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Sadly, emotional eating can interrupt your healthy eating and prevent you from losing weight on a consistent basis. Too often our efforts to lose weight come unstuck when we indulge in emotional eating. Using these tips and tricks can help you control your emotional eating, stay on your calories loss diet and enjoy long term weight loss.

Know if you are really hungry especially the difference between being physically hungry and just eating out of emotion. If you have been an emotional eater your whole life you might not understand the difference so learn to recognize that when you are really hungry your stomach will growl and you will feel a little weak and tired. That is your body’s way of saying that it needs fuel, so try letting yourself get really hungry before a meal just so that you can feel what it feels like when your body is hungry.

Recognize your emotional eating triggers by keeping a little notebook and a pen with you and write down when you feel like eating and what you want to eat and soon you will start to notice a pattern emerging. Do you always crave fried food after a meeting with your boss instead of meals you would eat on a calories loss diet? Do you want cake the minute you walk in the door after the evening commute or do you need a double cheeseburger at lunch just to get through the afternoon?

Identifying the situations and the times of the day that make you crave certain foods is the key to stopping emotional eating so if you know that you will crave something sweet when you get home to dull the stress of your trip, you can find another way to handle that stress that does not involve food. Maybe you need to listen to music for 15 minutes after you get home, or have a cup of tea with a calories loss snack like low fat cheese on a cracker as you read the newspaper, or maybe a hot shower will help.  Find another way to alleviate the stress that makes you want to eat something sweet because dealing with that stress in a healthier way will help you lose weight and manage your stress more effectively.

Do not buy comfort food because if it is not in the house, you will not eat it; it is just that simple. When you are feeling blue and you want something sweet or something fried as a comfort, if it is not in the house are you really going to take the time to drive to the store and buy this comfort food or go to the fast food restaurant to get something? Most people will not most of the time, so if you are craving something and you do not have it in the house you will look for a substitute rather than going out to buy whatever it is you are craving.

Do not use food as comfort and instead of reaching for the ice cream when you are depressed or lonely, find other ways to comfort yourself. Call a friend, take a hot bubble bath, treat yourself to a manicure, write in a journal to try and discover what is making you sad or lonely. There are hundreds of ways you can comfort yourself besides reaching for food so learn to use other things to get you through a tough day and this leaves room for you to continue to eat calories loss meals when you need to.

Keep healthy food in the house because if you have healthy snacks in the house you can use those as a substitute for comfort food when a craving hits. Instead of candy bars, keep granola bars in the cupboard and instead of chips, keep popcorn or sliced veggies or other calories loss foods around because making healthy substitutions for the foods you crave is a very practical way to deal with emotional eating. After all, cravings happen but eating healthy snacks in place of the high fat, high calorie comfort food is a practical and responsible way to deal with food cravings when they happen.

Wait 30 minutes and when a craving does hit, wait it out by setting a timer, looking at your watch, whatever you need to do. But wait a full 30 minutes before acting on that craving. If you still are craving that food after 30 minutes, allow yourself to have a half portion of it, but you will find that usually after 30 minutes that craving will disappear.

Get exercise because exercise is not just good for burning calories as when you exercise, your brain releases serotonin and endorphins, which make you feel good and make you happy. Twenty minutes or more of exercise can trigger the same feeling of peace and happiness and well-being that you get from food. Emotional eating is not responsible for your entire weight gain, but it can be a factor in why it is hard for you to make a consistent weight loss. Using these tips and tricks to control your emotional eating will help you stick with a calories loss diet and might be the way for you to start losing weight and keeping it off.

Warm regards

Rowena French

For The Team

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Rowena French recognizes how emotional eating can sabotage weight loss programs. Tired of dieting without success?  Need to reach your weight loss goals? My free gifts show you how calories loss is the simple answer. Read my guide, listen to my audio book!

A very common problem that stops people from successful weight loss is using food as a reward. For adults, almost all social activity revolves around food or drink so it is easy to associate food with celebration. Generally the cake, cookies and ice cream we eat at celebrations and wash down with equally celebratory champagne is not the type of food that we would include on a calories loss diet in a serious effort to regain our healthy body.

Did you win a big contract at work that the boss will probably take you out to lunch to celebrate? Do you have an important anniversary coming up when your spouse will probably make reservations at a nice restaurant? As there always seems to be a reason to celebrate in our lives, it is not surprising then that people use food to reward themselves for accomplishments.

Maybe you reward yourself for working out every day with a milkshake or a beer at the end of the week or you think that since you have been really good about watching what you eat all week you can have cake on Saturday. The trouble is, all these extra calories and small treats add up fast, and you can sabotage your calories loss diet by using food as a reward. If you really want to change these associations and behaviors, you need to acknowledge your natural disposition to reward your self with food and re-program yourself to celebrate in other ways.

Decide why you use food as a reward, whether it is a habit you have developed or if it comes from one of your family traditions. As soon as you understand why you reward yourself with food, you can take steps to modify your behavior, either alone or with the assistance of a therapist.  Many of the attitudes we have towards food come from childhood when parents offered candy to kids to stop crying or to eat their vegetables.

Make a point of not rewarding yourself with food the next time you have cause to celebrate.   Instead of celebrating an achievement at work, or a special event at home, instead of going for dinner, drinks or even coffee and cake, go shopping instead, pamper yourself with a spa treatment spa or even go to a movie or a play. Rewarding yourself with treats like these will help you feel pleased with yourself and you will have the added bonus of sticking with your calories loss diet and continuing to lose weight.

Take some time to select rewards that are long lasting because when food is your reward, the good feelings associated with this generally cease at the conclusion of your meal. Instead, of short term food rewards that will sabotage your efforts to lose weight through your calories loss eating, buy yourself something nice that you can use for a long time and that will remind you of your success every time you see it. Clothes are a great long term reward or you can get a manicure or pedicure, a facial, buy yourself a new book or a new CD or buy all the magazines you want and curl up in bed for a whole morning reading them.

Find places for celebrations near you that are not restaurants even if this requires some changes in your thinking because most of our lives revolve largely around eating and drinking. Instead of restaurants find places where the focus is more on what you do rather than what you eat and play golf, go bowling, take in a play, go to a movie or take part in any entertainment that do not focus on food. You will be surprised about how others you know will enjoy the prospect of fun without wall to wall food and drink.

Avoid situations in which food is made the center of the celebration as much as you can and remember that your long term goal is long term weight loss. If you have no choice, on occasions like office parties or weddings, join in the celebrations by interacting with the people around you or enjoying the music, rather than concentrating on the meal itself. Look for food items that can be part of your calories loss diet and enjoy the ‘win win’ outcome of being part of the celebration without compromising your journey to a healthier body and life.

Warm regards

Rowena French

For The Team

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Rowena French avoids food rewards in her weight loss and exercise programs. Tired of dieting without success?  Need to reach your weight loss goals? My free gifts show you how calories loss is the simple answer. Read my guide, listen to my audio book!

One of the most common mistakes that people make when it comes to weight loss is setting unrealistic expectations about how much weight they need to lose and how fast they can lose it. Setting unrealistic weight goals is really sabotaging your calories loss diet and your efforts to lose weight. That is why it is important to have some tools you can use to set realistic weight loss goals for yourself.

Experts in weight loss say that a healthy weight loss rate is one to two pounds per week and that is not a lot. If you tell yourself that you must lose ten pounds a week or that you want to lose fifty pounds by summer you are not being realistic. If you set unrealistic goals and then fail, you will be tempted to go off your calories loss diet, thinking that you are a failure, so utilize these techniques to make sure that your goals are specific and achievable.

Lower your expectations because losing one to two pounds per week is healthy and if you weigh yourself at the end of the week and you have only lost one or two pounds, do not consider that a failure because it is not. Congratulate yourself on sticking to your calories loss diet, losing that weight and focus on losing another one to two pounds the next week. If you celebrate each pound lost you will be motivated to keep losing weight and you will be losing weight in a healthy way with far greater prospects of keeping it off.

Think in percentages, not pounds as weight loss is not just about losing a set amount of weight.  If you want to get down to a healthy weight and stay there you should focus on losing 10-20% of your whole body weight, not just the amount of pounds you want to lose. You may be surprised about the amount of weight you need to lose for a doctor to consider you healthy so if you weigh 200 pounds, losing just 20-40 pounds could put in a healthy weight range.

Measure your weight loss in different ways to see the full impact of healthy eating and exercise on your body shape and include in your goals these different ways of charting your weight loss. The measurements you read on your scales do reflect your weight loss but so does the size of your waist, your hips and your chest.  Sometimes you will find the loss of your body mass plateaus for a time but your body measurements continue to diminish so make sure both of these forms of measurement are part of your goals.

Do the math because if you want to lose 25 pounds and you know that a safe weight loss rate is 2 pounds per week then you need to plan on taking 12 to 14 weeks to lose this weight. In the beginning it might make it seem more difficult to lose weight, but if you have a realistic expectation of how long it will take to lose the amount of weight that you want to shed, it will help you remain focused and stay on your calories loss diet. Weight loss goals that are ‘short and furious’ generally go out with a bang soon after they have been set.

Try to reduce your daily calorie intake by 500 per day either by exercising more and burning more calories or by eating less. Use a calories counter to estimate the changes you need to make to bring about this calories loss each day and use it to determine the foods that you can continue to include in your menu. Losing weight is a numbers game so get familiar with those numbers and how to use them to lose weight.

Set short term goals, but think of long term goals so set weight loss milestones and celebrate when you reach them. Buy yourself a new book when you lose 5 pounds, or a new dress when you hit 10 pounds lost. But even as you are celebrating each milestone, keep focused on the big picture and how much weight you want to lose in total. You need to celebrate your progress along the way but also stay focused on the big prize at the end because this will make your persistence to bring about a consistent calories loss worth the effort.

Warm regards

Rowena French

For the Team

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Rowena French sets achievable goals for her weight loss and exercise programs. Tired of dieting without success?  Need to reach your weight loss goals? My free gifts show you how calories loss is the simple answer. Read my guide, listen to my audio book!

When you start a new diet it is always exciting and easy to ‘commit’ to a daily calories loss menu and regular exercise. You tell yourself that this time you are going to stick with it, this time will be different, this time you are really committed. But do you really stick with the diet or do you go back to your old eating habits and end up with no weight loss and sometimes even a weight gain?

That is what happens to most people because dieting is not always fun, change is usually no fun and there are times when losing weight can just get hard. But in order to make real, healthy, permanent changes you need to make sure that the food you eat over the long term is both enjoyable and provides you with the calories loss you need. You need to be committed to getting healthy and fit and to sticking with your diet and this time you really do make that commitment.

Do not just tell yourself it is time to get healthy; instead make a physical gesture to show that you are committed to staying on that calories loss diet and making healthy other important changes to your lifestyle. If that sounds silly to you, it should not because people of all kinds even those in political office like Senator McCain and Senator Obama use all kinds of physical symbols to show their commitment to important matters. Rings, tattoos, ceremonies, even certificates and trophies are signs of commitment so you need a physical sign of commitment to mark the start of your diet.

There are some fun ways to make a commitment to become healthier, happier, and fit by losing weight so begin positively and write it down, making a weight loss contract and committing to stay on your diet for at least six months. Include in the contract, rewards for staying committed and penalties for breaking the contract.  Then sign it, have a friend witness it then keep it on the refrigerator to remind you of your commitment.

Hire a personal trainer as extra incentive because once you spend the money for a personal trainer, that money is gone whether you use those personal training sessions or not. The same rule usually applies to a gym membership as well, so spending money on exercise this is a commitment to getting fit. And knowing that money is gone whether or not you use that gym membership or get those personal training sessions they are likely to motivate you to exercise more.

Start a weight loss club by getting some friends together who want to lose weight as well and agree to meet once a week for a weigh in. Your friends will keep you honest about sticking to your calories loss diet. This is the underlying principle upon which some of the most successful weight loss companies are based so if they can be successful at gathering people together to celebrate their weight loss, you can too.

Tell people about your diet especially your friends, your family, the people at work, or anyone that you see on a regular basis, explaining your plans to lose weight, eat better, and exercise more. Once you have told people you are committing to a calories loss diet, they will ask you about the diet and how you are doing and you will have to answer them. Embarrassment about telling people that you fell off your diet can be good motivation to keep going in those moments when you want to quit.

Have a clear mental ‘picture’ of how you plan to look when you have reached your goal weight. Find pictures in magazines of the new ‘look’ you are working towards and display them at home and in your workplace.  This very public way of committing to a healthy weight loss for good through calories loss and exercise is very public commitment at the beginning of your diet and an effective motivator to keep you strong and resilient even when times get tough.    

Warm regards

Rowena French

For the Team

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Rowena French commits to healthy living through weight loss and exercise. Tired of complicated diets with no success?  Serious about lasting weight loss? My free gifts show you how calories loss is the simple answer. Read my guide, listen to my audio book!

Changing your lifestyle instead of ‘going on a diet’ is essential if you want to enjoy a long term weight loss but it can be difficult, at first, to change your thinking about dieting. If you have always been overweight, you have probably spent years dieting even creating calories loss menus but hating your body. That kind of mindset does not go away overnight, but you can change how you approach dieting and how you think of your body because it is not the enemy and it is not out to get you.

Making your body healthy and giving it what it needs, will ensure that you will be healthy and happy as you get older. When you change the way you approach food and what you eat because of the calories loss you create with healthy foods, you will notice that you have more energy, sleep better at night, and you will be slowly changing your metabolism to process calories more efficiently. Spend some time considering what kinds of foods your body needs to get healthy as part of the changes you make to your lifestyle.

Exercise is also a necessary part of living a healthy lifestyle because it is crucial to keeping the body strong and healthy. Building muscle will help you burn more calories and help speed up your metabolism. Most exercise will help you do this so but sure that you decide on the type that you will enjoy enough to continue with on a regular basis.

Exercise is also a necessary part of living a healthy lifestyle because it is crucial to keep your body strong and healthy. Building muscle will help you burn more calories and help speed up your metabolism. Most exercise will help you do this so but be sure to decide on the type of exercise that you will enjoy enough to continue with on a regular basis.

You can start your new lifestyle now without requiring special meals by ordering a salad for your next lunch, or having a healthy glass of water instead of that soda. When you are at the grocery store, think about the best choice for eating healthily and creating a calories loss in meals across the next week. Instead of reaching for a frozen pizza, select a bag of frozen vegetables for dinner and cook up those vegetables with some white rice and a chicken breast instead of making macaroni and cheese.

Portion size is also an important and sometimes underrated part of a healthy lifestyle. Most people eat double the portion size they should have at each meal because it is more than your stomach should hold and as a result and not surprisingly they find it difficult to lose weight.  Your stomach is about the size of your fist and this is an indication of the amount of food your stomach can best manage.

Make a fist right now because that is about how big your stomach actually is. Now think of the last meal you ate and about how much food you were putting into that little stomach. Your stomach will stretch when there is a lot of food placed in it, which is why you probably never noticed how much food you really eat.

When you sit down to eat your next meal, make a fist before you lift that fork and try not to eat more food than you could fit into that fist. Eating smaller meals that are no bigger than a fist 4-5 times a day is a much better way to lose weight than eating 3 larger meals per day. This means there is less reason to enlarge your stomach regularly and because of this less need to eat larger portions of food to fill it.

This small but essential aspect of a successful weight loss food program is important to understand and act upon.  Although foods that bring about calories loss is a core aspect of long term weight loss, just knowing the size of your stomach and ensuring that it is not unnecessarily stretched and then refilled to the same extent will assist you determine not only what you eat but how much and how often. Smaller and more frequent meals are well worth factoring into your new and healthier lifestyle.

Warm regards

Rowena French

For the Team

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Rowena French seeks out the way to healthy living through weight loss and exercise. Do you need the secret to lasting weight loss? I have the answer. My free gifts show you how calories loss does work. Read my common sense guide, listen to my audio book!  

Having watched the presidential and vice presidential debates, and having an interest in stress, I started to wonder about the effects of this debate on the four people on the two tickets. Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden are the four contenders experiencing the stress. But what about the stress during the televised debates?

The first major stressor during debates is the ultimate victory or loss. At the back of their mind must be the constant fear that they might make an incredible blunder. With the dual pressure of handling content intelligently and presenting oneself as a credible and attractive person comes great strain.

The four people on the two tickets all have different personal styles. You can be sure that in the background there were many public speaking experts coaching our four contenders. The requirement to adapt and become an adept speaker in a short timeframe must be a burden. How must each person change?

Barack Obama has a sophisticated but slightly professorial style. Because he is intelligent and well read, he tend to come across as somewhat remote and theoretical. The pressure for him is to appear as warm, committed, and in touch with the people and their dreams. His key appeal is the concept of change.

John McCain has the pressure of being seen to be too old and unwell. He has his long-term experience as a senator but he has to find a theme that will connect with people and earn their support. His reliance on his war record is useful but the tension for him is to capture the imagination of those less interested in war so his call to the masses is patriotism.

Joe Biden has 35 years as a senator so he has a huge amount of knowledge but perhaps too much to convey in a short time. As well, it is easy for people to see him as arrogant. Joe has to present himself as commonplace and one of the people.

Sarah Palin has to choose between being folksy and from a small community and being credible on the national and international scene. What makes her appealing is her cute mannerisms, her winking, her ‘doggones’ and ‘aints’ but these are also limitations. Her additional stress was to appear informed after some of her disastrous earlier interviews.

The debating stress for these four contenders came from trying to cover up their weaknesses and shine with strength. They had to overcome their personality and content differences to be successful. The real issue is whether they handled the debating stress sufficiently well to attract a popular vote.

Warm regards

Dr Jeff

For the team at

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 Dr Jeff Bailey, a psychologist, writes about stress. The TV debates of Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barak Obama and Joe Biden provided an opportunity to consider how much stress each nominee experienced. Did they manage stress well? Check out Dr Jeff’s free stress book.

There is no doubt that Sarah Palin has hit the American scene like a moose crashing through your front garden. She presents a compelling combination of features. First off, and the media doesn't play this up, she is extremely attractive. The media call this telegenic and she is the most telegenic politician in America. She also has a popular appeal of being a smalltown mom in America's last frontier. And some people say that she is the Princess Di for the US.

Why am I writing about Sarah Palin? If Sarah Palin is qualified to comment on Russian affairs because she lives in Alaska, perhaps I too am qualified to comment on Sarah as I live in Alaska some 40 miles from Wasilla. But this is not the reason. I write about stress and how this affects people in the workplace and at home. Having read dozens of news articles about Sarah, I began to wonder how well she copes with stress.

I would love to interview Sarah and ask what her secret is for looking so continually composed, relaxed, excited, and on top of her game. As everyone knows, she is a wife, mother, Governor, and now vice presidential nominee. She has a five-month-old baby. She has been thrust into the international limelight in a way that few people ever have outside the entertainment industry. So what is her secret for managing stress?

There are two kinds of stress – distress and eustress. Stress can be either brief or sustained. Distress can create many dysfunctional characteristics: sweating, a nervous state, uncertainty, constant tension, lack of confidence, and a failure to be able to cope with daily life. Sarah Palin certainly doesn't fit this picture. Then there is eustress. This is an elevated state of excitement with increased neurochemicals, for example, cortisol and adrenaline. Eustress helps deal with pressures and new challenges. This is Sarah Palin's special brand of stress.

But stop and think for a moment. What exactly are the sorts of stressors confronting Sarah Palin right now? And how is she handing the stressors? These are the questions are prompted me to write this article.

 Cary Cooper, a British psychologist who has a huge research background in stress, recently reported on his study of stress in politicians. The study found that six months after taking up office, politicians were reporting elevated levels of stress. The signs included loss of confidence, sleeping problems, drinking and eating too much, feeling constantly under strain and showing increasing lack of motivation. The reasons for the stress were clear: a large workload, up to 70 hours work per week, a lot of travel, and very little time with family.

At this stage, Sarah Palin is not vice president but she is still Governor of Alaska. There is mounting criticism in the local press about Sarah's absence from the State and from her responsibilities as Governor. She is a very responsible and ethical person. This must be causing her some tension. She also has the spectre of Troopergate lurking in the background. She has had to hand over a lot of responsibilities to the McCain political team. She has her daughter's pregnancy and marital state to worry about. And a son has just been deployed to Afghanistan.

But there are other sources of stress as well. Sarah has been thrust on to the political and international stage. While there is no doubt that she has the background and skill to handle Alaskan issues, political journalists have questioned her credibility in national and international affairs. Given the current bailout and economic crisis, how competent is she to address major financial issues? Given Russia's recent incursion into Georgia, can she handle sophisticated diplomatic negotiations? Does she have enough understanding of the taxation system at the national level?

Questions about her political knowledge can undermine her confidence. They can put her in a defensive position at every interview. They can make her feel tense and uncertain unless she has in-depth knowledge of the issues at hand. Criticisms from all fronts can destabilize one's level of security and self-assurance.

So, how does Sarah Palin handle stress? What strategies does she used to manage the tension? These are the questions which would make for a fascinating interview. My educated guess would be that she uses many productive stress management strategies. Many of these strategies would derive from a high-level of emotional self-awareness and a strong sense of purpose.

She has a strong sense of family and personal values. She has an unshakeable belief in God's will and purpose. She relies on prayer as a form of stress reduction and to give her direction. She has the support of a huge number of people, not only the First Dude and her children, but many Alaskans. She has an extraordinary amount of personal ambition and drive. She is a competitor who loves to win and enjoys the challenge of competition. My guess is that she uses a range of very productive stress management strategies that will continue to help her manage stress in her public life.

Warm regards

Dr Jeff

For the team at

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 Dr Jeff Bailey, a psychologist, writes about stress. Given all the media attention about Sarah Palin as the VP candidate, he started to wonder about how well she manages stress. Sarah has effective stress reduction strategies. Check out his free stress book.

Our cute-as-a button niece Ally came to live with us this year. She is 18, has just started College and is living away from home for the first time.

She is trim, outgoing and lots of fun.  Her boyfriend is devoted to her. She’s smart, has a great sense of fashion and she’s very conscious of her appearance.  At first glance you think she didn’t have a problem in the world!

We’re discovering more about each other every day. We respect her privacy and want her to enjoy living with us. But we’ve discovered some things she’d rather not discuss have needed airing.

Not long ago her bathroom washing revealed an aspect of her life new to us.  All her towels were covered with white stains. They were ruined and needed replacing.

I asked her what might have caused the discoloring.  She looked embarrassed and vague, had no answer but said ‘I always used white bath towels at home’.  The towels were replaced with the requested white. As I was arranging this, the penny ‘dropped’. Peroxide was the culprit.

Ally was using skin care products containing peroxide to treat her acne.  No wonder she spent more time in her bathroom than any other room in the house! No wonder the towels needed replacing and no wonder white was the only colored towel she had used at home.

At first I was surprised at how hard she’d tried to hide this from us. Then I recalled how outbreaks of acne leave adolescents so exposed and vulnerable. Ally’s response to my question mirrored the deep embarrassment that most kids feel as they try to cover up or control their skin blemishes.  Just when they’re feeling most self conscious about their appearance and trying to fit in with others, acne can appear and ruin everything!

It is generally believed that our genes and hormones impact on our chances of developing acne.  Sometimes skin care products can impact on acne along with stress.  According to the American Academy of Dermatology, an estimated 80 percent of all people between the ages of 11 and 30 have acne outbreaks at some point.

We’re pleased that Ally has found a reliable guide to help control her acne.  Thankfully she didn’t follow the myriad of myths about remedies for skin blemishes.

We notice that even though she is well informed, Ally chooses not to discuss the prevention of her acne with us.  We’re OK with this. Our task is to ask no further questions, provide white towels, and allow her to keep doing what she seems to be managing well.

Warm regards

Rowena 

From The Team

http://mightydigitaldownloads.com 

To discover more about ways to prevent and treat acne and blemishes you will find help in The Complete Guide to Acne: Prevention, Treatment and Remedies.

Expand your children’s world- help them become a reader even if you have extremely busy schedules! You don’t have to be a good reader to help your child. You don’t have to enjoy reading to help your child.

 You don’t have to read lengthy books to help your child become a great reader. You don’t need to spend a huge amount of time reading with your child. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on books. You don’t have to take expensive classes to know what to do and how to get started.

 Let’s begin this article by talking about what you CAN do. Here are some practical and simple ideas. If you want to get some ideas about supporting the school’s reading program volunteer as a reading helper and talk with your child’s teacher about what to do at home.

 You can lay the foundations that will help your child become a lifelong reader. Their world will be expanded and enriched by reading experiences that you can provide with only a short, consistent time commitment each day. The benefits are immeasurable.

 The first thing to do is to stimulate your child’s interest in reading. There are many ways to do this, the most obvious being to read a book to them. Choose a book that is suitable for their age and interests.

 Start with a picture book, even big kids love picture books, particularly the ones by Graeme Base. Show them the pictures, discuss what you all see. Let them listen to your voice, and become aware that words convey meaning. They associate the written word with spoken language. If you are reading to beginning readers, track under the lines so that your child sees that you read from left to right. Turn the pages slowly and say, perhaps, what do you think will happen next.

 Parents need to model reading behavior and label it as such. Whether you read a magazine, technical manual, cook book, cereal packet or newspaper, capture your child’s attention by sharing a piece of information. Some simple ideas include: read the cereal box at breakfast time; read some words that have many syllables and clap their rhythm.

 There are many core skills and concepts that underlie reading, like word recognition, rhyming, starting and ending sounds of words, even joining in by looking at text. Have the kids help you prepare meals by reading recipes or instructions on packets and cans. When eating out or getting take out, find words and symbols that have meaning, like the golden arches of MacDonalds.

  Parents should read to their children even when the children have become independent readers. Everyone, even adults, enjoy listening to stories read to them. Listening to a poem, book or short text read stimulates imagination and builds vocabulary as well as expanding understanding of our world.

 Read to your children all the time. Read fiction and non-fiction; read poems and short stories. Read about real things- animals in Africa, Space travel – whatever interests you and your child. The advantage of reading to your child is that you can read books about things that interest them and stories that are beyond their reading level. This will motivate them to increase their reading skills so that they can read more complex text. 

Consider having a collection of children’s reading CDs for long travel time. Visit libraries and join up so that all the family can borrow books. Family reading time can be fun when each member reads independently. Endeavor to have a set time when everyone sits and reads, no TV no answering or using phones, no texting, no sitting at a computer, no drawing or writing.

 Vary the content of what you read to children. Read them a cleverly crafted poem and talk about the ‘mental pictures’ the poem creates. Select some of the most exciting words from the poem – the fun words or the mysterious words. Encourage your children to enjoy the intricacies and beauty of your language. Select from magazines, books, letters, emails, catalogs, mail from the mail box – anything. Words are magical. Reading is fun. If you believe this and if you spend lots of time helping your child read, your child will do brilliantly at school and love language and reading.

Warm regards

Columbia

For the team at

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Columbia Lee is a passionate educator with 35 years of teaching experience. She knows parents can create exciting learning at home. Do you want to help your child learn to read? Want your child to read better? Get her collection of helpful books to increase learning at home. 

Have you ever been amazed by someone who can calculate discounts, distances to a destination, interest rates that will yield the best investment, profit/loss on shares, with awesome speed? No doubt these people have a love for everything mathematical. Children love learning. We can easily help our children develop a love for everything mathematical.

 Math learning is great fun at home. You don’t need specialized resources. Everything you need is in your home at this moment. You need enthusiasm and a creative mind to find math opportunities.

 Math doesn’t just happen at school; in fact math is every where.  Math is part of our world. Quick reasoning, problem solving skills and accuracy and speed in computation are vital skills in our technologically oriented world.

 We rely on math almost every minute of every day. From awakening when our alarm goes off to resetting our clocks for next day. We constantly perform math calculations during the day. Time: 2 minutes to get to the train, 30 minutes to get this job done, an hour before the school bus arrives, birthdays, Valentines Day, Spring Break, Thanksgiving. Money: cash, credit card transactions, bank balances, meals, pocket money for the kids, bills, bills and more bills. Measurement: traveling, exercising, building, cooking, shopping.

 Today’s children need to be able to problem solve, reason mathematically, use math language and apply math in almost every aspect of their lives. Our children have grown up with calculators and computers. Despite this they need to be able to know when an answer makes sense or is reasonable.

 Calculators and computers are tools. They do not have thinking power- they are able to perform complicated calculations at lightning speed but they rely on the accuracy of the data input. They are only as useful as the person who puts in the numbers. The user needs to be able to determine whether the answer given is reasonable- does it make sense? To be able to determine this you must be able to estimate the approximate answer and in doing so key in the correct operation (+,-, X, /).

 Start to find the fun in math with your child today. Help them to learn and enjoy applying math thinking to everyday situations. Make a game of it. Estimate the outside temperature and check with your thermometer. Guess the weight of your shopping and then weigh the parcels. Having fun with math with your child can develop a real love of number problems and thinking.

 It’s really easy. You’ll be amazed at how you will come up with great ideas and activities. Play counting games, recite number rhymes, cook, shop, and look for shapes in your home; the activities depend on the age of your child. Read and create timetables, use tallies to find out how many cars pass your house, count the letters you get, add the numbers in the zip codes. 

 Interesting math travel activities keep the kids occupied when traveling long distances. Try adding the numbers in 10 car and truck license plates and compare which is greater/smaller. Tally the number of red cars that pass your car, continue to subtract distance traveled from total length of journey, and record the cost of gas and food and total at end of trip, estimate the time it will take to complete a trip, even record temperatures every 20 miles. Real life activities such as these help kids to see how math skills are used constantly and this helps them understand the reasons for learning math.

Encourage your children to talk about how they solve math problems. Help them to think about their math thinking. This is called metacognition – thinking about thinking. Think what processes and strategies they used to reason out a solution. Even very young children can do this. Build a positive attitude to math by incorporating math tasks and thinking into everyday activities. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how quickly your child will develop a love for math.  

Columbia Lee

For the team at

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