Parents Tip : Sex Education for Children

It is just reminder that pupils always have questions about the body structure and function that are not usually answered in texts designed for class use – questions about the reproductive organs and about the “facts of life.” Teachers can cooperate with parents in the matter of sex education in a number of ways.

Ideally, sex education should be given in the home from the time the little child asks his first question about how babies are born. The part that home should play in teaching the child about life and the beginning of life is indeed important. Unfortunately, many parents feel unable to do this reaching adequately.

Those parents who realize that their children need guidance but feel adequate to give it will often turn to the school and to the teacher for help and advice. The well-informed teacher can do much to help this parents, both though individual conferences and through initiating P.T.A or parent study-group programs.

In planning a P.T.A or parent study-group program, it might be wise to make use of guest speaker. Some good resource persons for a program on sex education are a physician who works with teen-agers, a psychologist or psychiatrist, or a teacher of human-relations or family-living courses.

Because many parents find it difficult to talk to their adolescent children about sex or to answer questions, they appreciate knowing about books or pamphlets that can be of help.

Explaining Menstruation

Although many girls begin to menstruate around the age of twelve or thirteen, some begin much earlier and some much later. Since the age range for the first menstruation is wide, many girls may have their first period at school as early as the fifth- or sixth-grade level. Even if they have been well prepared by their mothers for the onset of menstruation, this first occasion may evoke anxiety. Then, too, it is quite possible that some girls may not fully understand what is happening.

In the event that menstruation should occur for the first time at school, some possible course of action should be thought out in advance. Perhaps the school nurse can be called upon to provide a sanitary pad and to offer explanation and reassurance. If necessary, she might have to explain in a brief and matter-of-fact way such facts of menstruation as these:

Physical maturity for a girl means that her reproductive organs (ovaries) have developed the power to mature or ripen the ova, or egg cell, which contain the germ of a new life. An egg leaves one of the ovaries each month and travels down the Fallopian tube to the uterus. The uterus is a pear-shaped organ especially designed to serve as a sort of nest where a new baby can grow if egg is fertilized.

As soon as the egg leaves the ovary, the blood supply to the uterus is increased so that in case the egg is fertilized, there will be plenty of nourishment for the developing baby. When the egg is not fertilized, the extra blood sent to the uterus is not needed, so it is discharged through the vagina. This is the menstrual flow. It usually lasts from three to five days, but it may last for longer or shorter time.

Such as explanation can be given in a way that the youngster can easily understand. Questions should be encouraged and answered in a straightforward manner, without hint of mystery or embarrassment. Menstruation is a healthy aspect of normal development of a girl. Therefore, the adult who explains it to her can tacitly indicate that this is a sign of growth one can be proud to have achieved.

Read More

5 Advices : Some Good Tips in How to Study

Working with homework

One of the changes you no doubt have found as you moved into the junior-high years is that you are expected to study a great deal more on your own. You have more homework, and you have longer assignments than you did in earlier years. Some of these assignments may not be for your next class meeting but may be given for a week or even a month or so in advance. As a result you will have to learn how to study and how to plan in advance for things you must do.

Find a Good Place to Study

Find a comfortable, fairly quiet place where the lighting is good and where you can spread out your books and papers.

Try to have at hand the books, pencils, pen, paper, ruler, dictionary, and other materials you are likely to need in your studying.

Be Clear about the Nature and Purpose of Assignment

Write down your assignments in a regular place, preferably in a notebook. If the assignment is not clear to you, ask a teacher about it before you start it. Be sure to put the date when the assignment is due.

Think about the purpose of the assignment before you start to work. Ask yourself, “What am I to learn from this?” or “What are the main things I am to do or to find out?”

Adopt Good Study Habits

In a reading assignment, try reading the whole lesson quickly to see what it is all about. Once you get the main ideas, reread the material more carefully and fill in important details. If the assignment seems awfully long, break it up in to small parts and tackle one part at a time.

Spend time after reading some lesson to think over what you have read. See if you can tell about it in your own words.

Keep trying to see the importance of what you are studying and to think of real-life examples of the things you are reading about.

If the assignment has been a written one, always check your finished work with the assignment directions to be sure you have done what you were asked to do.

Look for chances to talk over with others the things you have been studying.

Work on Learning to Concentrate

Try to keep your mind on what you are doing. Do not take too much time out of daydream about the party on Friday, the new sweater you want, and so on.

Stay with the job. Do not hop up and down to do things you suddenly think about or to make telephone calls. These can wait.

Give yourself a break. Do your homework early enough in the afternoon or evening to avoid being tired out before you start.

Learn to Plan Ahead

If you have time for study in school, decide which work you can do best in school and which would be better to save for doing at home. Work that you find difficult may best be done when you teacher for that subject is available to help you.

Study your hardest subject first, when you are still fresh.

Allot the time you have for study among the assignments you must cover. Try to keep to your time limits whenever possible.

Divide you assignment into parts – those are due the next day and those that are due later on. Then plan your daily work so that you have some time set aside for working on each of your assignments.

Do your daily work first. If you cannot cover it and long-term assignment in evening study, set aside a definite time on weekends for long-term assignments. Do some experimenting to find out when you work best, morning, afternoon, or evening, or just before or just after meals. When possible, schedule your studying for such times.

Make use of small periods of time. You can sometimes accomplish a lot in 15 minutes.

Read More

10 Reactions When Emotional Needs are not being Fully Satisfied

Emotional Needs

Use Illness as an Excuse

If a person is afraid to face difficult situations or situations in which he feels unsuccessful, he may use illness as a means of avoiding them. He may, for example, develop a sudden headache or upset stomach on the day of the English test.

Make Alibis or Sulk

To avoid criticism or to keep from feeling unsuccessful, a person may invent excuses of one sort or another. Or he might sulk or indulge in self-pity.

Avoid Situations He Does Not Like

If a person does not feel at ease with those his own age, or if he feels unwelcome as a member of a group, he may begin to avoid others whenever he can. He may, also, repeatedly forget things that need to be done or sleep too much.

Daydream Too Much

A person who is unable to achieve desired success in school or with friends may spend far too much time daydreaming about imaginary triumphs.

Always Try to Be With a Crowd

If a person feels lonesome and lest out f he is not always surrounded by other people, he is depending too much on others. Everyone needs some time alone.

Scapegoat

If a person feels threatened by a situation, he may blame a person or group when the blame is completely unwarranted. The person or persons blamed may be singled out because they are of a different race, religion, social group, or economic class.

Become a “Show-Off”

If a person fails to get enough attention and approval from others, he may use such methods as teasing and showing-off to make people notice him.

Become Loud or Bossy

A person who feels unsuccessful or unnoticed may become loud and try to push or boss other people around to cover up his real feelings.

Try to Bully Others

If a person is lonely, if he feels that others do not like him, if he feels unsure of himself, or if he is angry about something, he may take out his feelings by trying to bully others.

Brag a Great Deal

If a person does not feel too sure of himself, if he feels deep inside that he is not worth very much, he may cover up his real feelings by bragging a great deal. Or he may say mean or belittling things to or about others.

A person may sometimes use one or more of these undesirable ways of behaving to make up for an unsatisfied need. Different people use different ways of making up for unmet needs. One lonely boy, for example, may avoid people; another may strike out at others by bullying or teasing.

Read More

Learn to Manage Your Emotions Wisely

Manage emotions wisely

In commenting about emotions, Dr. Bailey, spoke of the importance of learning to manage them wisely (Artikel Personality Development). How can this be done? How Can You Learn to Manage Your Emotions Wisely?

You can begin by considering what an important part emotions play in everyday life. Your emotions are a part of almost everything you do. Such feelings as happiness and affection add zest to living and make life worth while. And there is certainly a place in the world for such strong emotions as fear and anger. Fear of accidents and injuries aids in keeping you safety-minded, and anger over cruelty or destructiveness has helped to bring about many needed social changes and reforms. Thus the problem is not to get rid of emotions; it is to learn how to develop such emotions as those of happiness and affection – and how to cope wisely with strong feelings such as those of anger and fear.

Cultivating Such Emotions as Affection and Happiness

Your feelings of affection can “get through” to other people. Show by your smile, your facial expressions, your words, or your actions the love you feel for your parents and other family members – and the affection you have for your friends.

Your family and your friends have a basic emotional need for love and affection – as you do; they will have a hard time knowing how you feel about them if you never show your emotions.

Try to find hobbies or kinds of recreation that give you fun and relaxation. Everyone needs some activities into which he can throw himself completely and with pleasure.

Look for opportunities to do things for others. Some of your most satisfying feelings can come from doing things for others.

Managing Hurt or Angry Feelings

Perhaps you have thought that you ought to try to achieve such “self-control” that you would never become angry or show your anger. On second thought, however, you can see this really would not be desirable, for it is quite natural to become angry at cruelty or unkindness or destructiveness. If no one ever became angry, such things might never be stopped.

It is natural, too, for you to feel hurt or even angry when you think you are not being treated fairly or are being left out of things unfairly.

Out first impulse when we are hurt or angry is often to hit out at or hurt another person either physically or by cruel words. Such behavior can have serious consequences for ourselves and for the other person. It is essential that we learn to control this destructive kind of anger.

Of course, we cannot keep hurt or angry feelings locked up inside us for very long, either. As long as we have such feelings, we will be irritable and unhappy. Nor can we readily hide these feelings. They may come out disguised in such ways as teasing or bullying; or the angry feelings we try to keep bottled up may be expressed as physical ailments such as headaches.

Because we all do feel angry and hurt now and then, we need to learn constructive ways of managing these emotions – ways that keep us from hurting others or ourselves.

In last article, What can I do when I feel angry or hurt?, there are some helpful ideas about managing angry feelings constructively.

Read More

You Must Know: Personality Development (Part 2)

Parental Guidances Personality Development

This article is second part of You Must Know: Personality Development (Part 1).

The Part Played by Heredity

As you know, heredity plays a part in influencing personality. What you inherit is sometimes called the raw material out of which your personality will develop. The chief element of this raw material is your physique.

Physique include your body build and structure, your blood type, your sex, the color of your eyes and skin, the texture and color of your hair, and the shape of your head and facial features. All these you inherit, as well as your individual pattern of growth – the rate at which you progress through the various stages of physical development.

Heredity is thought, also, to set the broad limits of your mental powers. Yet no one knows the full extent to which a given amount of intelligence may be used and developed. Probably no one uses to the almost the mental ability he has; and few develop fully their other special strengths.

Your temperament, too, is considered to be at least partly dependent upon your heredity. Evidences of this appear in the differences in reactions of babies in their very first days of life. Some babies, for example, even from the start, seem more placid and easygoing that others; some respond more vigorously to hunger and discomfort.

You must always remember, though, that your inherited characteristics are only what you begin with. As you grow older, you can use, or fail to use, your inherited characteristics to good advantage. Thus, while heredity provides your physique, it does not by any means fully determine your personal appearance. That depends upon cleanliness, neatness, good grooming, the choice of the right kind of clothes. You can grow in learning to make the most of yourself in appearance as well as in other ways.

You are all born with the ability to feel and to react, but you can grow in learning self – control – in learning to handle your emotions wisely instead of letting them “run away” with you.

The Part Environment Plays

What does your environment, or all your external surroundings, have to do with your personality development? You are what you are, in part, because of such features of your environment as your family, your friends, your school, your community, your church or mosque.

From your family you absorb attitudes and view-points, standards and ideals, interests and curiosities, and many of your feelings about yourself and others. You are also influenced by your church or your mosque, your teachers, and your friends.

You Can Change

In thinking about your environment, it would be a mistake to decide, “I am what I am because of my experiences so far, so there is nothing much I can do to change myself!” It would be equally foolish to take a similar attitude about your heredity. Just as you can assume some personal responsibility for building upon your inherited characteristics, so can you begin to change your environment in ways that will result in desirable personality growth. For example, your friends, reading materials, radio and television programs, internet and their social media, hobbies, and recreational activities can to a large extent be a matter of your own wise choices.

Your personality is yours alone. You can have a big part in developing that personality. As you grow older, you become increasingly accountable for the direction and extent of your personality growth.

Read More

You Must Know: Personality Development (Part 1)

Source: Husband and Wife Store

There is much interest in personality development these days. If you open almost any magazine, watch the ads on television, ads in web page or social media, or look at some of the popular books in bookstores, you will see many evidences of this interest.

Some of the suggestions offered in sources like these are helpful ones; others are poor, if not actually harmful. Many suggest short cuts to an outward personality – one which might seem pleasant on the surface but which could never be real unless it reflected the person you really are.

The Meaning of Personality

A great many people seem to think a person either has personality or does not have it. The fact is, everyone has personality – distinguishing qualities or characteristics that make him different from anyone else in the world.

Your personality includes your body and its functioning, your appearance, you habits and attitudes, and your abilities. Personality is also the result of all your experiences. So you see, your personality is all of you.

What is usually meant by the expression “he has lots of personality” is that a person has the kind of personality which makes other people want to know him. Actually, as you realize from its definition, no one person has “more” personality than another. Each person has his own special personality.

Personality is not fixed. It can grow and change and improve if you are willing to work at developing it. Dr. Karl M, a famous psychiatrist, once described personality as “all that anyone is, and all that he is trying to be.”

A Slow Process

Every new experience you have, every new problem you learn to meet, gives your personality a chance to develop more fully. Personality development does not take place over night, however. It is a slow process. It cannot be accomplished in a “few easy lessons.”

If you start now to think about the kind of person you want to be, you can help your personality grow so that you will become more nearly that kind of person. You must begin, of course, by recognizing yourself as you are today – and under – standing some of the factors that have contributed to your personality.

Next article You Must Know: Personality Development (Part 2)

Read More

Parent Tips : Handling Self-Conscious Feelings

Stop being so self-conscious

Carlotta, as you may remember from her statement previous article, is reluctant to recite in class. She is a good student, but she just cannot bring herself to speak out in class – not even when she has something interesting or worth while to offer to the discussion.

What can Carlotta do about her self-conscious feelings? And what can you do, if this a problem that you also have, to handle such feelings?

First of all, keep reminding yourself that you are not the only one who ever feels this way. Do not be deceived by what seems to be great self-confidence in others. Often what seems to be self-assurance in one of your acquaintances is just a cover-up for below-the-surface feelings of uncertainty.

Next, remember that there are helpful ways of handling your self-conscious feelings and ways that are not so helpful. Carlotta, for example, lets her self-conscious feelings get the best of her. She thinks, “That is the way I am, and there is nothing I can do.”

At times, too, Carlotta tries to handle her problem by running away from it. When she was asked to take part in a class program, for instance, she accepted. But on the day of the program she said she had a headache – and she did not go to school that day. By afternoon, however, her headache had disappeared and she was feeling quite well again. What do you think of this method of handling self-conscious feelings?

As you may have decided, running away from a problem never solves it. On the other hand, facing the problem squarely and doing something about it helps you grow in confidence. Once you carry through a task that is difficult for you, you gain confidence and feel better. And each time you face up to a situation you dread, you become a little less self-conscious and afraid. But if you keep running away from difficulties, you never get practice in handling them successfully.

There is something else to remember, too. Other people are not paying nearly so much attention to you or being so critical as you feel they are. So instead of using energy worrying about what others are thinking, concentrate on the job you have to do.

Keep in mind also that there is nothing disgraceful about making a mistake or being wrong about something. Often you may hesitate to offer a comment in a discussion because you are not sure of yourself. “What if I make a mistake?” you think. Well, what if you do? Everyone makes mistakes.

Finally, it is worth remembering that self-conscious feelings can be advantageous to you. Often such feelings can cause you to “take inventory” of your abilities and then make an extra effort to improve yourself.

Read More