Parenting presence !

 

I normally look at flowers to get the front view. Only in the recent years, I also take time to look behind the flowers. 

It is when we look behind the flowers, we get to see how a flower is held firm by its stem. 

A child is rooted in his or her family and is held by his her parents in an embrace of love. 

This embrace of love is expressed in different ways on a day-today basis. Only when, from infancy a child can feel this proximity with parents physically and emotionally, there is a prospect of a child blossoming in the childhood years. 

The parenting presence is an experience parents can offer to children from infancy for them to grow up with a sene of nearness to parents and belonging to the family.

It is necessary to avoid any form interruption to this process. 

The reading times, play times, meal times, bed times, walks and outings, creative activities, sibling times, neighbourhood times and social times are the usual ways which parents can use to give this attachment process essential for the emotional security of children in the preschool years. 

I remember a family with their two pre-school children tell me once, that 'their time is for their children'! I felt moved by that statement. To be able to consider that parent's time is for children is a true mark of parenting instinct and calling!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Alterntives to screen time!

The above  photo of bird feeding at the feeding corner is a daily occurrence in our garden! It took about a month for the birds to feel secure to come and feed, after we started this practice  about a year ago. Now the birds come looking for food in the morning; in case we are late to fill the feeding bowls, they make loud calls from their perch in the courtyard. 

I wonder if parents of pre-school children can take an interest to introduce to them a habit of observing birds. If you leave a bowl of food wherever there is a space to accommodate visiting birds, the birds would come. One has to choose the food depending on the birds who normally visit the site. 

To have an activity of bird watching included in the routine of a pre-school child is desirable, to develop in them observational skills and attentive habit! 

It is almost a desperate need for many parents to look for alternative to screen time that pre-school children are used to now. 

I hope parents would commit themselves to protect pre-school children from prolonged screen time. From a daily habit of three to five hours, we need to reduce screen time to about an hour a week, each time not exceeding fifteen minutes. This ought to be co-watching time,  when one adult sits with the child to create a conversation about the scenes for a conversation later. 

The social, language and interactive skills of a pre-school child is enhanced by playful activities, which enlarge exploration and offer new experiences!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

The searching look!

This Imperial green Pigeon is a regular visitor to our garden when the nutmeg fruits are plenty in the trees. Now, that it is not the season for nutmeg fruits, the visit of the pigeon is only occasional. The above is the photo of one in the pair of pigeons. The other was behind, hidden in the foliage. 

The imperial pigeons feed on fruits, nuts and legumes. It's tilted neck indicated that it was intently searching for a nutmeg fruit as it was the tree that pigeons visited during the fruiting season. Its ability to see at a distance is one of its special features. 

The pigeons are often well groomed and have an aesthetic appearance. The green imperial pigeons live in forest areas and come to gardens searching for fruits. 

I remember showing to three pre-school children photos of different species of pigeons, sometime early this year. One question they asked me was, 'who combs them'?  What a searching question. They being used to be assisted by their mother to get ready, including grooming the hair, had a legitimate question when I pointed out the well groomed body of feathers of pigeons. 

I was fascinated by this question. It was a spontaneous question of a pre-school child. I realised that as adults such a question might appear redundant. A pre-school child is not used to have his or her groomed unless someone else did for him or her. These are like other first time questions that a pre-school child might ask. One child saw water pooled in the courtyard during rain. When the rain stopped the courtyard was dry. The pre-school child's question was, 'where did the water go'?

I feel encouraged when two years old or three years old children ask such questions as those questions are linked to their observation, thinking and enquiring process. 

The responsibility of adults towards pre-school children is to expose them to different experiences to stimulate them to observe, think and raise questions. When the adults can stay ready and the lead children to an observant habit, children would evolve to think  and ask questions. That is active learning, which would be natural to what we would like to see pre-school children develop. 

While reading from books or narrating experiences or sharing our observations to them would be necessary, it is of greater importance to turn our pre-school children to be thinkers and enquirers by making them to see, feel and experience. 

That is the way to turn our pre-school children to be original in thought and authentic in pursuit of making associations!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

A small start!

The two birds above, King fisher and Magpie robin are common birds in any garden. 

A father told me that his son of three years urges him every morning to look for birds. This started since he used to point out to him birds in the garden even when he was one and half years of age. Now he has become familiar with about thirty different birds and has his own collection of pictures of birds which his father took for him. They are on display in the bulletin board in the dining hall. This boy has a story to talk about them. When they have visitors for a meal, he shares something related to birds during the conversation, pointing to the birds on the board. 

When he gets time, he goes on his own to the book shelf and looks at the bird books. He carries a book of birds with him when he goes for a picnic or outing. His parents bought him a binocular for his third birthday. 

When many parents try to wean their pre-school children from viewing the TV for cartoon and comics, here is a good illustration of a three year old child getting spontaneously occupied with birds and their habitat, and behaviour. His question to his parents is: when will birds come to nest in their garden!

There are different ways that parents can introduce pre-school children to the environment. This boy is also interested in watching seeds sprout in the soil. He is a companion to his mother while she does some kitchen gardening. 

Getting a pre-school child interested in the happenings around the home is a good way of introducing activities that takes them in to different experiences and interests!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Promoting attentiveness !

A bird can be seen perched hidden and quiet for several minutes. Their instinct is to fly. But they balance it with still periods. 

Often parents raise a question as to how to sustain the attention of a pre-school child!

Most pre-school children grow up in a distracted home environment. In the earlier years when I grew up, most homes did not have a TV or a land phone. Today, the natural traction is towards the TV viewing in most homes, whenever there is free time. Each adult member of the family would have a mobile phone. The telephone conversations draw the attention of pre-school children. The homes run according to the rhythm of adults. It is only in few homes, I noticed a deliberate plan to make the environment child friendly when children are awake. 

We enhance the attention of pre-school children by engaging them to focus on activities which are good for promoting their understanding, interest, observational skills and interaction. 

Most pre-school children hold their attention, when they are involved in doing some paper craft, like drawing, colouring or make a scrap book; when they are read to from a picture book, when sung to along with their participation in actions, during narration of events in which they participated, or playing with toys to promote imagination and make-believe concepts....! These habits are to be regular and a few times during the day for the child to have a focus on what would generate an interest to hold his attention. 

Attention is a cognitive function. It is when a child is able to process a visual or auditory information, a child gives his attention by choice. 

Many parents who introduce the pre-school child to TV viewing is making a child passive by seeing the entertainment on the TV screen, which involves only transient attention on any scene as each scene is moving fast. We reduce them to be ultra short in attention by introducing them to visual screen in the TV or mobile phone in early childhood. 

Instead if we promote interactive play and promote observational and narrative skills, we promote the loop of comprehension- seeing, hearing, doing, feeling, processing, understanding, memory and recollection! This form of integrative learning does not take place unless parents and a pre-school child engage in joint activities of interest to children!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

A child's Corner!

Anna and I placed a root of a tree in our lawn, below which we kept a water bath. Since then we have birds coming for their drink. A small provision, but valuable for some birds who normally live around gardens. 

A small provision which parents can make for their pre-school child is  a Child's Corner at home. 

A child's corner consists of exploratory toys, books, art materials, colour pencils, soft toys for make belief play, and a Bulletin board to display drawings and  pictures which a child might would create. 

Let me a share a video link for parents look and get an idea about a Child's corner at home:

https://youtu.be/1e/ONrsUbwkA

The above video was edited and uploaded by Ms Shalini Shaji when she worked at the Developmental Paediatrics Unit at MOSC Medical College. 

A Child's Corner would help a pre-school child in five different ways:

It creates a physical space for a child to consider it as his own with a child's table and chair along with a cupboard. This gives him or her a sense of belonging. 

The Child's corner becomes an activity corner where a pre-school child spends his or her time. The older siblings also share this corner  for group activities. 

It is a corner to which parents also come to engage a pre-school child in play. The parent-child interaction takes place regularly as parents create time for interactive play.

Most pre-school children require a physical space to come back to and feel comfortable to be surrounded by interests that he or she is fond of. The rest of the house is often designed to meet the utilitarian needs of the family. 

The pre-school children get used to a routine from early childhood to play and work on their own space, which gives them a sense of stewardship. They grow up being responsible to things that they have. 

A Child's Corner is a space where a child expresses his or her identity!

A bird bath is a place a where a bird comes to routinely. 

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

The skill of observation!

For a pre-school child, watching this rose flower can be fascinating because it has shades of pink, drops of water on the petals, it is drooping and appears dissimilar to other flower in the garden. 

The sense of observation is an essential part of pre-school formation. Most children by about three years are ready to capture details of what they see or hear. 

The 'why' questions emerge during the conversations. Sometimes the 'why' questions are without clear answers and appear complex to simplify to the level of understanding of the child. 

A wise mother told me about her daughter who often watched her cook leading her to ask many 'why' questions. When the mother was asked, why their dog was brown in colour, she asked her daughter to point out to all the items in the kitchen with brown colour. That engaged her and made her move about to observe. 

Some children are verbal with their usual style of asking, which can be turned into a new learning experience. Her mother asked her daughter to bring the colour pencil set and scribbling pad and draw lines to find the different shades of brown. Following this she was asked to look around in the bed room for objects with shades of brown colour. 

What the mother sensed about her daughter was a significant observation. Her daughter would develop skills of observation, which was what was appropriate at her age rather than engage in repetitive why questions, at an age when her mind cannot comprehend the answers to all the 'why' questions. 

The difference between observation and perception for a pre-school child is that observation involves association. To perceive that an ambulance is usually white in colour needs an understanding that the  white colour has a symbolic meaning of 'peace'! But she can easily associate the white coloured ambulance with a cross, to be a vehicle meant to carry sick people to the hospital. It is that form of association, which is a prelude to developing perception or comprehension in the later years. 

When the mother read to her daughter about elephants, what struck her daughter was about its trunk. Her next question was, 'why their dog does not have a trunk'? The mother took out the encyclopaedia and showed how each animal has some common parts like eyes, ears, legs, but different parts like trunk, long tail or short tail, large body or small body. That went on to showing her pictures of birds to emphasise that they have wings and only two legs whereas, an elephant or a dog  have four legs. 

The sense of observation is an important pre-school skill, which parents can introduce to their pre-school child to find the similarities and dissimilarities of colour, shape, size or dimensions around them. 

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)