Contrary to what many Nepalis believe and will tell you, raising a child to be a well disciplined one does NOT require "disciplining." In other words, to raise a well-behaved child, you don't have to scold, scream, shout, beat, or humiliate the child. All you have to do is to raise them by respecting, listening, and engaging with them.
When a baby or toddler throws a temper tantrum, the easiest way to deal with it is to divert their attention to something else by talking to the child. It could be about something you see in the sky or nearby or it could be about the music you just started playing etc. The very very short attention span of such children means that they will readily and easily refocus their attention to a new stimulus from what they are fixated on when they are throwing the tantrum.
All the time I was abroad, even while preparing for the eventuality of returning to Nepal, I had never had a timeline. The first time I contemplated a timeline was the Summer of 2009: I gave myself five years. In February 2013, almost four years later, I decided, the time was right to return. Timing was right for a number of reasons, namely, financial, career, weariness with moving, and a little one at home.
What and how you do things for and with toddlers matters hugely. The simply reason, of course, is that they pick up on a lot of that and essentially shapes them.
Reading makes a huge different in people's lives. Reading to babies and toddlers makes a huge impact on their academic achievements later on as well as in the their adult life. Children who read, on average, lead children who don't academically. Adults who read, for example, on average have been found to live longer than those who don't etc.
At a session last month with a little over four dozen parents from twenty-five schools, I shared three things they can do to fill the gap with their children's education in Nepal. Reproduced in the blog post are details of those three things and other important bits from that session.