The Loten's sunbird was tunefully singing and an Egret was on its morning stroll in the field below! I watched this sight with a sense of wonder! Every time the Sunbird raised its bird call, the Egret stopped and remained still and moved forward slowly only in between the bird calls. It was a rhythm worth watching to sense the different silent rhythms in nature.
This was in my mind when Anna and I visited a family friend in the evening. We arrived at the home when their three years old son was on his play time in their garden. He had about an hour of exploration in their garden each evening, while one of the parents waited in the veranda to stay in his visual field. Every few minutes he would appear with a leaf or a stone, a feather, or the blade of the lawn grass! His parents took keen interest in what he brought and told him something about his collection. He usually placed the collection on the table and came back little later with another object. He continued this exploration while their dog lay in the corner watching the boy moving around in the garden.
When we were driving back home after our visit, what Anna and I recalled for our conversation was this rhythm we noticed between this child and his parents. Every time he came with something that he picked up, the parents had something to say to share about his surprise and reward his effort with words of appreciation and information about the object. This natural traction between a child and his parents was an insightful sight for us. How gratifying it is for a child to have this time for himself and have his parents respond to his enquiring mind with thoughts and suggestions.
This parenting role is an endearing experience for a pre-school child. For that family this is an evening rhythm of engagement which they do regularly for them to get to know the way their child is thinking, exploring and enlarging. Th conversation which started with a feather led to them pointing out birds perched in a tree! Then it led to show him a calendar hanging on their wall with pictures of birds! The boy's question was what do the birds eat! I saw first hand how the parents were practising and promoting child development by their interactive and engaging conversations!
The 'Third Parent' in most homes is the visual media of TV, mobile phone, home theatre, etc. I have parents who tell me that their pre-school child watches the media for 6 or more hours during the day. A sure way to silence a child and suppress the interactive instinct inherent in him ! In one home, the parents watch their favourite programme on the TV while their child plays on the mobile phone games or watch cartoons. This was their evening routine for months starting from the COVID season. At the end of two years, the family noticed that their three years old child uses less words and more actions to express himself. He cries in exasperation till the phone is given to him when he gets up in the morning, so much so the parents had to buy a smart phone for their three years old son!
The terrible phrase, that was popularised during the COVID season was 'social distancing' instead of just 'Physical distancing'! In fact what was necessary to popularise was 'social interaction' during the time when physical distancing was necessary to break the cycle of spread of infection.
We now live with a double disadvantage. We made our children grow up during the COVID season without the social interactiveness, which all pre-school children would need normally for their optimum child development. We introduced to them the visual media at a time when the development of their language skills needed human interface and interactive ambience.
Fifty percent of children I welcome at the Child Development Centre in the recent two years are those with communication disorders, where as, it was only twenty percent in the three years preceding 2019.
There is a rhythm in nature which birds follow as it happened with the waterbird pausing to listen to a Sunbird!
There is a rhythm of interaction between parents and pre-school children, which Anna and I noticed happening between a child and parents in the incident described above.
I hope parents will act decisively to restore the rhythm of child-parent communication and keep aside the visual media from dominating a pre-school child's world!
M.C.Mathew (text and photo)
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