Learning and Teaching in the First Year

It is important to maintain and sustain the learning and teaching process of your baby. According to novelist John Steinbeck, a genius is “a child chasing a butterfly up a mountain”; let your baby’s curiosity be the butterfly and let his learning environment be the mountain. Most real learning in the first year occurs within the context of ordinary everyday life. It doesn’t require formal training; it is a natural consequence of everyday experience. Be that as it may, to maximize your baby’s learning potentials, you need to create an enriched learning and teaching environment. The typical American child, however, does not live in an enriched environment: he spends hours watching television or playing electronic toys; he is often engaged in self-directed play, instead of interactive and imaginative play with his parents.

An enriched learning and teaching environment for babies and children to reach their maximum intellectual potentials includes the following:

Your baby needs to spend time in a safe, secure, and quiet environment.

Your baby needs a dimly lit environment to see better; use only 40-watt or less light-bulbs in the nursery.

Your baby needs freedom of movement; use the crib or playpen sparingly.

Your baby needs age-related toys and art materials.

Your baby needs new things to look at all the time.

Your baby needs regular contacts with adults, especially eye contacts.

Your baby needs smiles, as well as friendly and affirmative words.

Is Your Baby Ready to Play and Learn?

There are some obvious physical changes and signs if your baby is good and ready to play and learn.

Your baby needs good rest before he can play and learn. Adequate rest avoids mood swings and improves the brain function in your baby.

Your baby’s breathing is always slow and even, with a relaxed abdomen, if he wants to play and learn.

Your baby sucking rate also slows down considerably.

Your baby’s attention focuses on the source of stimulation, his fingers and toes fanning with excitement towards it, as well as his pupils dilating and his eyes widening.

On the other hand, your baby may show signs of overstimulation when he cries and squirms, flailing his arms and legs, and even thrusting out his tongue.

Good parenting means providing an enriched learning environment for babies and children to learn while playing. A study conducted at the University of Chicago found out that some accomplished adults, such as distinguished athletes, musicians, mathematicians, and scientists all had parents who shared certain outlooks about enriched environment in which they were raised and reared.

They all unintentionally produced a prodigy

They all encouraged their children to play and to explore the world.

They all stimulated and motivated their children through playing and learning.

They were all dedicated to their own interests, and encouraged their children to do likewise, but without pushing them in that direction.

They all supported their children’s self-chosen interests, and made their passion a top priority.

They all encouraged their children to have independent thinking, and to think for themselves through curiosity and asking questions.

The key to successful parenting is to provide an enriched environment for learning while playing, as well as for recognizing talents and potentials that may or may not be the skills and abilities you value most. Praising your baby’s efforts and his accomplishments strengthens your baby’s neurological connections between activity and emotional rewards, and thus instrumental in developing more interest in trying new things and experiences.

Bottom line: the more your baby enjoys spending time with you as he explores the world, the more motivated he will become, and the more he will learn. Relax, loosen up, and always look at the environment and the world through your baby’s eyes, rather than those of your own. It is just that simple.

Read my book: Make Your Smart Baby Super Smart and be a smart parent.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

No Ego No Stress

NO EGO NO STRESS  

"NO EGO NO STRESS" is a 134-page book by Stephen Lau on ancient human wisdom for stress relief. Specifically, it is about Tao wisdom, which originates from the ancient Chinese sage Lao Tzu, the author of “Tao Te Ching”—one of the most translated works in world literature. “Tao Te Ching” is popular due to its profound and unconventional wisdom, which is both intriguing and controversial. Learn how to let go of the ego-self to remove all the stressors in modern living due to finance, careers, relationships, etc. and live as if everything is a miracle.

NO EGO NO STRESS  is made up of 4 parts.

PART ONE: An Introduction to STRESS:

It explains how and where stress comes from; the damage and devastation of stress to human health.

PART TWO: Conventional Wisdom:

The major life stressors come from careers, money, relationships, adversity, and time. Conventional wisdom offers many strategies for stress relief, such as exercise, herbs, medications, meditation, and psychotherapies, among many others. Conventional wisdom may reduce stress levels, but it does not eradicate stress completely. Conventional wisdom only complements the ancient Tao wisdom for ultimate stress relief.

PART THREE:Tao Wisdom:

This part not only explains what Tao wisdom is all about, but also contains the complete translation in simple English of all the 81 short chapters of “Tao Te Ching” which is one of the most translated works in world literature. Going through the whole script, interpreted and translated by the author, will enable you to understand the essentials of Tao wisdom for stress-free contemporary living.

PART FOUR: No Ego No Stress:

Stress originates from the human mind: how it perceives and processes life experiences. What is stress to one individual may not be stress to another. This part explains in detail how having no ego can eradicate all stress related to career, relationship, money, adversity, and time.

Get your copy of NO EGO NOSTRESS

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Avoid Dangerous Drugs

Avoiding Drugs During and After Pregnancy

If possible avoid taking any drug during or after your pregnancy. Optimum health is always drug-free.

Millions of people are suffering needlessly as a direct consequence of the unconscionable zeal of the pharmaceutical industry to rake up billions of dollars of profit aided and abetted by scientists and researchers who have been paid handsomely, even to the extent of falsifying test and research results in some cases.

To illustrate, three of the top executives of Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to criminal charges of misleading the public on the risk of addiction and abuse associated with the painkiller drug OxyContin. That was yet another scandal of pharmaceutical companies doctoring research findings of the safety of drugs and masking their undesirable side effects.

For decades, unreliable drug tests have abounded in the medical and pharmaceutical research community.

It is not uncommon for pharmaceutical companies to "influence" researchers through coercion, incentive, and even threat, to produce the desired results in clinical trials. Fabricating data, such as in the case of OxyContin, is no surprise to the pharmaceutical industry.

Clinical trials, usually involving a small number of people, may not truly reflect the outcome of those who will ultimately be using those drugs after their approval.

In addition, drugs tested on animal models may be biased and even irrelevant. An artificially induced disease in non-human animal models may yield results incompatible to a spontaneous, naturally occurring human disease. In short, there is no absolute safety or reliability of pharmaceutical drugs.

The pharmaceutical companies and the FDA have convinced not only the medical establishment but also the gullible public that costly drugs are the answer to all their health problems, despite their dubious track records and often-deadly side effects.

The use, misuse, and abuse of drugs account for 250,000 to 500,000 deaths each year in the United States. And do you still believe that pharmaceutical drugs provide all the answers to your health problems?  

Dr. O. W. Holmes, Professor of Medicine, Harvard University, had this to say regarding pharmaceuticals putting you in harm’s way: “If all the medicine in the world were thrown into the sea, it would be bad for the fish and good for humanity.” Dr. Holmes’ statement speaks volumes of the potential harm of pharmaceuticals.

When you give your body a drug that replaces a substance your body is capable of making itself, you body then becomes weaker, not stronger, and begins not only to manufacture less of that substance, but also to become more dependent on the outside source, which is usually the drug.

Unfortunately, no drug can give you insight into the circumstance that created your problems. At best, it can only temporarily reduce the physical pain created by your situation. A drug "cures" your symptoms at the expense of creating more potential symptoms down the road. For a while, you may be symptom-free, but soon enough new symptoms may emerge, requiring yet a more potent drug to deal with them.

According to Dr. John Tilden, author of Toxemia, the first and only cause of disease is toxemia, which is the accumulation of toxic wastes over a long period of time. In other words, toxicity retained and stored in our bodies is the common denominator for the causes of all human diseases. 

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Make Your Child Intellectual

Make your child intellectual by teaching him or her to read at an early age, as early as a few months old. Remember, geniuses are made, not born.

29 Smart Steps to Teach Your Smart Kid to Read

This 117-page is based on how I taught my daughter to read some 30 years ago. 

Like all proud parents, I was and still am proud of the fact that I could teach her how to read when she just turned three (most children learn at the age of five). The TV and all electronic devices may not be as effective as YOU, the parent, to teach your child through everyday intellectual interactions, games, and activities. 

This book provides 29 steps that could begin as early as your baby is one-month-old. My daughter became a proficient reader when she was five (reading books with little or no illustrations). By seven, she would not let me teach her anything -- she could find everything from books. It paid off and it's worth all the initial efforts in teaching her to become an early reader. Now she's an attorney in the United States.  I wrote this book because she has recently become a mother herself, and that's why I wrote this book to share my experience some three decades ago.

Also, read my book" Make Your Smart Baby Super Smart.

Stephen Lau

Why Prayers Are Seldom Answered

Asking Questions About Prayers Not Answered

There’s an old proverb that says: “He who cannot ask cannot live.” Life is all about asking questions, and seeking answers from all the questions asked.

Albert Einstein once said: “Thinking is difficult; that’s why so few people do it.”

Thinking is a process of self-intuition through asking relevant questions to create self-awareness and self-reflection. It’s the natural habit of the human mind to try to solve all problems by asking questions. Through the process of solving problems, the human mind may then make things happen.

So, asking all relevant questions is self-empowerment of the human mind to increase wisdom because it initiates the intent to learn, to discover, and then to change for the better.

Here are some of the questions you may want to ask yourself concerning why your prayers are seldom answered, or not answered at all:

What’s a prayer?

Jesus said: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7) Is a prayer just your way of asking for something that you want or desire?

Is it your personal request to the Creator to make something happen or not happen in your life?

Is it your conversation or a means of communication with the Creator to further develop your relationship with Him?

Is it your way of seeking advice from the Creator to help you deal with your own life’s problems and challenges?

Is it your asking the Creator for His blessings that you think you may be entitled to?

Or is it none of the above?

How often is a prayer said or offered?

Before getting up, and before going to bed?

Several times throughout the day, such as before your meals?

While attending a religious service?

Seldom, if ever, unless expressing with your condolences to someone you’re feeling sorry for?

What’s spirituality?

For a believer, spirituality is the inexplicable communication and the subtle relationship with God.

For a non-believer, spirituality is the invisible connection to a Higher Being, who seems to have inexplicable control over certain things in life, such as life and death.

Even for those without a specific religion, they may still have a soul or spirit, because their spirituality is their own conscience that intuitively tells them what’s right and wrong, and not just following the laws and orders of their country. 

In many ways, spirituality is like a shadow that follows us: sometimes we see more of it, and sometimes we see less of it; but it’s always there, forever following us wherever we go, whether we like it or not. Spirituality is always present whenever we focus less on ourselves and more on others.

Does God exist?

Many do believe that God exists—but His existence is no more than the existence of the sun, the moon, and the planets.

Few believe that God plays a pivotal role in their daily lives.

Even fewer believe that they can somehow communicate with God in their daily prayers.

WHY PRAYERS ARE SELDOM ANSWERED

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

A Healthy Drink for a Healthy Pregnancy

The Burdock and Daikon Drink for a Healthy Pregnancy

Burdock root has been used as both food and medicine in Asia and Europe for thousands of years. Recently, it has been used as a nourishing tonic for cancer, liver disease, and rheumatism. Burdock root is a staple diet of the Japanese, who are among the peoples with the longest lifespan in the world.

   

Fresh burdock root is available at many greengrocers, Asian supermarkets, and natural food stores in the United States.

Daikon is Japanese radish. Its phytochemicals have recognized healing and anti-carcinogenic properties: it cleanses the blood (the kidneys); it promotes energy circulation; it increases the metabolic rate (a weight loss remedy in Asia); it decongests the lungs, clears sore throat, colds, and edema.

These are the ingredients to make the burdock and daikon drink:

One burdock root (about 24 inches long)

One daikon with green tops

One small carrot with green tops

Here is how to prepare the drink:

Cut all ingredients into small pieces.

Place them in a pot with water double the volume of the ingredients.

Bring to a boil.

Pour out the content, and drink it.

You can repeat the process one more time. This time, after bringing it to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer it for another 20 minutes. Let the ingredients steep in the hot water for another 20 minutes before drinking it.

    

The burdock and daikon drink is a healthy drink for the immune system throughout the pregnancy. Do follow the Asian wisdom for a healthy pregnancy.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

  

Smart Parents Have No Attachments

Attachments and Illusions

“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.” Simone Weil

                

An attachment is no more than a safety blanket to overcome human fear—the fear of any change and the fear of the unknown from that change. To cope with that projected fear, you may just need many more attachments.

An attachment is basically your own emotional dependence on things and people that define your identity, around which you wrap your so called “happiness” and even your survival. Attachments are your holding on to anything and everything that you are unwilling to let go of, whether it is something positive or even negative. Attachments do not make you live longer.

We are living in a world with many problems that confront us in our everyday life and living, and many of these problems are not only unavoidable but also insurmountable. To overcome these daily challenges, many of us just turn to our own attachments as a means of distracting ourselves from facing our own problems head on, or from adapting and changing ourselves in an ever-changing environment. All of our struggles in life, from anxiety to frustration, from anger to sadness, from grief to worry—they all stem from the same source: our attachment to how we want things to be, rather than relaxing into accepting and embracing whatever that might happen after we have put forth our own best effort.

Attachments often become the sources of human miseries and sufferings. Worse, they may also come in many different forms that we are unaware of because of the illusions they have created in our minds.

 

Career attachments

Your career may span over several decades, involving many ups and downs, such as promotion and unemployment, changes of career and pursuits of higher qualifications, and among many others. They may all have become your problematic attachments.

Money and wealth attachments

Money plays a major role in life. You need money for almost anything and everything in life. In the past, people could enjoy some of the blessings of life without spending too much real money. Nowadays, to many people, enjoyment of life requires money—and lots of it—and you may be one of them. Attachment to money and the riches of the material world is often a result of an inflated ego-self. You may want to keep up with the Joneses—driving a more expensive car than the ones of your neighbors and friends.

Relationship attachments

Living has much to do with people, involving agreements and disagreements, often resulting in having mixed emotional feelings of joy and sorrow, contentment and regret, and among many others; they often become attachments to the ego-self as memories that you may refuse to let go of—not forgetting and not forgiving, for example, are some of the emotional hurdles that are often difficult for many to overcome.

Success and failure attachments

Success in life often becomes an attachment in the form of expectations that it will continue indefinitely, bringing more success. Failure, on the other hand, may generate regret, frustration, and disappointment. These emotional attachments are often difficult to let go of. 

Adversity and prosperity attachments

In the course of human life, loss and bereavement are as inevitable as death. Loss can be physical, material, and even spiritual, such as loss of hope and purpose. You may also want to attach to your good old days, and even refuse to let go of your current adversity. Both adversity and prosperity attachments stem from the ego-self.

Time attachments

Time is a leveler of mankind: we all have only 24 hours a day, no more and no less, although the lifespan of each individual varies. Attachment to time is the reluctance to let go of time passing away, as well as the vain attempt to fully utilize and maximize every moment of time. This attachment often leads to the development of a compulsive mind and the action of over-doing.

The bottom line: sometimes we are so wrapped up in the outside world that we seldom have an opportunity to look inside of ourselves. Understanding who we really are may make us happy, instead of creating our own attachments in the material world we are living in. Imagine you are all alone in a room with nothing, except a pen and a piece of paper. Well, surprisingly, you may then become creative and even happy, with nothing there to worry about, and nothing there to distract your mind.

Identity crisis

According to Tim Hiller, a motivational speaker, a football coach, and a writer, “We usually don't realize the thing that is defining our identity until that thing is taken away.”

Without attachments, we may have an identity crisis; but the truth of the matter is that attachments only give us a false identity, and this may, ironically enough, lead to an identity crisis.

The spiritual wisdom is that Jesus Christ did not have an identity crisis: He clearly knew who He was; He never claimed to be someone else that He was not; He knew where He originated from, and also where He would be going. The problem with humans is that we do not know who we really are; through comparison and contrast, the human ego is forever striving to be someone else. Sadly, in the process, a real identity crisis ensues.

Attachment illusions

All human attachments are the raw materials with which we both consciously and subconsciously create our own identities through a period of confusion and uncertainty that may eventually lead to not only the identity crisis but also the attachment illusions that distort our perceptions of the realities of life. Without human attachments, there will be no identity crisis, and no illusion of the mind.

For example, does the attachment to money bring happiness, or make you live longer?

To many, it does, especially if they have been experiencing the lack of it! That explains why thousands of people line up for hours to get their lottery tickets, hoping against hope that their tickets would win them great fortunes, and hence their happiness. But the reality is that many lottery winners claim that their happiness from the winning is only transient and is not lasting.

Bruce Lipton, author and cellular biologist, once said: “The function of the mind is to create coherence between our own beliefs and the reality that we experience. We generally perceive that we are running our lives with our own wishes and our own desires. But neuroscience reveals a startling fact: we only run our lives with our creative, conscious mind about 5 percent of the time; 95 percent of the time, our life is controlled by the beliefs and habits that are previously programmed in the subconscious mind.”

It is your pre-programmed subconscious mind that tells you money can give you happiness. That can also explain why you may find yourself working in jobs that you do not even like due to your subconscious belief that money is anything and everything in your life.

The whole world out there that you see in front of you right now is nothing more than a projection of what you feel deep inside. Not only is it a projection of your deep feelings but also you internal energy. Yes, money is energy too, just like you, me, anything and everything else. Money is an expression of energy of your subconscious mind, building a complex system of money beliefs, such as “money makes the world go round” and “when I have enough money . . . then I’ll be happy, and can do whatever I want to do.”

But according to Harvard Business Review, money and happiness are not positively correlated, because money may make people less generous and more demanding and domineering. In addition, money may not bring out the best of an individual: the more money that individual has, the more focused on self that individual may become, and the less sensitive to the needs of people around, as well as the more likely to do the wrong things due to the feeling of right and  entitlement.

The bottom line: any attachment to a just about anything we crave or value only creates an illusion in the mind.

ANYTHING IS EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING IS NOTHING! NOTHING IS EVERYTHING!

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Knowing Your Baby

Understanding the basics of parenting is the first step towards making your baby smarter. The first few weeks after the birth of your baby are the time of trial and error, as well as of delight and discovery. If the baby is your first-born child, you will soon discover a new dimension in your relationship with your baby. This new relationship begins to demand your time that comprises energy and effort. Your baby’s rapid development and quick responsiveness begin to enhance your own confidence and competency to confront the new challenges of parenthood.

Knowing your baby is important, but knowing the self is equally, if not more, important because the latter determines what type of parenthood you may fall into, as well as the type of child your baby will ultimately become.

Pay attention to how your baby eats and sleeps, how your baby moves his arms and legs, how your baby reacts to the environment with different sounds. Be very observant of your baby’s unique behavior and personality development.

No matter what type your baby may fall into, it is your baby. Develop a gently loving approach to understand, accept, and appreciate your baby’s behavior, capability, personality, and temperament. Remember, you can always improve his personality and temperament. Appreciate your baby’s uniqueness is important to his personality growth of your baby. The bonding between the baby and the parents plays a pivotal role in the baby’s own physical and mental development. This relationship is the groundwork for the baby’s learning experience, as well as the baby’s individual personality traits and abilities. If you want your baby to become super smart, always enhance this bonding and relationship.

Remember the following:

Always create a nurturing environment in which your baby can grow cognitively.

Learn to relax if your baby is too demanding; try to take a nap while your baby is sleeping.

Learn to smile when approaching your screaming baby.

Remember, your baby may be as miserable as you are, and he or she is there not to annoy you.

The bottom line: accept and appreciate even a difficult baby because things will change for the better later.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Wisdom of Centenarians

the wisdom of centenarians

The Ancient Centenarian: Luigi Cornaro

Luigi Cornaro, a Venetian nobleman, was one of the most celebrated centenarians, who lived from 1464 to 1566 AD.

In his youth, Luigi had abused his health with a lifestyle of wantonness and excess, resulting in an extremely weak constitution, accompanied by many physical ailments.

At the age of thirty-five, he was given up by his physicians to die. Luigi’s physicians prescribed a temperate lifestyle as the only way to end his suffering and preserve his very fragile life. That temperate lifestyle was essentially the exercise of self-restraint or self-discipline in relation to diet and drink for calorie restriction. His physician recommended for him a diet consisting of only twelve ounces a day of solid foods of bread, a vegetable soup with tomato, an egg yolk, and a little meat, divided into two meals, and fourteen ounces of pure grape juice, also divided into two servings.

He lived on that minimal diet of calorie restriction from age thirty-five until eighty-five, when his relatives began to urge him to eat a little more since he was getting old and he required more physical strength and stamina. Complying with and succumbing to their well wishes and importunities, Luigi reluctantly agreed to increase his food intake from twelve to fourteen ounces. Immediately, he became seriously ill with high fever. Eventually, Luigi had the longevity wisdom to revert to his former anti-aging living with a diet of calorie restriction. As a result, he lived in a state of unbroken health and happiness until the age of one hundred and two.

Luigi was famous for his longevity living in relation to calorie restriction. He expressed his wisdom in his discourse when he was in his eighties and nineties. His wisdom has been an inspiration for more than five centuries. His longevity wisdom was simple and down-to-earth: never overeat; avoid environmental stress, such as extreme heat and cold; and avoid extreme fatigue, and interruption of sleep.

The bottom line: you don't have to eat such a low-calorie diet of Luigi in order to live long; just eat less, and eat only when you are hungry.

The Contemporary Centenarian: Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara

Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara, from Japan, turned 104 recently, and he is one of the world's longest-serving physicians and educators. Since 1941, he has been healing patients at St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo and teaching at St. Luke's College of Nursing. He has published around 15 books since his 75th birthday, including his bestseller "Living Long, Living Good."

As the founder of the New Elderly Movement, Hinohara encourages others to live a long and happy life with the following wisdom he would like to share with all:

·  Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara stresses the importance of not becoming overweight.

·    For breakfast, Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara drinks coffee, milk, and orange juice with a tablespoon of olive oil, which is for healthy arteries and healthy skin. For lunch, he drinks milk with a few cookies. For dinner, he eats vegetables, a bit of fish and rice, and, sometimes some lean meat.

· He always keeps himself busy with a full schedule ahead. He recommends that any retirement should be a lot later than 65.

·       He shares what he knows—one of the reasons why he is still working and teaching. When he teaches, he always stands to stay strong.

·       He recommends having a second thought or always seeking a second opinion whenever a doctor recommends a test, a procedure, or a surgery.

·      He believes that doctors cannot cure everyone. Instead, he believes in music and animal therapy. 

·     He recommends taking the stairs and carrying your own stuff to stay healthier and younger for longer.

·  He uses doing fun things to forget his pain, both physical and emotional.

·    He recommends letting go of all material things because nobody knows when his or her number is up, and nothing can be taken to the next place.

·  He believes that each person is unique, and illness is therefore individualized. But medical science lumps all and sundry together; an individual should understand why he or she is sick, and not the doctor. Science alone cannot cure or help you; you must learn to help yourself.

·     He believes that life is always filled with unpredictable incidents. So, be prepared.

·       He stresses the importance of finding a role model to help with setting life goals and life purposes.

·      He believes that energy comes from doing good and feeling good, and not from good food or good sleep.

·   To Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara, it is always wonderful to live long, and he loves every minute of it.

YOU JUST DON’T DIE!

YOUNGER AND HEALTHIER FOR LONGER

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau