The bees, ants, grass hoppers, spiders, beatles, bugs, wasp etc are other little beings that I come across in our garden.
Why is butterfly important! There are migrant and resident butterflies in a garden. The migrants come for nectar and the residents live their life cycle in the garden. I keep a watch on the Butterflies because they are normally present in a healthy garden, where chemical insecticides are not sprayed.
The dragon flies reside where there is grass and weeds carpeting the ground. They also live their life cycle in gardens or beside streams. They avoid paces where there are lots of bird movements as some birds hunt them for their food.
What is common between both of them is their quiet presence. You find them only when you look out for them. Theirs is unlike the birds who make their presence known through their bird calls and flight movements.
The Butterflies and Dragon flies do not have a protective cover, except in some public gardens, where a corner is dedicated to grow plants, which the butterflies thrive on during their breeding season.
The colours and designs which they provide on their body, often get noticed and photographers and artists make them as their subject of art.
They are small, but beautiful to the beholder's eyes.
They take care of themselves and add to the richness of a garden.
The little beings in our homes are the pre-school children. Yesterday, a Paediatrician in a meeting observed that pre-school children get attended at their homes by a third parent -the visual media! I have come across families who allow the pre-school children to watch entertainment in the TV or mobile phone, mostly cartoons or film songs, all the time when they are awake. They are fed while they watch the entertainment. The human interface of conversation, play, story telling, singing, etc are uncommon in many homes.
Are we subduing our children to a unhealthy quiet presence!
All pre-school children need social engagement, interactive play, outdoor activities, structured times of creative activities and exploration of the environment for them to grow in a sense of enquiry and observation. They do it by seeing, hearing, touching, sensing, and interacting. Parents are their immediate companions. Parents sometimes look out for parent substitutes. The media has become the third parent in many homes.
The Butterflies and the dragon flies thrive in a favourable environment!
I wonder whether our pre-school children have a favourable environment at home!
It is one time, when there is an exodus of families to overseas countries for better prospects socially and professionally. With both parents working in shifts, when one parent is with a pre-school child, the parent not being familiar to occupy a pre-school child creatively, yields to the lure of the visual media to occupy the child. That is how the distancing of a pre-school child from parents begins.
I happened to get an opinion from a specialist in pre-school children's TV programme. He told me that a lot of the cartoon series are fantasies, unreal situations like a rabbit driving a car, and sensationalised content to attract children stay glued to the programme. There are fights, violent scenes, heroic events, dangerous tricks and displays, etc.
What pre-school children need are language and communication skills, behavioural skills, social skill, pre-school skills of attention, observation, interaction and group activities, etc. The children's TV or mobile phone programmes are not directed towards them. The cartoon figures are so unreal that a preschool child at one or two years, get preoccupied with an unreal world and its ways, so much so some pre-school children speak and sing in simulating the cartoon language.
I wonder whether we would be earnest to restore pre-school childhood to a human interface of interaction, instead of the present pattern of a machine interface!
The pre-school child needs the interactive ambience of home and not a passive engagement with the visual media!
The pre-school child needs the protection of parents to grow socially, relationally and behaviourally!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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