Hi Googlies, 30/6/10

Praise Jesus! Thank you Mama Mary!

Sunday Mirror published an article of mine titled ‘No Presents Please’. Posting it today. Glenn forgot the pen-drive at office hence this is slightly delayed. If you like the art. n any other that I post pl. do forward it to your friends and colleagues.
Milagres, thank you for inspiring this recent article. The retreat has helped me immensely. Am practicing forgiveness as a daily dose of medicine for the soul and it is really working wonders for my spiritual health!
Maria, looking forward to the DVDs of your family and Baby’s christening. Next bday is Reuben’s. Won’t forget this time. So sorry for forgetting Kevin’s, really. Send my Arts to Reshma and Charmaine, ok?
Have decided 100% on home-schooling my smallies. We may movenext year to Old Goa to be close to Glenn’s office. All of us have told Glenn we want a house this time, not a flat. Children are making their list of animals that they wanna have. Sajla, guess the cow will come to our house instead of yours now! J
Have a blessed week ahead to everyone who is reading this mail.. Do write in and give me your views on the article.

From the heart,
Auriel.

NO PRESENTS PLEASE!

Some years ago, we received an invitation to a wedding of a close relative that ended thus: ‘No presents please!’ I gathered that the bride and groom alongwith their parents were saying in effect that ‘we’ were all they needed to make their celebration complete.
Recently, at a programme on child-rearing, I learnt that there are three things a child needs from conception to age seven:
1. Acknowledgement: When the child is conceived in love, it feels wanted. If the parents resent the pregnancy, the child in the womb senses this and feels abandoned. To acknowledge the child right from its moment of conception and to accept it as a gift from God no matter what the circumstances at the time of conception is very essential. This is difficult though when the mother has been raped or is ostracized because she is unwed. Such a woman would rather her child not live to bear the burden society puts on it. But if she understands that the child is innocent and has the right to live just as she does, she may accept it and this will give the child a sense of belonging.
When a child is born, the mother’s presence is very important right from the start. Nowadays, doctors allow the mother to suckle the newborn even before it is taken for a bath, which is a good practice because the baby has just gone through a stressful experience and needs its mother’s presence and reassurance to calm it down.
Women should consider the option of staying at home to nurture the child for the first seven years after birth. I know that most women enjoy working and, for some it is a necessity, but it is in the interest of your child that I make this appeal. When my eldest son was kept in a crèche so I could work, he told me one day that he hated the place because they made him sit in one place all the time and when he felt cold, he was too scared to ask for a blanket. This shook me up so much that I got my husband to adjust his office timings so our son could be at home with one parent all the time. Later, when we moved to Goa, I decided not to work as we had two boys and a third was on the way. Today, I can say with joy that I am happy to be a stay-at-home mother. The kids too are glad that I am there to wake them up, see them off to school and that I am at home to greet them when they return from school.
2. A listening ear: Parents are the best counsellors for their children, provided they know how to listen well. Often we hear the words that are spoken by our children and we react to them. We fail to read the non-verbal communication that is going on alongside. If parents learnt how to interpret this, a lot of the problems that they face with young children and even with teenagers could be resolved. Parental discipline should be administered with love, not as an assertion of one’s power over the child. Putting aside all work and looking at your child directly as he talks to you is a sign to the child that he is important in your life. Ask lots of questions if you are not sure what is being said. As parents, we do tend to assume a lot and understand so little. Get them to solve their own problem by carefully steering them to an appropriate choice so that they feel that the final decision made is theirs, not one imposed by you.
3. Lots of hugs: Apart from acknowledgement and a listening ear, lots of physical touch like hugs, kisses and cuddles are also important for the proper growth of your child. It is easy to cuddle a little baby, but do you cuddle and hug your seven-year-old? (Believe it or not, even my teenage son loves a hug now and then.) Hugs are the best way to say you are sorry when you’ve hurt their feelings or to say they are special when they’ve done something you approve of. A cuddle at night before they go to sleep will leave them with a sense of security as they drift off into Dreamland. Many parents make their small children sleep in a separate room from them. This can be very frightening for a small child, so its best to let them sleep with you until they volunteer to sleep in a separate room on their own. Allow your children to hug, kiss and cuddle you whenever they want to and see the difference it will make to you. (One night, after the rosary was over and we were blessing one another, my three-year-old daughter decided to give everyone a bonus kiss on the cheek. It really felt special.)
If spouses show love for each other in front of their children, it gives them a great sense of well-being. Just by sitting close to your spouse as you’ll watch TV together and, maybe, holding your wife around the shoulders as she snuggles into yours, tells the kids that Mum and Dad are doing OK. Children are very sensitive to feelings and moods; they may not say it, but they sense when parents have had a fight, even if it wasn’t in their presence. So it is important to show them that you are a team after the fight has been resolved. When siblings fight, get them to make up with hugs, cuddles and kisses.
Your children are precious gifts from a gracious God; they deserve nothing but the best. Give them your acknowledgement, a listening ear and lots of hugs so that they grow, bloom and bring fragrant peace to the world around them.


RTE: AN ACT OF CHILD LABOUR.

With a sinking feeling, I read the news that the working hours of schools may be increased to 45 hours per week. (page 5, Herald, 24 June, 2010). That sounds like one more hour a day of imprisonment for teachers and students alike.
A typical school day for an average child begins at 6 am. He is rushed through breakfast and toilet chores, dressed hurriedly for school and then driven at a dashing speed so he can enter the school premises before the warning bell is rung. For almost three hours at a stretch, he sits in one place as one teacher after another walks in, teaches and leaves. Then, for barely 15 minutes, with one eye on the clock, he gets to exercise his cramped muscles in the break. If the mid-day meal is served in those 15 minutes, all hope of getting even this exercise is lost. Then, once more, he has to sit in cramped conditions for another three hours before he is ‘released’. If anyone has seen children leave for home after school, it looks as if prisoners are being released from a jail. Is this the kind of life that a child from three-fourteen years of age is condemned to live?
And what exactly is done in school? The text is read, explained, answers written and rote-learned and some extra-curricular activities thrown in for good measure. Teachers, bogged down by completion of syllabi and corrections of books, have neither the time nor the energy to train all their students for these ‘extras’, so they choose a few ‘good’ ones while the vast majority is left by the wayside. The school prides itself on its trophies, shields and certificates and those who earn these prizes for the school are applauded.
If working hours are increased, the children would be imprisoned for another whole hour every day. Ask any child if he wants that and the answer will be a flat and empathic ‘No’. But who is concerned about the needs of children after all? They must be educated; the Right to Education demands this. Whether the means satisfy the ends or not, it doesn’t matter. The means cannot be altered so the sheep must be herded; the cattle brought in faithfully.
Parents ought to seek other options and one emerging on the horizon is HOME SCHOOLING! After all, the present generation of parents are an educated lot. Why can’t they teach their own children? If the government allows parents to prepare their children for examinations held periodically, home-schooling would enable parents to be teachers in the home. Activities like dramatics, dance, music, elocutions and debates could be organised in the school premises and sports could be conducted on the grounds on a regular basis for interested students. The home schooling programme presently prevalent in Goa prepares children to appear through the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), which has ‘a mission to provide relevant continuing education at school stage, up to pre-degree level through Open Learning system as an alternative to formal system.’ It provides opportunities to interested learners by making available the following Courses/Programmes of Study through open and distance learning (ODL) mode.
· Open Basic Education (OBE) Programme for 14+ years age group, adolescents and adults at A, B and C levels that are equivalent to classes III, V and VIII of the formal school system.
· Secondary Education Course
· Senior Secondary Education Course
· Vocational Education Courses/Programmes
· Life Enrichment Programmes.
In NIOS, one can choose the subjects that the child is comfortable learning to train him for these levels. For example, a child weak in Mathematics can drop it entirely; this option is not offered at the mainstream level. English and Hindi are offered at the SSCE level so those who find it difficult to cope with Konkani need not learn it. Parents can begin teaching their children at any age. The ideal age to begin reading and writing would be six years as against that of the formal system which prepares children at three years of age. A child can be taught at home by the play-way/ Montessori method from three to six years of age.
The advantages of home schooling is that children get personal attention and the strengths of each child can be enhanced. Children get closer to their parents when they spend more time with them. The financial costs of schooling is restricted to the purchase of text and note books only; no uniforms, shoes, bags, water-bottles, etc. Time-table is flexible; it can be geared to the child’s optimum level of attention. As the child learns at his own pace, stress on him is zero. Children do not have to be ‘reached’ to school so their safety and the transport expenses involved is avoided. Children with learning disorders thrive well in this system as they would be harassed and ridiculed in the mainstream school by teachers and classmates. One can incorporate many syllabi like CBSE and ICSE alongside SSC and use varied audio-visual aids at home, making learning a fun experience. Mainstream schools do not stress on moral values as much as they do academic performance, so with home-schooling, a parent can instill the right values right from the beginning.
The disadvantages of home schooling are lack of social interaction and lack of discipline. To overcome these two obstacles, parents have to make a significant effort to seek avenues where children are exposed to social activities in the community, religious institutions and support groups. Parents, themselves, need training on teaching methods, creating an environment conducive to learning, how to instil discipline and so on. As the children learn organisational skills and team work from interacting at various social events, there will be a more disciplined approach to life on the whole.
Home-schooling is a tremendous challenge for parents as one has to swim against the tide. Society questions such changes and tends to put down those who want to make a difference. The government needs to re-evaluate its RTE policy to include home-schooling for those who can effectively implement it. Today education has become a business of sorts; a stormy situation. Let us not be pulled in by its treacherous undercurrents, but learn to survive the tempest by seeking better options for our future generations. If any educational policy is child-centred, it can never go wrong.