Show ur love..

A $10,000 birthday party? Nah... Making your child feel loved and special can be as simple as rolling around on the floor with them! Read on to find age-by-age suggestions.

Birth to 6 months old

"Use both touch and voice," says Julie Watson Smith, family and business lifestyle coach "For example, say, 'I love your toes because they have the cutest little toenails on top,' and while doing that you touch your child's toes. Continue with knees, hands, elbows, chin, nose, eyes ... you get the idea." Other ideas: play peekaboo, sing lullabies, give soft massages, play stick-out-your tongue games.

6 to 12 months old

"Play 'I'm gonna get you,' and rollick on the floor with your baby when you 'catch' her," says Jennifer Brown, a child and disability mental health specialist. Also, she adds: "Make up songs with your child's name in them. Then stick these songs around the house to make your child feel special for years to come."

12 to 18 months old

"Give horse rides on your lap with surprise drops and catches ("ride a little pony, down to town, ride a little pony, might ... fall ... down!")," says Brown. "The little silly songs and games teach children about predictability, and about a beginning, middle, and end. It allows them to anticipate."

18 to 24 months old

"Create your own bedtime stories with your child as the hero to spotlight his special traits," says Smith. "Really, who can resist 'Super Peanut-Butter-and Pickles Boy,' right?"

"This is a key time to find every chance to say yes," adds Brown. "There are so many 'no's' in toddlerhood. Is he scooping up his food like an animal at the dinner table? Make silly plans to have a 'doggy party' later in the day, and eat cereal (Jell-O or yogurt if you are adventurous!) from a bowl outside, and giggle at the wonderful mess doggies make (while outside, and not at the table, of course!)."

2 to 4 years old

"Turn tasks into fun," says Dr. Linda Miles. "Arrange a germ attack and run around with a sponge. Knock on the kitchen door and warn the germs that you and your child are coming to get them. Give your child a cloth and let them go after the germs."

"Create a home art gallery to spotlight your child's personal masterpieces," says Smith. "Then invite family and friends over for a special evening with the artist."

4 to 6 years old

"Start an appreciation board," says Sarah Newton, a parenting coach in the U.K. "Each day, put a word or a sticker on the board and tell your kids what you appreciate about them. Then have them do the same for other people in the family."

"Kindergartners love to step into the role of a bigger kid," adds Smith. "Let them express themselves as big kids by allowing them to set some rules or establish new traditions, such as a little later bedtime, mommy or daddy and child date night, or even ice cream for breakfast Sundays."

6 to 8 years old

"Start a fun bowl in the house," adds parenting coach Newton, explaining that you can fill the bowl with fun, spontaneous ideas for your kids when they say "I'm bored." You might make crepes for dinner or have a jump rope in the backyard. "Above all, spend time with them. Have television-free hours where you are all just together."

"Blow up a big picture of your child and each day stick a word on it that represents a quality you respect about him," adds Newton. "For example, 'caring' or 'funny.'

Syahmi Mukhriz and his funny faces.."i love u ibu.."he loves to say those 4 words..eps before he goes to bed every nite..mmuahh..i love u too Ami..i replied..hehehe!!

For kids,two languages can be as easy as one..

Thu, Jul 9, 2009 (HealthDay News) -- European researchers are contesting the assumption that bilingual toddlers have more trouble learning language skills than children who know just one language.

"While the remarkable performance of children acquiring one language is impressive, many children acquire more than one language simultaneously," said study author Agnes Melinda Kovacs, a research fellow at the International School for Advanced Studies, in Trieste, Italy. "As bilingual children presumably have to learn roughly twice as much as their monolingual peers [because they learn two languages instead of one], one would expect their language acquisition to be somewhat delayed. However, bilinguals pass the language development milestones at the same ages as their monolingual peers."

The finding, which appears online July 9 in Science, came from a test of the responses to verbal and visual cues from 64 babies who were 12 months old. They came from monolingual and bilingual families, although the study did not specify which languages the families spoke.

The toddlers were exposed to two sets of words that had different structural characteristics. After each word, the children viewed a special toy on either the left or right side of a screen, depending on the word's structure. They then were presented with words they had never heard before but that conformed to one of the two verbal structures. No toy followed.

Researchers determined whether the infants had learned the word structures by measuring the direction of their gaze after hearing each new word. Judging by their eye movements, the bilingual kids did better in recognizing words than their monolingual peers.

"We showed that pre-verbal, 12-month-old, bilingual infants have become more flexible at learning speech structures than monolinguals," Kovacs said. "When given the opportunity to simultaneously learn two different regularities, bilingual infants learned both, while monolinguals learned only one of them."

This means, she said, that "bilinguals may acquire two languages in the time in which monolinguals acquire one because they quickly become more flexible learners."

According to the study, the cognitive pathways developed during the learning of two languages might make bilingual children more efficient in acquiring new information.

Earlier research has often confirmed the benefits of learning more than one language. In a 2004 Canadian study, for example, researchers found that bilingual speakers were more proficient at dealing with distractions than those who spoke only a single language. That ability was even more pronounced for older people, suggesting that multilingualism might help elderly speakers avoid age-related cognitive problems.

A significant percentage of humanity speaks more than one language. In the United States, more than 18 percent of the population aged 5 and older speaks a language other than English at home, according to the 2000 U.S. census.

One child psychologist who read the Italian study found the results intriguing and said she would like to see further research on how children learn different languages, especially ones with different tonal structures, such as Chinese and English.

"We now know, thanks to [functional MRI] studies that allow us to observe the working brain, that learning does result in discrete changes in 'wiring,'" said Marta Flaum, whose practice in Chappaqua, N.Y. specializes in diagnosing and helping children with dyslexia and other language handicaps. "It would make sense that learning a second language affects brain changes as well."

However, Flaum said, "we know that the young brain is more plastic than the older brain, making it easier to learn at an earlier age''

syahmi d adorable..