Brachiation is a whole body event. From the fingers right down to the feet. Any inactive muscles (by active I mean switched on, not tense, but actively supporting the body as opposed to being in a relaxed state resulting in floppiness) will make brachiation more difficult.

Often people who are struggling to brachiate have forgotten to involve the core and posterior muscles.

The lats should be firmly braced to support the shoulders. Avoid allowing yourself to sink out of your shoulder joint, you want a nice long neck, if you feel your shoulders up around your ears you need to pull up and support more.

Legs that are too floppy will swing ineffectively and create a pulling effect in directions against the motion of travel. This wastes energy and also increases the required energy for each transition.

If the core (mainly abdominal) muscles are inactive the back is likely to become loose, even arch. making activating your lats almost impossible and causing the legs to hang backwards creating a backwards pull when you want to go forwards.

The longer you hang on each bar the more difficult the transition to the next. Think of riding a bike on a steep hill that goes down and then dips back up. If you start at the top and build up speed as you dip up you have enough energy and momentum to move easily up the hill with only a slight gear change. However, should you stop at the bottom and start again you would have immense trouble, require far more energy and need to start down in the low gears. Think of what effect that has on the workload of your legs and the type of muscle movement it creates, often jerking and explosive not smooth and fluid.

Feel the speed of your swing and match your arms to compliment the motion.

Hope that helps. If you are able to describe any particular feelings within your body during brachiation I may be able to give you a more specific and helpful answer.

Totally agree with you DadDude.

While things look completely different it is mostly in the way of advancements and new understanding.

Knowing the historical evolution that discoveries etc have taken has multiple benefits both in moving forward and in sometimes going backwards to move forward again (imagine if we had stuck to the electric car, I dare say the battery industry would look quite different had we taken that course and had the necessity to develop the technology down such a path).

The more knowledge one has, even if said knowledge is "outdated", the better equipped we are for our trek down the path of the future.

awesome thanks

Sounds to me like he's highly fascinated by something that is in truth highly fascinating.

I'd be helping him learn the correct terminology so that he doesn't feel the need to make up his own (as offensive as people find it he's really very clever - he may have seen that cadbury's ad where there are people made of chocolate and drawn his own conclusions from there, either way you've got to admit he's drawn what would seem to a four year old as a fairly obvious conclusion).

The more he knows and understands and has proper labels the more he will be able to use the right behaviour. At least he is excited by chocolate people and not fearful as I think that would come across far worse.

Depending on what his conceptual understanding is like she could even go into a little bit of detail about why the different people have evolved differently.

Our instinct when children are obsessed with things (particularly embarrassing things) is to try and stop the behaviour but I firmly believe that helping them pass through it to the other side is the more appropriate response. The obsession comes from a desire to understand.

I hope she can help him through this without too many awkward situations - children can be challenging to say the least

Modelling good behaviour is always a good starting point for teaching children. Our son has taught himself to say please and thank you in the correct situations purely by having the behaviour modelled to him. We have never told him to say it or corrected him when he didn't say it. It is a beautiful thing to watch a two year old express genuine gratitude and because he genuinely feels it, understands and wants to express it.

The thing about self control is that it is an internal function so while we can model the behaviour children watching aren't actually getting all the information they need to draw the right conclusions. So yes model it but also describe it - "mummy would love to eat all that chocolate at once but that would be greedy so I'll just have one piece" is well within their grasp especially if it is expressed repeatedly over time.

However this wont be enough as in order to execute self control or discipline you first have to have self awareness. Something that grows throughout life and let's face it even as adults we have moments where we don't understand our own reactions to things while we're in the moment because we perhaps don't know ourselves as well as we might think or our thoughts are clouded by heightened emotions.

Helping your child understand their emotions and their impacts on people and the consequences of their actions is the first step to making them self aware once they are self aware they can exhibit self control.

My son already has remarkable self control not just for a two year old but generally, having said that he's two so any time he's highly emotional or tired or hungry that self control dissipates. But these moments are getting fewer and farther between as he starts to understand a wider range of emotions and what causes them and how he reacts to them.

The thing about most parents (as a teacher I've seen it over and over) is that they have all these expectations one common one is "I expect my child to be respectful to adults"   a noble wish and something we all want our children to have. The problem is that most of the time we force the behaviours onto them much like we force them to say please and thank you and the problem with this is that it is often behaviour done to please the caregiver or avoid punishment and does not help the child to understand the whys or get to know his own feelings or make his own decisions or learn from his own mistakes.

While letting your child make mistakes for himself can be difficult (not to mention embarrassing when it comes to social behaviours) at least you are giving your child the opportunity to know why he is behaving a certain way. For instance "when you told grandad to go away today that hurt his feelings. You were upset with grandad and should ask grandad to stop when he is annoying you" (can you tell this is a common one in our house?) Obviously as they get older you can describe more and more and they can understand more and more. It develops empathy and self awareness and responsibility for the consequences of their own actions.

We have a no reaction policy in our house. So our reactions our always very controlled and measured and we always explain what we are feeling and why. It is difficult to allow your child to embarrass you and themselves, or to fail at things but they learn so much more from the situation when they are allowed to discover it for themselves with just a guiding dialogue and not just a bunch of rules and regulations about how to act.

While it was hard at first to let him learn from his own life with just our guidance it is getting easier not to interfere and he is thriving and makes us proud more often than not and it is sweeter because we proud of decisions he makes for himself not proud of him for doing what we have told him he should do.

Hey Arvi,

I believe they are the books that go hand in hand with the courses. If it talks about the circle of security and the circle of repair then yes.

The amazing thing about it is it is very simple, very obvious and so difficult to do when life takes over but it is worth it.

Shazz,

Oh my goodness you are a brave lady!!

I had a severely cracked nipple with my son for the first two and a half months and that damn near killed me. Similar to you it would ooze and then stick to my clothes inevitably ripping open again. I ended up with mastatitis in that breast and couldn't feed from it.

i ended up expressing from that breast and using the milk to heal the wounds which in the end cured both issues.

I cannot imagine what it must have been like to put up with it to the extent and for the length of time that you did.

I am so pleased for you that you have found a solution - how very sad that you had to find it yourself with no help from the people who should have been able to guide you.

Best of luck with your SON I hope all goes well and you can enjoy the experience of breast feeding this time.

Hi Ryan and welcome,

Congratulations on discovering the joys of early education - it is a truly rewarding journey.

That's a great little site you've started - keep it up.

Best of luck with Hailey I"m sure you'll have a wonderful time discovering just how much she can learn and how easily you can teach.

I use cable ties to bind mine - even though I have a binder it's really just easier in the end to put a couple of cable ties in. But that could just be my laziness.

I think the important thing is to keep the words and pictures on separate pages at this point.

My family and Farm animals are a great start.

Weather, transport, occupations or even anything from your EK follow his interests .

Have fun with it.

Don't wait for your piano there is no harm in starting to teach note recognition purely through flash cards.

Doman teaches the note quantities first - whole notes etc and the pitch later.

When it comes to sharps and flats you just treat them as you always would "this is C# " etc.

As much as you think your singing isn't noteworthy it is important to keep it up.

Xylophones are great for teaching perfect pitch (at least good quality ones are). If you are going to use your piano - when you have it tuned be sure that it is tuned to concert pitch as often when a piano has remained untuned for a while they end up having to tune it to itself rather than to concert pitch in which case you would be teaching the incorrect notes.

Rhythm games on bongos is great at this age and if he is sitting he will be able to partake. We began by copying the rhythms he made and making a game out of it - eventually he would start to copy our rhythms as well.

Follow your child's lead in how much you do - children are very aware of what they want/are ready to learn watch his cues he will tell you if it's too much.

Keep it fun and you can't go wrong.

My MIL is a school principal and she tried to tell me that teaching my son to read before school would leave him with a massive vocabulary and no imagination!!!

These myths about the right time to do this or that are just that myths.

I completely agree with twinergy "she has an absolute ball, she can learn technique after she learns appreciation the important thing to us is that she wants to and enjoys doing it" then change the subject.

As for the asking for details that's just so they've got more information for when they have a gossip session later and I love twinergy's response.

Stargirl36 that is awesome. Best of luck with it, I hope that the Doman courses can help you help her through her spatial and maths and other problems she may encounter as she gets older - it certainly can't hurt her. It must feel great to have that communication with her.

I was under the impression that while the dot recognition doesn't last that the maths program itself does (those that move forward with it and continue with the numerals) - hence the children who go to the institute continuing to do high level maths throughout their lives.

Having said that - high level maths at a young age was never Doman's original intention. The intention is to form the pathways and strengthen them for later learning.

Essentially it shouldn't matter which program you use you will have provided your child the foundations for easier maths in the future and possibly even gifted maths in the future. So whether you do Jones Geniuses or Shichida or Doman the benefits will be there even if you don't see them at first - it's one of those times where a leap of faith is required.

Keep at it and remember that the "average" child ( if such a thing really exists) doesn't even learn to rote count until age three and even then it's only up to four, if your child know their numbers they're well ahead of the game already.

Hey momtobaby,

I don't know that we did anything special - at least any more than any one on this site has. We do lead an unusual life and our boy has two parents with him almost all day everyday and is with at least one of us at all times. On the occassions where we're gigging he is in the audience watching or in the changeroom listening so his little life has been eventful and rather different to other children. This may have helped but then it may have nothing to do with it.

I think it really comes down to a time and priority decision.

I taught my son seven (and a few randoms) languages to varying degrees simultaneously and he has learned them all well to the extent that we bothered with them. That is the ones we had more tools for are stronger than those we didn't.

I'd look at all the things you want to do and see how much time you can devote to preparing etc and actually doing each task and see whether or not you are able to cope with such a timetable.

Personally if I had been able to get LR Mandarin at the same time as LR English I would have.

It also depends on why you want to teach the multiple languages. For me it wasn't about teaching him to be multi-lingual as a baby. We weren't actually attempting to teach him the languages I was a first time mum with a single Doman book in hand winging it and had read the lines in his book stating that they lose the sounds they don't hear in their everyday life. Hence the decision to get so many languages underway it was actually an attempt to build the pathways for later - little did I know he would learn them.

Fantastic!!

This is how we raised our boy only ever doing for him that part of an activity he could not do for himself. It has worked splendidly at 2.5 (well almost three now oh my goodness where does the time go) he has gross motor and fine motor skills of a five year old with spatterings of skills up to 8 year olds. Is he a genius? Well maybe but mostly I think he has just had loads more experience than other kids and been allowed to find out for himself.

Most importantly I think he has been allowed to hurt himself.

I, in one of my many jobs, am an acrobatics coach (check out www.acrodancer.com) and I have found over the last twenty years or so that as schools have stopped kids from being allowed to do handstands on the playground or climb trees or removed round abouts and high slippery dips that children have less ability to understand what real danger is, to weigh risks, to know their own bodies, and worst of all their pain tolerance is virtually zero.

There are children in my classes who I genuinely am concerned that should they ever break a bone or experience child birth that they will not mentally cope because they have been so wrapped up in cotton wool that they have no perspective on the matter.

We do these things because we don't want our children to suffer but overcoming adversity is one of humanity's best traits and not one that we should rob our children of. They are born with the ability we should not remove it from them just because we cannot bear to see them experience difficulty. Their lives must be about them not about us.