From conception, the mother begins to play her role somewhat naturally. However, the natural attachment has tended to cause the mother to neglect proper information that will help make her a better parent. The foremost being that her role in proper upbringing of the child is complementary notwithstanding how naturally attached the child has been to her. Unless she knows that God made it so she will engage in rivalry with the husband for the leadership in the house. This rivalry as a result of ignorance of her proper role will cause her to engage in undue protection of the child from the father's influence hence fracturing the child's proper development. In fact, a child so shielded by the mother from the father's proper influence in his early years of development can easily be spotted out there in the society due to character deficiency. What then is the proper role of the mother in the upbringing of the child?
Now, the mother should concentrate on the natural roles and submit to complementing the husband's primary role as the child's real mentor.
She must keep in proper physical shape and observe all health rules right from conception. She must begin relating to the child as a person even when the child is yet in her womb! Her moods must be more positive than negative as the child benefits from the positive while it suffers when the mood is negative. Proper hygiene is paramount. Proper diets are essential to allow for the proper physical development of the child. Proper exercise and all that the nurses and doctors teach pregnant women during antenatal outings must be strictly observed.
As much as it is affordable and convenient, the mother must attend a well equipped hospital with experienced doctors, nurses and midwives both for antenatal sessions and the delivery of the baby, as well as postnatal attention.
The baby must be welcomed with loving care at birth and breast-fed.
Breast-feeding must not be compromised for any other formula. The negative effects of formula-feeding of children have become obvious to society now more than ever before. The benefits of exclusive breast-feeding are also obvious to many in society today thanks to the efforts of many baby-friendly hospitals and maternities.
The mother must begin verbal communication with the child immediately following birth, to enable the child develop proper responses and abilities that will be useful in later years of development.
This is not to be confused with the fact that the baby sees more than he hears. The mother must make positive gestures and moods abundant around the baby. Negative moods and gestures should be reserved for disapprovals when attempting to discipline the child.
Discipline might ring a bell to a surprised mother now. Yet, this is the core responsibility of parents because the child's development of necessary character traits actually depends, to a large extent, on the amount and type of disciplinary measures available to the child in his formative years, especially ages one to three and including up to age five. Yes, discipline begins from day one of birth! How it is to be administered is dependent on the child's tenderness and age of development. Discipline is a form of communication.
For communication to be effective it has to be two-way in nature. How then can the mother communicate with her child when the child has not began to talk meaningfully? The child's basic way of communication is crying and at times smiling or outright laughing. It is the duty of the child's mother to understand the meaning of each crying of the child. Discomfort that causes the child to cry must be identified and promptly removed. On the other hand, conditions that make the baby happy should be sustained and repeated as often as necessary. It is not easy to stop a baby's cry by simply hushing them while the discomforting sensation remains with them. This is usually when most mothers get frustrated and resentful. Yet a little attention can give the rather angry mother the clue for a discomforting sensation being experienced by the baby like hunger, itching, wetness of the diapers, looming sleep, pain due to a fall which was not observed at the time it happened, fearful condition etc.
Discipline as a form of communication can take place any time the child engages something that is dangerous for him or others, or unacceptable as a behavioral trait, or something that pains someone else. From a disapproving frown, verbal warning followed by a positive instruction to spanking the child if the instruction is usually ignored by the child, disciplinary measures should be gradually intensified until the child stops the negative action. Note that the disciplinary measure should be sustained until the child drops the unacceptable behavior.
Never give a disciplinary measure you are not ready to sustain in order to achieve the desired result. Like disciplinary measure, like instruction, never give it unless you are able and ready to follow it through. And, for goodness' sake, keep all instructions positive. A child does not have the capacity to interpret the instruction as you think. The child reacts to negative instructions as a challenge or outright invitation to adventure! Parents must come to grips with this mysterious revelation. Positive instructions like "stop", "come here", "drop it", "give me", "run away", "stay there", "go there", "wait for me", "greet me", "say thank you", and so on, actually work like magic on the child. Fortunately, a child that is used to positive instructions in his formative years usually develops the virtue of obedience as a result.
Although the father shares the major needs of the child with respect to the necessities of life the child’s mother has the immediate responsibility of taking the first steps in relation to all these basic roles as outlined in this discussion. For instance, the provision of nourishment for the child actually begins with the mother even by the time the child is yet in the mother’s womb. Likewise, any other need of the child you may consider. Perhaps this is why most people have come to believe that the training of the child is the exclusive responsibility of the mother. Hence, mothers are often erroneously criticized for the behavioral deviations of their children. We have to determine the proper role of the mother in the child’s upbringing. From the onset of pregnancy, the mother should relate to the child in terms of provision of proper food, physique, psychology, emotions, and environment both inside and outside her womb. This is because the mother’s choice of food, physique, psychology, emotions, spirituality, and social environment definitely has direct bearing on the child. This is why mothers are usually advised to enroll for ante-natal services in well-equipped hospitals where well-trained doctors and nurses are available. Details of what constitutes proper aspects of the above-mentioned are beyond the scope of this handbook. From birth the mother is advised to breast-feed the child exclusively, although clean boiled-and-cooled water may be given, until the age of six months at the least. From this experience discipline would deliberately be inculcated on the child. Those times the child bites the mother as it breastfeeds present wonderful opportunities for disciplinary measures to commence. There should be no room for negative actions or attitudes at this time. A frown, a word of notice and warning, a spank if the child’s negative behavior is continued will be proper in progression of the actual breast-feeding process. There should be no room for retaliation or boycott as a response to the child’s biting. That would amount to aggression from the child’s perception! And the child would as a result of the confusion insist on the original behavior. Parents should note that disciplinary measures must be applied in love if they are to achieve positive results. This point must be stressed at this initial stage of child training as it will determine whether the discipline of the child would work out positively or rather negatively. Why begin with the negative behaviors of the child? One may curiously ask. Yes, this is the fundamental point of interest in human behavior. From the spiritual perspective of life, we learnt that since the so-called fall of man, humans have assumed a negative pattern of life known as Natural Bent. Hence, there is the need for parents to be able to differentiate willful bad behavior from behaviors resulting from natural bent. Discipline should be applied to correct both. However, the approach must be different for each as the cause is deciphered. And the parent must allow time to work on bad behaviors resulting from the natural bent while at the same time limit the continuation of willful bad behavior by insisting on the child’s obedience to any instruction meant to correct any such willful bad behavior.
This leads us to another crucial point: parents must insist on the obedience of the child to any and every instruction. The corollary: parents must not give the child any instruction they are not ready to insist on its obedience by the child! This information is so fundamental to the ability of the child to learn obedience which is a point of discussion in the chapter dealing with what to teach the child, elsewhere in this handbook. So far, we have established that the mother naturally has the initial opportunity to administer discipline to the child. That love is an important ingredient for the inculcation of discipline on the child. And instructions must be followed through until obeyed by the child. Otherwise such instructions must not be given. This requirement of love as a necessary ingredient of discipline is not a difficult one for a mother as there is a natural attachment of the child to the mother which makes it very achievable. However, mothers actually misplace love for pampering at this stage and would neglect the necessary instructions. All in the name of loving the child, they also appear to feel that the negative natural bent should not be corrected since everyone is affected and this one is a child known for their innocence and would learn to behave well later in life! Yet any parent that wants to have peace in the latter part of the child’s life must be serious about this crucial issue of discipline and learn this time-tested method of achieving it in the life of any child. There should be no room for such permissiveness. From biting the mother’s breast to crying often the child’s cry must be investigated each time as this is the child’s only way of communicating verbally. A child’s cry normally stops as soon as the cause of discomfort is identified and attended to in a manner that soothes the child’s need. Hence, the mother should avoid getting frustrated as a result of the child’s cry and rather learn to investigate, identify and attend to a child’s source of discomfort whenever the child is crying. There should be no room for negligence or frustration with regard to a child’s cry. Crying is actually the only verbal means of communication known to the child at this very tender stage of life. For example, a child cries whenever he is hungry. Once he gets food especially breast milk he sleeps off. The child cries whenever he wets his inner wrappings. He stops as soon as he is undressed, cleaned and given dry wrappings. If crying is continued after all observable stimuli are attended to, then, it could be a pointer to sickness and a medical observation is needed at that point. Like crying, the sickness disappears quickly as soon as the right cause is identified and treated properly. A lingering sickness points to a wrong or improper diagnosis and/or treatment. Parents should take note of this. Most childhood sicknesses have fever as symptom, hence, treating the symptom with the wrong prescription would normally cause the sickness to linger or deteriorate. Whereas treating the symptom with the proper prescription would find the sickness disappearing almost instantly. This is why wise health workers always advise for laboratory tests before prescriptions are obtained and administered.
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