Feeding Your Child's Brain for Success: Multiple Micronutrients or A Magic Bullet - Dr Low Kah Tzay

SMART PARENTING CONGRESS 2012 - Raise a Little Thinker
Dr Low Kah Tzay, Paediatrician Mt Elizabeth Hospital


Baby has greatest density of brain cells by age 3

Breast feed for at least 6 months

Repeat offer for good food 20 times in 20 different ways

Always give breakfast

Snacks are important as children have smaller stomachs

Give low GI foods so that they will have a constant level of energy

Show by example for good eating habits

Understanding Early Brain Development (talk) - Dr Phuah Huan Kee

SMART PARENTING CONGRESS 2012 - Raise a Little Thinker
Learning Snippets from Dr Phuah Huan Kee, Paediatrician, Mt Elizabeth Hospital

Babies's brain are not fully developed at birth.

Early brain development is simply a wiring process - synapses formation and myeline formation (protection). From 3 - 26 years, pruning happens rapidly to weed out unnecessary connections and strengthening important ones.

Important to reinforce via frequency and emphasis so that the pruning is optimized. Ensure that the process is enjoyable.The key is exposure, not hothousing.

Developmental milestones highlighted (discrepancies of 3 months are ok). 3 main domains to note:
- motor skillls
- speech and language
- social and emotional interaction

Developmental delay - Isolated or Grouped (austism or brain disorder)

Autism - diagnose it at 18 months (for social and emotional interaction). Check developmental milestones

Dyspraxia (developmental coordination disorder) - check for clumsiness after 3 years of age

To optimize brain development
- healthy diet (breast milk especially)
- healthy body (vaccinations)
- healthy and nurturing environment

How to Multiply your Child's Intelligence (talk) - Janet Doman

SMART PARENTING CONGRESS 2012 - Raise a Little Thinker
Learning Snippets from Janet Doman, Director of Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential

Children learns more in the first 6 years than the rest of their lives.

Let children use all their 5 senses to maximize their learning experience. Often than not, we are stumbling blocks to that.

We are our child's greatest teacher because of the love we have for them, not because of our knowledge.

We have to enjoy our time together as a family because children learn most when they enjoy what they are doing. Social interaction (family) multiplies that. Singaporeans have to learn how to slow down.

Singaporeans tend to oursource the learning of our child. We have to get involved and insource this as much as possible.

5 Steps to Learning

Children have very short attention span so our way of teaching (long periods of time) may not be catered for them. We can teach in short spurts and small amounts of time.

We do not need to test the children to see if they learn. They will create problems to solve themselves. They play.

You can differentiate between an intellectually starved child and an intellectually stimulated child. The latter always asks and wants to know more. The former wants to do the same thing over and over again and not do anything else.

TV is not good for children.

Ipad/Iphones are great but beware of the radiation. Expose them only after 3 years old if possible.

Phonetics is just a means to learn language. The focus is to be natural and the child will learn naturally.

This Squidoo Lens is fantastic and also touches on some of the above.

When our home was burglarized....

On the very first day of my reservist training, Addy and I came back to our house, only to find our private space invaded.

3 laptops gone and about $600 worth of cash.

Whilst I was concern about the data privacy of our personal information being compromised in our laptops, Addy was fearful of the physical intrusion of privacy in our home. Imagine a stranger rummaging through your belongings, standing in your bedroom and looking at your life, it does give one the shudders.

It was quite an adventure calling 999 and having 10 officers visiting our home that evening, with the whole works of questioning, dusting the place for fingerprints and photo taking. Apparently, it is the first burglary in our neighbourhood. Despite the our window grill being damaged, the hole is a bit too small and that our external glass pane was not breached for a break-in via that way. The police premised that the intruder entered via the main door.

Our broken window grill from the outside

The whole episode was pretty disruptive, and that is what I did for my reservist. My Navy family was kind enough to release me; a part of me wanted to go for reservist as a holiday break..

We had to replace all our locks, change our grills to the wrought iron type, put up a CCTV thingy with signs. To allay our fears, we are going to put up an alarm system and buy an enhanced insurance plan. So much for staying in a 3 room flat.

But more, the incident made me think that there are indeed selfish people out there trying to take advantage of us. And our responses are reactionary - suspicious of our neighbours, being skeptical of others, walling up our houses physically and thinking that the world is more evil than we thought it is. I wonder how better to reflect on the incident to see how we can better learn from it and be more Christian. It is certainly very hard, trying not to curse and swear at that unknown person.

Whilst we try to gain back some normalcy in our lives, we thank everyone for showing their concern and that our family is at least safe. Whilst we sustained some lost memories and heartache, experienced lots of inconvenience and losing money, we hope this can be a warning to all around us to be watchful.

Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA)

Addy works in a hospice setting and came across many cases where LPA was not appointed for patients who has lost their mental capacity. The downsides are numerous but they boil down to 2 essential parts.

The first about personal care but this aspect matters lesser as family members are generally able to make such decisions for you. This would apply more when you do not have family members or would like a close friend to make such decisions for you.

The second is about personal assets. Even family members have little control over your assets if you have lost your mental capacity. There are horror stories of family members having great difficulty to utilize the affected's CPF to pay for medical bills or sale of assets to do the same. This is the hassle you would have to leave behind for your loved ones.

Addy and I are thinking to appoint designate our LPAs soon, just in case. Seems like we can appoint up to 5 people.

Generally, the steps to do so are:
1. Complete the forms from the Office of the Public Guardian
2. Visit a doctor, lawyer or psychiatrist with the necessary documents for certification issuance (essentially to indicate that you are sane and not under duress)
3. Notify your appointed members
4. Fill up the LPA form
5. Book an appointment and submit the application at the Office of the Public Guardian.

Cost varies depending on who you see to issue the certificate and how detailed you allocate the powers to your different appointed members. You can refer to this page for the relevant details.

Some may debate the necessity of this given that we should place our trust in God. But similar to insurance, what you are doing is planning for the benefit of your loved ones.