Dear Colleagues! Today is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #159. Pharma Veterans shares the wealth of knowledge and wisdom of Veterans for the benefit of entire Pharma Community. It aims to recognize and celebrate the Pharma Industry Professionals. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. If you wish to share your stories, ideas and thoughts, please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here.
Continued from last……
- Attitude — Excessive leniency, laxity or nagging and violence.
Both extremes are harmful. Cosseting and trying to provide extra care, kindness and comfort, beyond certain limits, is no good for example buying a bike or a car to a lad of 14/15 years, which is a very common sight on roads, is no gesture of love, rather an out-right aversion and hostility. Such children are not only perilous to the society but are a great threat to their own life. Such a child can go wayward, astray or rebellious.
On the flip-side being captious, rowdy, stern and berating the child all the time produce dreadful and repulsive results. Child may lose confidence, become timid and ultimately emerge as an unsuccessful adult in life with no initiative and unable to take the right or timely decisions.
He/she develops into a mediocre adult, avoiding competitive situations and destined to failures. Such children remain low performers in every genre of life like education, games, social life and career.
A child can even pervert into criminal and immoral activities and may completely go out of hands.
Parents handling children with these extremes are in fact malicious to their children. They put the whole life and career of the child at risk and develop a man with inferiority complex or a dissenter and nonconformist.
Parents therefore, have to find a mid-way. A moderate attitude has to be adopted. A child may irritate you sometime, but in such a situation do not “react but respond” Maintain distance but at the same time be friendly to the children. Always extend a helping hand and an olive branch when a child is in a low mood or in hyper activity.
Never scold, particularly in public. Do not try to dominate or dictate the child, but educate him/her. Discipline their life by being a role model and giving that environment at home. Do not grumble but smile and radiate love for them. Never hurt their self-respect and ego. Value them on what they say. In case you disagree on some point; convince them by giving reasons, not by refuting. Children’s faltering is not to be taken as personal affront, instead show magnanimity.
- Oblivion about health of children – mental and physical.
Countries like Pakistan where quality health facilities are already scarce and the parents generally have very little knowledge about health affairs in general and child in particular. There is alarming deficiency of awareness about problems like hearing, speech and weak eye sight. Even a large number of educated parents do not sense these problems at the early age of child. Psychologists maintain that “at the age of one year a child can understand easy instructions from the parents. At two years of age child usually understands 650 words and can speak 20 – 30. At three years child understands about 2000 words and can speak 1000”
If the growth of a child is normal from this standard and he/she understands and responds then there is no worry. But if there is a problem with child’s speech or understanding then the parents should immediately consult the specialist. If the child continues with the deficiency with the growing age then besides usual treatment, parents should give more passionate attention to such a child.
In modern times children weak eye-sight has become a major issue, due to the exposure to computers and smart phones from very early age. Parents should prevent their children from these gadgets and get them thoroughly checked before they are admitted to the school.
- Neglecting or ignoring day-to-day problems of children.
Being ignorant of child’s activities and not caring about the company of friends that he is moving with produces appalling results. Such children at this gullible age fall an easy prey to criminals. The dreadful incidence of Kasur is still fresh in our memories where about 300 children fell victim to atrocious sex abuse by a gang of criminals. Such children can also easily become drug addicts and embroiled in other immoral activities.
Childhood is a very delicate age and parents have to be extremely watchful of children and their activities. At this stage, neglecting a child, which could be due to many reasons, may result in children going astray. They become vulnerable to mental health issues and serious psychiatric disorders.
Therefore, there is a dire need for the parents to immediately address if something awry is observed in child’s behavior.
The parents are advised to keep the children very close to themselves and minimize the distance with them. Be a good friend, so that in the event of any difficulty the child should feel confident to reach out to their parents for help and advice and should not find refuge somewhere else.
To be continued……
