and thank you for coming!

For most of us, this audition was our very first one. Teachers as well as students were all anxious and had butterflies in our tummies. However, the lovely ladies from DD Animation were so nice and friendly, everybody had fun during the audition. They calmly explained that we need to read some lines and sing some songs. Easy peasy!

Thank you so much to all participants today! It was a pleasant experience to have the voice-over audition today, and Genius Aulad is ever so blessed and privileged to be collaborating with DD Animation for this project. We hope it was a fruitful session for all of us inshaa Allah, and we look forward to having more educational collaborations like this in future.

May Allah bless our efforts and deeds.

Why Are Children Easily Frustrated - Part 2

Assalammualaikum all!

Yes, our mini series "Why Are Children Easily Frustrated?" is still on-going and we are on to the 2nd poster now. As we know, there are many different reasons to why our children can get easily frustrated. Let's see what the 2nd point says.

Imagine that your child spots a beautiful toy car in a store. And he is transfixed. He has temporarily fallen in love, and it scares you. You detect danger. He wants this toy car, and you know it even before he speaks the words "I want that car Mama!". Oh he wants the car badly. You know what will happen if you say no, and you do not want him to throw his tantrum yet again. So you succumb to his 'want' and gets him the car.

This, dear readers, is a form of instant gratification.

Instant gratification is becoming more and more significant in our lives these days. We now live in an era when everything can be obtained in a blink of an eye. Need to shop? Go online instead of queuing up at the mall. Looking for a mobile phone? Just purchase it now instead of waiting two more months for the big sale. It is hard enough for us adults to wait and be patient, imagine how challenging it would be for our children!

Why is delayed gratification important?

Delayed gratification is basically resisting a smaller but immediate reward in order to receive a better reward later. It is important for a child to practice delayed gratification as this will make them grow into a person who is less impulsive and more patient and adaptable in life situations. A renowned research by Walter Mischel in the 1970's called the "marshmallow experiment" shows that children who demonstrated delayed gratification grew up developing better emotional coping skills, higher rates of educational attainment, and lower rates of addiction.

How do we train delayed gratification to our children?

One way to practice delayed gratification is through avoidance. It is the embodiment of the saying "out of sight, out of mind" - if it is not visible, children will not be reminded of it. Start storing those cookies and chocolate at a 'safer', less reachable place. Put your phone away when you are with your child so that they are getting limited screen time.

Another way to impose delayed gratification is through positive distraction. Have you ever been in a situation where your child is screaming because you are taking too long to prepare their food? Try singing a song with them while you prepare the food, or get your child to tell you how their day was. Before they know it, inshaa Allah, their wait comes to an end :)

May Allah bless our efforts and deeds.

Let's go for SPA!

Assalammualaikum all!

It is the season for SPA, and this will be the final round for 2016!

SPA, which stands for Students-Parents Activities, is an initiative done by Genius Aulad as an invitation for parents to become 'teachers for a day' in their child's centres. SPA is held every alternate month throughout the year and every SPA has a different theme.

Our latest SPA theme is My Favourite Things, which means parents get to relive their old hobbies and games that they used to play when they were little. How cool is that?

We are in the midst of having SPA in our centres all around the country. Alhamdulillah, participation from parents and students have been nothing short of amazing. Parents not only obtained the opportunity to experience being a guardian for a group of children; they also managed to spend quality time with their child at school.

Check out some of the activities they had in the recent SPA:

Assembly time before the games begin.

One of the games they had was teng-teng, equivalent to hop-scotch. In this picture, we can see the children are learning to compromise and practice queuing up as they wait for their turn to jump jump jump!

Seen here, a mommy is teaching the curious crowd to play congkak, a traditional game of marbles in a special board usually made of wood. Look how interested the children are to learn, masyaAllah.

This outgoing daddy is demonstrating how to play dam, also known as checkers. Notice how the blue and green pieces are made of plastic bottle caps? This is an excellent example of recycling and having fun!

How precious is this picture? A boy is trying to main getah, a game similar to jump rope. Two teachers are both holding the end of the rubber-band rope for the boy to jump over it. The little onlookers must be watching to see if they can jump higher!

So there you have it, some of the activities that we had during our recent SPA session. The children sure had a lot of fun, and we recognize that parents' involvement in their child's play time is crucial to the child's development. We hope to keep having this activity in years to come, inshaa Allah.

Watch out for our next SPA session next year at you nearest Genius Aulad centre. Announcements would be made in Facebook as well!

May Allah bless our efforts and deeds.

Why Are Children Easily Frustrated - Part 1

Assalammualaikum all!

Alhamdulillah, we have started a new mini series and we just posted our first poster on Facebook this morning! The mini series is titled "Why Are Children Easily Frustrated?" and it features on why it happens or what triggers the issue, and how can we as adults and parents help with the situation.

Victoria Prooday, an occupational therapist with 10 years experience, mentioned in her blog that over the years, she has witnessed a decline in children's social, emotional, and academic functioning. This is causing children to feel bored at school, unable to wait, and get easily frustrated.

Why are children easily frustrated?

In this technology-driven age, it is a norm for everyone to have gadgets. We use it a lot for leisure, work, and even keeping in touch with loved ones. The thing about technology is that it evolves every day; it becomes more and more user-friendly and caters to users of any age. That is why nowadays, children have no problem using gadgets.

Exposure of technology to children from a very young age may not be such a good idea. Why? Long hours of exposure to virtual reality makes it challenging for children to process normal information because their brains are used to the high levels of stimulation that the gadgets provide. Basically, they can process complex information but find it challenging to figure out the simple things, and that can frustrate them.

So, what can we do about this? How can we help our children?

The worrying part here is not whether they can or cannot use these gadgets, but it is about how much time they spend on the gadgets. Limit the use of gadgets and connect emotionally with our children so that they can learn to be more attentive and responsive. In the long run, the ability to emotionally connect helps tremendously in building relationships.

Connect emotionally by doing activities together with your children. It could be as simple as crawling together at home or dancing to a silly song, to learning how to ride a bicycle and flying a kite in the park. The direct interaction with children will help a long way in building their confidence and social skills.

In the end, it all boils down to how much time we spend with our children. Every moment we have with them is precious and irreplaceable. So let's start relying less on technology to keep our children company and spend more quality time with them instead. Let this be our investment in dunia and hereafter, inshaa Allah.

Stay tuned for the next "Why Are Children Easily Frustrated?" mini series. May Allah bless our efforts and deeds.

Well, hello there!

Assalamualaikum and welcome to the Genius Aulad official blog.

Inshaa Allah, we will be using this platform to better communicate and reach out to more people in future. We have so many activities and events going on at the moment, so we would like to document all that and share the excitement with you!

Stay tuned for more posts!

Meanwhile, do visit our official website here.

May Allah bless our deeds.