Supplements - Probiotic

Recently I benefited by taking Probiotic supplement. When the doctor prescribed BioGia to my child, I know what it is.  If you want to know more about the benefits, please click here, here or here. 

However, I am very surprised that the price we are paying for this in Singapore.
For 30 capsules each with 100 million counts of live bacteria, I have to pay almost S$45! This is charges from a public hospital.  A check on Amazon reveals that price is approximately S$32. Much cheaper! 

  

I wonder how much the shipment would cost. But unfortunately, this product cannot be shipped overseas. There are some other brands, but the shipment cost is really a lot!

I checked the company from whom I bought my Probiotic, Vitamin World. I always buy from them whenever I go to US, or when my close friends going over to US.  Their excellent customer service is really striking. When I called last month from Singapore about a product changing color, they just shipped me a replacement although they said that the product I had was fine to consume. That's how I come to know about their international shipment.

Ok, look at the following product from Vitamn World :

Yum V's from Vitamin World (Click for the link or Find from Vitamin World's Website)

 The price is USD9.99, or S$13 at most. Shipment is about USD$12 for two bottles, plus handling fee of USD1.95), and they do ship overseas. 

The benefits of the 'good bacteria' can be obtained by taking yoghurt drink or yoghurt, or some other fermented foods with naturally occurring live cultures. I don't think my kids need this every day. But I would let them take this when there are many people in school having flu or stomach flu.  One of the main way to stay happy is to stay healthy, right?

Socratic Approach for Kids?

My learning in US and Japan particularly after Master course is largely based on Socratic Approach. Wikipedia explains that this is a form of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas. To young children, I think this may be called "proactive learning". To me, in the context of training people at work place is "I teach you one thing, you have to teach me back ten in return".

One major contrast to this approach is our commonly seen spoon feed teaching method. In this method, teachers or parents tell kids everything on what they should know. Notes are prepared, and students are expected to do well in exams after reading the notes, period! I have gone through this and I have seen how spoon feeding type of education limits and slows down learning process (**see my comment). Just ask ourselves how can one teach in the limited hours of lesson per week? Compared to another students who keen learning by himself, I would think the later learns better.

The question for me is how do we encourage proactive learning? How do we teach young kids to learn by themselves? Call me lazy or whatever, I dislike taking care of my kids's spelling test. I made it clear that it's his responsibility and he managed that very well. Whenever he asked me meaning of a new words, I seldom give him the answer and asking him to check dictionary. Sometimes, I tell him to "google" the answer. I think all these are part of proactive learning education from me to him! Socratic approach requires more than that, students are supposed to critically think about what they learned. In contrast, some teachers told me that if they asked students to look up dictionary, they are wasting lesson time! The expectation of parents is no dictionary in classroom! Wow! I am surprised.

I have a friend whose daughters were both pursuing medicine under scholarships. I asked him how did he do that.. His answer to me was, "do nothing!". Interesting answer... but I think that answer has a lot of wisdom in it. It's not easy to do nothing, especially if you see your kids get bad marks from one exam, right?

What else can I do better on this? I don't know. Perhaps following my classmate's way is the best! What do you think? Please share.