Children receive love in different ways.  Each child has a love language that is special to them—it fills their love tank.  Try all of these often and see which one is your child’s favourite:

☆          Words—tell them all the things you love about them not just what they do.

☆          Touch—surprise them with hugs, hold their hand, cuddle them heaps.

☆          Acts— tidy their bedroom, make their favourite dinner, and fix their bike.

☆          Time—set aside 1-2 hours just to spend with your child—walking, bike riding, throwing a ball, playing together.

☆          Gifts— leave surprises on their beds, find a feather and give it to them, buy a special something.

Note from Karin: If you would like to read more about Love Languages this book is brilliant ~ ”The Five Love Languages of Children”. Available from me for only $19 (plus $5 postage) ~ Save $9. Just send me an email karin@nurturehouse.com.au and I will send you an invoice for payment.

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We were made to live with and be in nature.  It is there to balance and heals us.  So encourage your child to experience nature every day by:

*         Taking their shoes off and feeling the earth, the grass, the sand

*      Walking on the beach or in the bush

*      Playing in a park

*         Watching the sun rise or sun set

*         Watching the clouds and the birds in the trees

It’s time to go outside in nature ~ Natural Support for ADHD Children is a post from: Nurture House

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Rhythms form the basis of life —  night and day; the seasons; the beat in music.  Children need to have a consistent rhythm in their life too.  A time for eating, a time for rest, a time for play.  As they get older—a time to pack their bag, to go to school, and to do their homework.  Their rhythms will change as they grow and our role is to provide space for rhythm and support them as they move into each new phase in their life.  Set up systems to help them with the rhythms in their life. 

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A nonviolent method of dealing with terrorism has been adapted as a gentler form of parenting. But does it work?

I was rendered speechless by my four-year-old son recently. At the end of a fraught day he put his arms around my neck and whispered in a consolatory tone: “I still love you Mummy, even though you’re grumpy and you always scream and shout.” Gulp. My maternal guilt-o-meter went off the scale. In my defence, I’m not always grumpy and I don’t mean to scream, but what else can you do when your son throws his shoes at his brother’s head instead of putting them on, as requested, on a frantic Monday morning? There isn’t a baby book with a chapter on that. Believe me, I’ve checked.

That bedtime exchange was enlightening. Things are going to change around here, I promised. Which explains how I came upon Parenting with Nonviolence, an unconventional parenting approach based on principles of Nonviolent Communication (NVC).

NVC is a mediation tool developed in the 1960s by Marshall Rosenberg, a US clinical psychologist and founder of the Centre for Nonviolent Communication. Today, more than 200 trainers teach Rosenberg’s philosophy of mediation in more than 50 countries, including Afghanistan, and there are 15 qualified trainers in the UK.

Long used effectively in warzones around the globe, NVC is now gaining credence with parents looking for ways to handle conflicts that rage closer to home. The emergence of parenting courses based on NVC, and its take-up by British parents, represents something of a backlash by those disenchanted with the more prescriptive approaches of people such as Gina Ford and Supernanny. The advent of footwear as weaponry in our house, and my overreliance on shouting, made me want to know more about a nonviolent parenting philosophy.

Helen Bone runs a group in Bristol that meets every two months to work through the practicalities of parenting with nonviolence. She turned to NVC when her son Sam’s behaviour began to deteriorate, triggered by his asthma.

“He couldn’t verbalise how his asthma made him feel so he shut me out, with lots of kicking and shouting,” she says. “My response — angry, frustrated and upset — was making the problem worse. Through NVC we’ve learnt a different way of communicating and it’s gentler.”

So how does it work? Bone describes a time when she used NVC with her son to prevent a conflict getting worse. “We were at a relative’s house and Sam was playing in the sandpit with a toy lorry, but the rest of the family were going to the park,” she says. “He just lost it because he didn’t want to stop what he was doing. I used to think, ‘I’m the parent, so he’s going to do what I say’, but instead I thought about what his needs were. I realised he just wanted some autonomy. I think that’s important, and what tantrums are about in most cases.”

Bone then turned the spotlight on herself. “What I love about NVC is that it isn’t just about empathising with the child. I need to understand what’s going on for me as well,” she says. “I realised I needed to show my partner’s family that I am a good mother, that I have discipline with my child. I needed him to come to the park because the other grandchildren were going and I thought ‘Wow, this is a really pressured situation, it looks like nothing on the surface but there’s loads going on here’.” She offered to help Sam bury his lorry in the sand if in return he would go to the park. He agreed. “It was yes straight away. We buried the lorry and the whole thing dissipated.”

NVC isn’t simply about not being violent; it’s about dealing peacefully with conflict of any kind — from toddler tantrums to global terrorism — extending to addressing the unspoken feelings and unmet needs that often underlie violence and conflict. NVC regards all behaviour as linked to needs. So a child who refuses to finish his lunch shouldn’t be forced to do so because modifying a child’s behaviour without addressing his needs is considered an oversight, even when the method of “coercion” is nothing more harmful than the promise of dessert.

Instead, NVC encourages parents to engage with their child to seek an outcome in which the parents’ needs and the child’s are met. That might mean accepting that your child has had enough to eat, or together negotiating a few more bites — it doesn’t mean forcing your child to finish his food, or go without pudding as punishment for not complying.

Sarah Ludford, mother to Ella, 20 months, says that NVC has changed her parenting approach and how she copes when she gets it wrong. “I scream and shout sometimes, but NVC helps me to engage more constructively because I’m learning to recognise Ella’s needs and hold them with my own,” she says.

As a result, previously fraught interactions over such things as changing Ella’s nappy or brushing her teeth are mostly a thing of the past. “If I approach her with the toothbrush and hold her down it’s a horrible experience, so we’ve turned it into a game. She runs up to me and puts my toothbrush in my mouth, then I brush her teeth and she runs away again. It might take ten minutes but if I treat her with force, even in minor things, I’m teaching her that violence is an acceptable way to operate in the world. That perpetuates the same old paradigms that create wars and division and racism.”

Daren De Witt is a UK representative of Rosenberg’s Centre for NVC and a qualified trainer. He feels that we treat children’s needs as second-rate, and believes that NVC counters the culture of domination that influences the way we raise them. Respecting children as sentient human beings, he says, lays the foundation for teenagers, who are more likely to relate respectfully to parents.

So what is the appropriate reaction to my son’s “need” to throw his shoes at his brother? De Witt says: “By identifying his underlying need and talking about it rather than just labelling his behaviour wrong or punishing it, you can equip him to recognise his feelings and to articulate his needs more effectively in future.”

NVC is not, though, about refusing to say No to kids. Kitty Hagenbach is a pre and perinatal psychologist and runs Babies Know, a parenting programme that draws on NVC. She feels that failure to hold boundaries for a child can be as much a violation as enforcing them too aggressively. “No is a very important word for children, especially in this age of overly permissive parenting,” she says. “NVC is not about having the children run your life. It is most important that parents remain in charge.”

NVC strikes me as a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” approach to parenting. But it seems to work. And involves far less screaming and far fewer incidents of shoe-related injury.

Written by: Heidi Scrimgeour www.cnvc.org
The Sunday Times ~ 20 April 2010

NOTE FROM KARIN:
I recommend NVC to my clients. If you would like to purchase the Non Violent Communication Book ‘Respectful Parents, Respectful Kids’ please send me an email: karin@nurturehouse.com.au

Respectful Parents, Respectful Kids ~ was $40 only $25 plus $5 postage and handling.

All we are saying is: give peace a chance is a post from: Nurture House

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Source: Sydney Morning Herald October 2009

Modern diets high in processed foods that contain little fibre may be behind the rise in recent decades of inflammatory diseases such as asthma and Type 1 diabetes, say Sydney scientists who have found fibre consumption can trigger the production of immune molecules in the gut.

The response could be responsible for keeping inflammatory diseases in check, and may provide the missing link between lifestyle and an epidemic in developed countries of many forms of inflammatory disorders, in which the body mounts an excessive immune response, said lead researcher Charles Mackay.

With colleagues from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Professor Mackay found short-chain fatty acids, produced by the fermentation of fibre in the colon, bind to a genetically determined protein receptor that appears to regulate the body’s natural anti-inflammatory response.

Professor Mackay, who has moved to Monash University since completing the work, said scientists had been sceptical about the role of diet in asthma in particular, even though increasing asthma correlated closely with dietary changes.

”Here we have a theoretical and molecular explanation as to why fibre should be beneficial to the immune system,” said Professor Mackay, who demonstrated that mice bred to be deficient in the protein receptor – known as GPR43 – went into inflammatory overdrive when they were given a chemical solution to irritate the gut.

The study is published today in Nature.

Other recent lifestyle changes, such as antibiotic use and hygiene measures, could change the natural bacterial make-up of the gut, Professor Mackay said, and this in turn might affect the ability to convert fibre to short-chain fatty acids.

As well as emphasising the importance of a healthy diet including plenty of fruit and vegetables, he said GPR43 could be a target for new medicines for people who had already developed severe inflammatory conditions.

Guy Marks, a respiratory physician and epidemiologist from the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, said scientists would now want to discover whether the GPR43 receptor varied between individuals, and whether any variations were linked to inflammatory disease development or severity.

Michael Grimm, a gastroenterologist and professor of medicine at the University of NSW, said ”the dietary angle has not been strongly looked at or even suspected” in inflammatory disease. If it turned out fibre consumption made a real difference even after diseases had developed, ”that holds out a great prospect for simple additions to current therapies”.

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Source: Sydney Morning Herald November 2009

AN OVERWHELMING majority of children do not eat enough fish, placing them at risk of heart disease, asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and retarded brain development, new research says.

Associate Professor Barbara Meyer, from the University of Wollongong’s School of Health Sciences, said intakes of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids – found mostly in fish – were ”desperately low” among Australian children.

Her paper, Long Chain Omega-3 Intakes of Australian Children, which is being submitted for publication in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that three-year-olds consumed an average of only 47 milligrams of long-chain omega-3s, while four-to-eight year-olds had just 55 milligrams.

Both figures are less than one-tenth of the National Heart Foundation’s recommended guidelines of 500 milligrams.

”Only about 6 per cent of our children are meeting those suggested dietary targeted intakes,” she said.

Professor Meyer said only one child in 10 ate fish, which is the richest source of omega-3s.

Oily fish such as salmon, mackerel and sardines are the richest sources of long-chain omega-3s, while organ meats such as brains and bone marrow, lean red meat and eggs were other sources.

Foods fortified with omega-3s, such as eggs, milk, yoghurt and bread, as well as fish-oil supplements, are other sources.

Professor Meyer said she and colleague Nithin Kolanu based their research – funded by the Omega-3 Centre in Melbourne, which in turn is funded by nutrition, fishing and meat companies – on last year’s Australian National Children’s Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey carried out by the Federal Government.

”Intakes of omega-3 have not increased in that time,” Professor Meyer said. ”Children are not increasing their consumption of fish and seafood in any way, which is a bit disheartening.

”There’s a lot of enriched foods on the market with omega-3s but [consumption of those products] is not very high either. Only about 8 per cent of children are taking those supplements for omega-3s.”

Professor Meyer said expectant mothers should also ensure they ate plenty of fish, but should avoid those high in mercury.

A study published in 2006 in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed the benefits of eating fish outweighed the potential risks for pregnant women.

”It’s so vital in the last trimester of pregnancy because that’s when the growing foetus accrues all the brain matter. The first two years of an infant’s life is also important because the brain is still growing.”

The National Heart Foundation of Australia recommends everyone consume about 500 milligrams a day, or two to three serves of oily fish a week, fish oil capsules or liquid and food and drinks enriched with marine n-3 PUFA.

Those with coronary heart disease should have 1000 milligrams a day while people with elevated triglycerides should eat about 4000 milligrams a day.

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Source: www.onfood.com.au

An international symposium on the role nutrition plays in the prevention and management of pregnancy complications and early childhood diseases such as autism, asthma, obesity and cancer will be held in Adelaide this Friday, (July 30).

“Nutritional genomics is an emerging area of science that is making a significant difference in our approach to enhancing health outcomes by improving our understanding of how to prevent harmful genetic changes that cause developmental defects and degenerative diseases,” says Professor Michael Fenech from CSIRO Food and Nutritional Sciences.

“In recent years, this research is probably best recognised for identifying how folate assists in reducing neural tube defects during pregnancy.”

Professor Fenech is internationally renowned for developing quick and reliable techniques for detecting damage in DNA, then applying them to define nutritional requirements for preventing diseases caused by genetic abnormalities such as cancer.

To be held at the Adelaide Convention Centre, The Nutritional Genomics (“A Healthy Start to Life”) Symposium is the second in a series of annual events initiated by Professor Fenech and his research team at CSIRO.

“Each year we examine a specific health challenge,” he said. “The 2009 conference focussed on nutritional genomics and the ageing brain. This year, we are exploring the link between nutrition, its genetic effects and the quality of development during conception and early childhood.

“We know that it is important for mothers to eat well during pregnancy and we should feed our children healthy, nutritious food. What foods are best and how much of these foods we need is still unclear. This symposium will shed some light on these important questions.”

One of the speakers, Professor Jill James from the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute, is the world’s leading expert on applying nutritional genomics to identify and correct the metabolic disorders associated with autism.

“Bringing these top researchers together will enhance our understanding of how nutrients interact with our genes and the resulting health outcomes in early life. It will also help to identify any knowledge gaps for future research and demonstrate new scientific approaches to these challenges,” Professor Fenech said.

“Ultimately, we hope to establish a national collaborative network on nutritional genomics, which will enhance the current breadth and quality of research in this important field.”

To be held at the Adelaide Convention Centre, The Nutritional Genomics (“A Healthy Start to Life”) Symposium is the second in a series of annual events initiated by Professor Fenech and his research team at CSIRO.

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Is your world spinning faster and faster?  Are there more and more things to do and not enough hours in the day to do them? Does it feel as if you are being pulled along and you don’t have any choice? This natural treatment idea may help.

Many of us fall into the trap of going faster and faster and it can make life with sensitive children stressful and even more unmanageable.  If your sensitive kids are anything like mine, when I was stressed my eldest would become hyperactive and unfocused and my youngest would get sick with asthma and a cold. What a nightmare!

So what can you do about it? How can you break the cycle? Here are three steps that you may find useful:

Step 1 – Understand where you are living from

If you are living from your head, you just get dizzier and dizzier, until you eventually fall over. If you live from your centre, it is easier to focus on what is important to you and let everything else drop away.  So move to your centre and start living from there.

Step 2 – Connect with what is important to you

Now create a vision for yourself, your family and your children.  Also, spend some time looking at where you are expending your energy.  Are you doing the things you love or the things you feel you should do? Are you nurturing and caring for yourself and your family or looking after everyone else? What are you doing to create a peaceful and harmonious home? You may also like to step in your child’s shoes and look at your world through the eyes of your children.

Step 3 – Stick to your vision

The final step is to stay focused on your vision. So when any new opportunity comes your way you can easily decide if it really what you want to do.  Learn to say no; schedule your time with lots of space to just hang with yourself, your partner and your children; and remember to look after your health.

Slowing down can help your child ~ Natural Treatment ADD & Autism is a post from: Nurture House

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All of us share a deep desire to help and to know we are capable and valuable. Our children have this same wish, although they may not realise how they can create this experience. 

A great way to support your child’s self confidence is to encourage them to help themselves or help the family. This can be a little challenging if your child is unfocused, hyperactive or easily distracted. So the best thing you can do is support them to rather than doing it for them. Here are some ideas:

• Find an action they can easily do by themselves
• Encourage them to do it by themselves while you are there supporting them.
• Make it meaningful
• Use physical cues – like pictures and words to remind them.
• Use non verbal and verbal cues to share your love and gratitude - touch them, use your eyes, use your words.

If  you are looking for some ideas for physical cues. I have two products that might help:

• Personal Jobs for children
• Family Jobs for children
  

Your child can help themselves & the family ~ Natural treatment for Autistic children is a post from: Nurture House

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Do you remember someone taking your hand unexpectedly, and just holding it, and feeling so loved and at home? Or maybe you have reached out to someone else, when they needed it, and put your hand on their back to show them that you are there?

Our hands show our children that we care, however, we sometimes forget to reach out to them.  Take some time today to gently squeeze your child’s hand; massage a sore spot; tickle their back; put your hand on their shoulders; massage their feet or stroke their hair.

All of these actions say – I LOVE YOU, I ACCEPT YOU, YOU ARE SPECIAL and YOU ARE PERFECT JUST THE WAY YOU ARE!

Loving Hands ~ Naturally supporting your child is a post from: Nurture House

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