a book about children education

Recommended by a post on mitbbs, I skimmed a book named "Come here, child", written by a famous Chinese female author in Wuhan, ChiLi.

In this book, the author scratched her experience of raising her daughter, from birth to 16, in the perspective of a mother.  She focus on the interaction of the daughter and the mother, instead of chronology. Unlike most of the parents in China, her education of children is based on nurture the child's interests to nature, to what she love, and to encourage child to pursuit her goal.

This is somehow agree to my idea of children education. In Canada, children are treated as individuals. Parents usually give children a lot of freedom and encourage children to develop their own interests.  But in China, the author's attitude is very rare and precious.

Author summarizes her three rules.
One is to treat child as individual.  Let her decide on many things.  This point is widely believed in Canada.  My friend, Jimmy, treats his son, Eddie, as an individual. We went to a trip together, Eddie presented a high level of self-governance, self-discipline, and individualism, unlike a 9 year old kid, which surprises me a lot.

The second point is to nurture the kid to love the mother nature. This one is also important, as we know that human being are nature animal at first, and then social animal.  Unfortunately, author didn't tell us how she and her daughter develop social activities.  Maybe because the author herself is a writer and divorced, which may affect the social activities of the child, who knows.

The last point is to tell stories to the kid and help develop the reading habit of her daughter.  I can't agree more with this point.  Reading is almost the most educative and informative method of education.  Every child, who developed a habit of reading will benefit from it in the whole life. Naturally, her daughter is also good at writing, as she is a writer.

* Link to the post of about the book.
http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/LeisureTime/79109.html

* Link to the book
http://www.guyizhou.cn/article/3554.htm

three stories

There are three Chinese adages I'd love to share with you. Actually, they are three simple stories that I sometimes think about them during running.

The first story is "To repair the ward after loss of lamp".  It tells you that life is never to late to do something.

The second story is "Race between rabbit and turtle". It tells you that the slow runner may eventually win the race if he keeps running, while the fast runner may lose the race if he stops.

The third story is "The view is the same on the top of the mountain, for both snails and eagles". It tells you that you can enjoy the same success no matter you achieve it fast or slow.

Healthy Food

I was chatting with George during the run this noon.

We started the discussion with the life of human's teeth.  I had another teeth RCT on last Saturday again.  That's really unfortunate. We concluded that human's teeth or other parts of the body may not be evolved to sustain for more than 60 years as the average life of human beings were in the 60s for a while.  Only with the recent advance of medical technique, the expected life of human being is extended to more than 80.  It is good for individual. However, the society may not be ready to welcome the age of old. Japan is a vivid example of how the society is greatly impacted by the aging population. Anyway, as the world is mostly controlled or managed by the old, it is inevitable that more and more resources will be invested in the health research to extend the life of human beings.

We then talked about the importance of healthy food for the health of human being.  It is by far the most important factor of human's health, followed by exercise. I talked about my transition of eating less meat and more vegetable instead.  George mentioned local grow fruits are better than imported fruits as the former is naturally mature than the latter.  He also said that organic milk, egg, and meat may have greater effect in health than organic vegetable as milk, egg, or meat may accumulate more compound or chemical. Organic ones have advantage than non-organic one.  The price of organic milk is about 250% of regular one.  That's pricey, but people are still buying organic ones.  I'll check it out and may try it myself.  I agreed to his statement as I had the similar impress after watching the "Food Inc." documentary.

Guess I have to be more careful about food from now on.

2012 and survivor

I watched the Survivor season 17 last week.  I think that Bob deserve the million dollar. Both Matty and Sugar are so stupid to win the final prize.  Matty didn't learn to ignite a fire after 39 days and Sugar was stupid to save Bob in the final three.  I can't bear it with so stupid contestants in the show.

I also watched the movie <2012> last week.  The first part of the movie is good, with all the background story, the father is trying to save his kids, the yellow stone park volcano. The last part of the movie is also very stupid, when the life of all the people on the ark were rely on this stupid leading role.  The black guy, the chief scientist, was even stupider to claim that we are not human because we didn't save people's life waiting on the deck.  He didn't think about the other people on board already.  How come you may sacrifice even more people's life to save a smaller group or just this one guy.  Haha, because this one guy is the leading role of the movie.  Anyway, it is just a movie and I can't believe the reality will be like that.

B.R.A.I.N.

When I attended the parental class on Saturday, one thing I learned is the B.R.A.I.N. questions  you should ask when you were taking advices and make decisions.

B: benefit

What's the benefit of doing this?

R. reason

What's the reason of doing this?

A. Alternative

What's the alternate solution?

I. Intuition

What's your intuition of doing this?

N. Now, not now, never

What will happen if I do it now, or not now, or never?

Those are good questions to ask the person who gives you advice/suggestion or yourself before making a critical decision.

Allergy

Spring is here, as well as the allergy. I have been experiencing allergy for more than 5 years. My eyes are itching and dry,  my noses are stalled.  Those are typical pollen allergies.

I am used to the allergy already. Allergy is just a over-react reaction of your body's immune system to the outside world when there isn't much work for them to do.  So, I believe a mild pollen allergy is a good thing to  your body.  Your immune system is doing some exercise. :-)

As I refused to take any medicine, I can withstand the symptoms of the allergy now.  I am getting used to it, at least I am not afraid of it psychologically.

Just hope more rain than sunshine, as rain will reduce the amount of pollen in the air, thus alleviate my symptoms.

Anyway, be strong and get away with the allergy.