Parenting With Love Seminar 2015

On 25 April, The New Age Parents and New Age Pregnancy organized Parenting with Love Seminar: Preparing Your Child For Primary One. With over 100 parents in attendance, the speakers engaged, interacted and shared their insights on their field of expertise.

Preparing your child for P1 seminar by The New Age Parents

Why is it important to teach our children to be financially savvy? Are kids really able to understand the concept of saving, spending and sharing? One of the new things that will be introduced when children attend Primary One is pocket money.

Our first speaker, Ernest Tan highlighted the importance of teaching our children to be financial savvy and why it was crucial for parents to start these money lessons young. He showed how parents can start to introduce the concepts of sharing, spending and saving even before they go to Primary school.

Ernest sharing more tips with parents after his talk.

Michael, who has a daughter going to Primary School next year shared the same thoughts. “Ernest came across as somebody who really knows what kids need right now. Especially in this age where kids are exposed to a lot of different things, like your iPads, games and toys. I’ve learnt that understanding a little bit of financial savviness is actually quite important and it’s important for parents to start when the kids are young.”

On the next two topics of language learning, speakers from Julia Gabriel and Chengzhu Mandarin Centre suggested useful, applicable and bite size tips on how parents can make learning English and Chinese meaningful and engaging at home. The speakers shared their own anecdotes of how they applied the methods at home with their children, and how it has worked well for them.

Fiona Walker (in black and white) and Lynetta Chua (in blue) from Julia Gabriel speaking to parents after their talk.

Huang Ying (left) sharing how the ‘one person one language’ policy paid off for her and her son. Next to her is Iris Lim, Principal of Chiltern House Preschool (now renamed as Julia Gabriel Preschool).

Father of a 2 year old, Zhi Rong acknowledges the struggles parents face in raising a bilingual child. He has tried to speak both languages at home with his child but ends up fumbling sometimes.

“We live in a bilingual society. So sometimes at home I try to speak both English and Chinese but somehow I end up in a ‘crossfire’ myself. After hearing about the ‘One person one language’ method from the Mandarin talk, I will give this a try and leave the English part to my wife, while I speak solely in Chinese.”

The last speaker, Dr Vanessa von Auer from VA Psychology Centre gave an overview of bullying in the 21st century and how it is an increasing epidemic, with the introduction of social media. She gave parents bully-proof strategies and confidence boosting techniques they can teach and use at home.

Dr Vanessa demonstrating a simple balloon exercise parents can use to teach children about empathy.

The Seminar ended with a token of appreciation to the speakers, and a lucky draw for our parents. Parents also walked away with a goodie bag worth $60 and a special Parenting with Love Seminar Booklet, which covers content of the seminar topics, and other articles to help parents prep their child for Primary One.

To read the e-copy, go to Parenting with Love: Preparing your child for Primary School.

Best Catering for food Neo Garden Refreshments provided by Neo Garden Catering.

Parents browsing through GALT products from the US. Infantino Enterprise Pte Ltd is the sole distributor of GALT in Singapore. Their products can be found at major departmental stores.