Software professional Aditi De, a Rajarhat resident who is a mother to two small children, is often perplexed while handling her daughters. Her elder daughter Adrija, a Class II student of Our Lady Queen of the Missions, is hyperactive. But her younger one, Adrika, a nursery student, likes to stay at home, is a bit introvert, and shows apathy to eating.
Basanti Banerjee from Sarat Abasan in Salt Lake is also worried about her son, an upper KG student of Sri Aurobindo Institute of Education, as he does not like to play with his friends and would rather be alone.
What is the role of a parent in a child’s development? When asked, some parents felt they should be a guide or mentor to the child, others said they should be a friend.
Such approaches to parent-child relationship came to the fore at an interactive session titled "Know Your Little Ones,” hosted by Initiative for Scientific and Public Awareness Target (ISPAT), in collaboration with Suraksha Diagnostic Centre at Mrittika Bhawan in Salt Lake. With May, the mental health awareness month, underway, The Telegraph Salt Lake shares some insights from the workshop.
Swapan Das from Beleghata needed some advice for his four-year-old son Nilabho, who is moody and gets angry though he lives in a joint family. Sharmistha Dutta, whose six-year-old daughter is in KG standard of Our Lady Queen of the Missions, was eager to get some mentoring on how to deal with children for their healthy development. “Children of this generation are being brought up in a different environment. During our childhood we used to listen to our elders without any question, but our children ask us why they need to listen to their elders. We need some kind of training on how to bring up this new generation of children,” said Dutta. Her predicament is similar to that of many parents today.
The session, conducted by physician Adrija Rahman Mukherjee, commenced with a case study that she came across recently. A 32-year-old mother of a four-year-old came to Mukherjee's clinic with complications like high blood pressure. Her hypertension was due to extreme stress. She was very worried for her daughter. One of her daugher's classmates in school had expressed his love for her. Not only that, the daughter had also asked her father what the word “crush” meant. So the mother was very upset and complained to the school and scolded her daughter for being friends with the boy.
Mukherjee asked the young mother: “Does a four-year-old kid really know what the word 'love' or 'crush' means? They must have come across something on television or social media and they were trying to copy that. Don't give it any importance. Just ignore the matter. A child's mind is like a clean slate. They will forget it as they learn new things.”
Mukherjee feels parents are over-protective about their children, which has become a matter of concern. “Whatever the children want, the parents instantly get those things for them. They don't inculcate a habit of sharing things with others since most are brought up in nuclear families. Parents blame schools, schools blame parents. There is a continuous conflict between the two, which is affecting children adversely,” said Mukherjee.
The Covid pandemic has caused some damage. “A kind of inertia has developed in children being confined at home. They have become a little indisciplined without having any regular school-going habit and have developed an addiction to cell phones. They have lost the power of concentration and cannot sit for online exams stretching for two hours,” said Mukherjee, a consultant physician in family medicine.
Organiser Abhijit Chowdhury said that children were behaving differently in the post-Covid scenario. “They have forgotten school discipline. I learnt from some school teachers that students were not adhering to rules and earlier practices since direct contact was disrupted by online classes. So this session is very relevant in this context,” said Chowdhury, a vice-president of ISPAT.
Ritesh Basak, secretary of ISPAT, sad that the attempt was to generate some awareness on parenting in order to bridge the gap between children and parents. “Parents are facing lot of behaviourial issues, and they have no idea how to deal with those problems. It's an ongoing process and we have plans to organise more such workshops in the days to come.”
Mukherjee asked the young mother: “Does a four-year-old kid really know what the word 'love' or 'crush' means? They must have come across something on television or social media and they were trying to copy that. Don't give it any importance. Just ignore the matter. A child's mind is like a clean slate. They will forget it as they learn new things.”
Mukherjee feels parents are over-protective about their children, which has become a matter of concern. “Whatever the children want, the parents instantly get those things for them. They don't inculcate a habit of sharing things with others since most are brought up in nuclear families. Parents blame schools, schools blame parents. There is a continuous conflict between the two, which is affecting children adversely,” said Mukherjee.
The Covid pandemic has caused some damage. “A kind of inertia has developed in children being confined at home. They have become a little indisciplined without having any regular school-going habit and have developed an addiction to cell phones. They have lost the power of concentration and cannot sit for online exams stretching for two hours,” said Mukherjee, a consultant physician in family medicine.
Organiser Abhijit Chowdhury said that children were behaving differently in the post-Covid scenario. “They have forgotten school discipline. I learnt from some school teachers that students were not adhering to rules and earlier practices since direct contact was disrupted by online classes. So this session is very relevant in this context,” said Chowdhury, a vice-president of ISPAT.
Ritesh Basak, secretary of ISPAT, sad that the attempt was to generate some awareness on parenting in order to bridge the gap between children and parents. “Parents are facing lot of behaviourial issues, and they have no idea how to deal with those problems. It's an ongoing process and we have plans to organise more such workshops in the days to come.”
