Do you remember at least two of the main history lessons you learned in Grade 6? Or the molecular structure of ethyl alcohol that you chemistry teacher took so much pain to teach you in Grade 8? Or yet, the five kinds of Interrogative Pronoun that your English miss instilled in your teenage brain? I don’t, and I think most of you reading this dont either. The only knowledge from school that has stood me in good stead in my adult life is learning to read, write and count. Everything else, I mean literally everything else, has served me no purpose at all in my job search and career development.

But the way our primary school teachers and our parents put their whole being into ensuring that we did remember them – by means of tests, exams, grueling homework, and punishments – it did seem to us at that time that if we didnt remember those historical facts, dates, formulas, and grammatical technicalities, we were doomed for an adult life of failure in a rat-eat-cat world.

I regret to say this: most of those teachers who believed a student’s success lay in mastering schoolbook facts and formulas have continued to remain in the same station in their professional lives as they were when they taught us those now-forgotten lessons. How many of them have risen out of their current workpit to go on to become well-respected educationists in their community or country, or set up reputable institutions themselves? A very few have, but the overwhelming majority of them remained in their mediocre station in life, continuing to pass on quickly-forgotten knowledge each year to a new batch of young vulnerable minds.

It’s not just that what children learn in their schoolhood is forgotten within a few years after they bid farewell to their alma mater; many of the lessons they learn as immutable facts of life today become obsolete by the time they begin their lives as professionals. The grammar rules and language usage lessons become obsolete (the idiocy of English usage as taught in schools is one reason I have included the section ‘Change Your English, Change The World‘ in this website, for promoting reformation in this language), the methodologies and technologies are replaced with more innovative processes, insights and solutions that seemed so revolutionary and effective are condemned as inadequate and even dangerous as newer understanding is gained.

So what can you as a parent do to give your child a schoolhood that will continue to be an influential factor all his or her adult life? It’s a profound subject I will continue to cover in this site.

But let me say this now: above all else, instead of focusing on the knowledge that your child is forced to feed on in school today, put your whole mind into ensuring that he or she acquires a love of learning, and a desire and ability to acquire knowledge on their own.

You do it by leading them to interesting experiences; by spending time with them, not by just helping them do homework but by hobbying with them; by never rebuking them for missing facts in textbooks, but praising them for any skill or knowledge they gained on their own through your encouragement and guidance. That’s the supreme gift you can give them during their school days.

May your children whom you are now encouraging to love learning and acquire knowledge by themselves, fondly remember in their adulthood how wisely you had laid the foundation for them to not only acquire the knowledge and skills for their success in life, but more importantly, to gain the true understanding of how to be a great parent and spouse themselves.

Pappa Joseph

In all relationships, except one, you have to grow in love over the years. When a young man falls in love with a woman, that love is only a small fraction of the bond that he will have for her when she is his wife. In fact, their love for each other doesnt reach full bloom until years after they first met.

Frankly, when I fell in love with my wife, I sincerely believed I loved her so much I couldnt love her more. 35 years later we feel that our love in the first decade of our relationship was just a tiny grain of emotion compared to what we feel for each other now.

But that’s not how we feel about our children. We feel that we have always loved them to totality from the first day they entered our lives.

You see, parent’s love is instinctive. Especially mother’s. You dont have to teach a new mother how to love her child. The moment she beholds the pinkish piece of newborn life beside her, her whole being swells with tenderness and an overriding desire to protect her child at any cost. The love is full blown and complete from the very first day.

So Whoever placed that instinctive love within her, can certainly be expected to place within her the basics of caring for her child too.

A mother knows by instinct what’s best for her child in the core areas of the little one’s life. And if there are areas where she is not so knowledgeable about, her mother – the child’s grandma – pitches in with her own experience. That’s why grandparents should be such a vital part of parenting life.

Earlier generations of parents didn’t have a Baby & Child Care book to guide them, but they brought up a finer breed of citizens worldwide than what we generally come across today, despite the hosts of modern sychologists counseling them in every city.

I have seen, to the grief of my heart, pediatricians and childcare specialists strongly advising parents to condone certain habits in children (such as ‘playing’ with oneself), which if continued through the teen and young adulthood years, would surely turn their future marital relationship into a flaccid one.

I have mentioned this incident in another message, but let me narrate it again. At a recent parenting forum, a female child sychologist representing a highly esteemed child counsel center explained that an adolescent releasing his sexual tension was like a person soothing the area where a mosquito bit him. It is natural and not to be discouraged, she advised. One mother, who was sitting beside me, on hearing this, exclaimed, ‘What nonsense!’. Thank God for the maternal instinct.

These experts are excellent when prescribing what’s best for your child’s colic or fever, but oftentimes proffer deadly advice when it comes to your family’s moral values. There are exceptions of course, as rare as white ravens. If you know of such exceptional counselors anywhere, do let me know, and I will promote their services free through this website. They deserve it, being such a rare breed in their profession.

So when it comes to the essentials of caring for your child, trust your instincts more than the worldly counsel of child specialists. Heed their medical counsel as long as you innately know it doesn’t conflict with your Nature-given maternal feelings.

I hope that you, in choosing a parenting counselor for yourself, will find one who believes there are spiritual laws that supersede all the teachings they have acquired from the world’s materialistic, Creator-denying universities.

Pappa Joseph

The wonder years of a child are those years in his life when everything new he encounters is a wonder experience for him. A new object, a new face, a new place, a new shape…the child is wholly fascinated by the sight, sound and feel of it. The wonder years starts from the time he is able to perceive the world around him – which he could from infancy – to about the beginning of the teen years. At teenage, the boy or girl enters another phase of life when they begin to discover the wonders of puberty and teenhood, and their wonderment at natural phenomena wanes.

The parent who uses the precious wonder years to guide and enhance their child’s fresh experiences of the world lays an excellent foundation for their son or daughter to continue enjoying the wonders of life and nature beyond childhood and into adulthood.

A sense of wonderment along with a sense of keen humor (not to be confused with the ability to be humorous) is among life’s very special blessings for those who have them. These two dispositions make one’s daily living colorful and cheerful. There is no room for boredom or monotony for the person who never ceases to wonder at God’s creation being replayed daily in nature’s various phenomena. Every time he beholds a new flower or scents a new fragrance, his sense of astonishment at the marvel of creation swamps his heart and he can’t help but burst out in praises to God for yet another amazing facet of his handiworks.

I have already mentioned in my book on parenting (see books section) about the benefits of exposing even the child in the womb to positive external stimuli by mom exposing herself to pleasant experiences during pregnancy.

When the child is born and his eyes and ears slowly learn to focus on objects and sounds, put colorful objects within sight of the baby. Beautiful music, melodious and uplifting, may be played for a little while in the background when the child is awake and in a playful mood. Don’t play music continually, or too often in a day, for music heard too long can be torturous even to adult ears.

When the child is old enough to handle objects, place childsafe objects of different shapes and colors within his reach.

Take your baby outdoors at least once daily, if possible. If there’s a park nearby, walk under the trees and among the plants and let your offspring’s eyes soak in the wonders around him. Point out a new creature – a cat, a bug, a bird. Show leaves and flowers at close quarters, so baby can learn to observe the marvel of design in nature.

As the child grows older, the parent should provide opportunities for his or her sense of wonderment to grow correspondingly in diversity and intensity. The mere color and shape of a leaf gives way to the sheer diversity of the plant kingdom. Simple handling of objects now becomes nimble molding of shapes with clay or sand. Generic music listening advances to specific musical preferences.

When your child is about three or four, take him on your shoulders outside the house on a star-spangled night. And there in the dark, point to the constellations above and show him for the first time in his life the twinkling wonders.

In the years my two sons and my daughter were growing up from childhood to teenhood before my very eyes, I have never got back the opportunity to speak to them the words that I had postponed speaking to them; I never once got back the opportunity to touch and hold their hands when I had thought I would hold them a little later when I was just done with a particular urgent work I was doing then; in all those years of parenting my children, I never once got back the chance to look again at the same facial expressions which longed to have my attention and speak to me.

Oh, yes, I did get the chance to speak and touch, and see many facial expressions at other times. But the ones I missed were unique. I long for them now, but I know I have lost them forever.

If I were a young parent again, every time my little child’s head pops up at my desk, while I am deeply engrossed in an important project work, instead of telling him I cannot come with him now to see that butterfly he discovered, I will sleep my computer and rush out with my five-year old child to see that new wonder in his life.

These wonder years in your child, this fascination in his eyes for everything you show him, or do with him, alas, lasts for so short a time that even before you could provide a fraction of the wonder experiences you had initially planned for your child, the years are forever gone, and you have now a self-willed tween staring back at you and wanting to go his or her own way.

The wonder years are so fleeting you need special help from God to fully redeem these years. Therefore, before your child’s wandering years begin, and your wondering time starts, may God help you to redeem every single day of the wonder years with your little son or daughter.

Pappa Joseph

From almost the day of their birth until they are finally freed from their physical shackles sometime in their late teens, children’s bodies are confined by their parents within products or environments that do much harm to their overall development. This has such serious impact on our children’s future lives that I wonder why medical and educational authorities are not shouting this fact aloud from the hospital and school rooftops to every parent.

When the child is a just-born infant, what do the hospitals do? They immediately swathe the child in a pink or blue sheet of flannel that leave only her face exposed to the world. And the smothered infant fares no better when she is taken home.

Research shows that infants are put in movement restricting things – chairs, carriers, car seats, and the like – for over 60 waking hours a week…with serious consequence for their motor and cognitive development! As to how serious these consequences are, I urge you to read the eye-opening article ‘Containerized Infants: How Products are Affecting Our Babies’ Brains‘ by Rae Pica, reprinted in this section.

A related issue is co-sleeping with our children. Again, from their infancy, modern mothers are unintentionally pushing away their kids from their lives, when, on the other hand, Nature endowed them with the basic need to cling to their parents.

Modern culture encourages us to ‘sleep teach’ our children by placing them in a separate bed and even a separate room, so that they’ll learn to sleep on their own. But as a wise doctor wrote, ‘This generation of mothers labors under the dubious pronouncement that babies sleep best in isolation. Every infant knows better. His protest at nocturnal solitude contains the wisdom of millennia.’ (Thomas Lewis, MD, ‘A General Theory of Love’).

Sleep teaching our children in their tender age is one root cause for the growing phenomenon of the breakup of extended families (especially grandparents) and the advent of single-family dwellings.

I close by repeating the words of Verna Mae Sloan, a mother and grandmother:

‘How can you expect to hold onto them in life if you begin by pushing them away?’

Pappa Joseph

Courtesy: Chloe – chloe004 – flickr.com

Besides the fact that they were built to do so, there are a great many reasons why infants need to move. The truth is, even though their movement capabilities are extremely limited when compared with even those of a toddler, movement experiences may be more important for infants than for children of any other age group. And it’s not all about motor development either.

Thanks to new insights in brain research, we now know that early movement experiences are considered essential to the neural stimulation (the ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ principle involved in the keeping or pruning of brain cells) needed for healthy brain development.

Not long ago, neuroscientists believed that the structure of a human brain was genetically determined at birth. They now realize that although the main ‘circuits’ are ‘prewired’ (for such functions as breathing and the heartbeat), the experiences that fill each child’s days are what actually determine the brain’s ultimate design and the nature and extent of that child’s adult capabilities.

An infant’s brain, it turns out, is chock-full of brain cells (neurons) at birth. (In fact, a one-pound fetus already has 100 billion of them!) Over time, each of these brain cells can form as many as 15,000 connections (synapses) with other brain cells. And it is during the first three years of life that most of these connections are made. Synapses not used often enough are eliminated. On the other hand, those synapses that have been activated by repeated early experiences tend to become permanent. And it appears that physical activity and play during early childhood have a vital role in the sensory and physiological stimulation that results in more synapses.

Neurophysiologist Carla Hannaford, in her excellent book, Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All in Your Head, states: ‘Physical movement, from earliest infancy and throughout our lives, plays an important role in the creation of nerve cell networks which are actually the essence of learning.’

She then goes on to relate how movement, because it activates the neural wiring throughout the body, makes the entire body — not just the brain — the instrument of learning.

Gross and fine motor skills are learned through repetition as well — both by virtue of being practiced and because repetition lays down patterns in the brain. Although it hasnt been clearly determined that such early movements as kicking, waving the arms, and rocking on hands and knees are ‘practice’ for later, more advanced motor skills, it’s believed that they are indeed part of a process of neurological maturation needed for the control of motor skills. In other words, these spontaneous actions prepare the child – physically and neurologically – to later perform more complex, voluntary actions.

Then, once the child is performing voluntary actions (for example, rolling over, creeping, and walking), the circle completes itself, as these skills provide both glucose (the brain’s primary source of energy) and blood flow (‘food’) to the brain, in all likelihood increasing neuronal connections.

According to Rebecca Anne Bailey and Elsie Carter Burton, authors of The Dynamic Self: Activities to Enhance Infant Development, whenever babies move any part of their bodies, there exists the potential for two different kinds of learning to occur: learning to move and moving to learn. Still, recent evidence indicates that infants are spending upward of 60 waking hours a week in things – high chairs, carriers, car seats, and the like!

The reasons for this trend are varied. Part of the problem is that more and more infants are being placed in childcare centers, where there may not be enough space to let babies roam the floor. Or, given the number of infants enrolled, there may be little opportunity for caregivers to spend one-on-one time with each baby. This means, in the morning, an infant is typically fed, dressed, and then carried to the automobile, where she’s placed in a car seat. She’s then carried into the childcare center, where she may spend much of her time in a crib or playpen. At the end of the day, she’s picked up, placed again into the car seat, and carried back into the house, where she’s fed, bathed, and put to bed.

Even when parents are home with baby, they seem to be busier than ever these days. Who has time to get on the floor and creep around with a child? Besides, with today’s emphasis on being productive, playing with a baby would seem almost a guilty pleasure! And if the baby seems happy and safe in a seat placed conveniently in front of the TV, in a bouncer hung in a doorway, or cruising about in a walker, then what’s the harm? It’s a win/win situation, isn’t it?

In fact, it isn’t. Being confined (as one colleague says: ‘containerized’) affects a baby’s personality; they need to be held. It may also have serious consequences for the child’s motor – and cognitive – development.

Other trends in today’s society having an impact on infants’ opportunities to move are the inclination to restrict, rather than encourage, freedom of movement and the misguided belief that early academic instruction will result in superbabies. (In 1999, 770,000 copies of infant software – ‘lapware’ – were sold!)

Humans are meant to move and play. The inclination – the need – is hardwired into them. Babies, in fact, spend nearly half of their waking time – 40% – doing things like kicking, bouncing, and waving their arms. And while it may appear all this activity is just for the sake of moving, it’s important to realize a baby is never ‘just moving’ or ‘just playing’. Every action extends the child’s development in some way.

Rae Pica has been an early childhood education consultant, specializing in children’s physical activity, since 1980. A former adjunct instructor with the University of New Hampshire, she is the founder and director of Moving & Learning and the author of 18 books, including the text Experiences in Movement and Music (now in its 5th edition), the award-winning Great Games for Young Children and Jump into Literacy, and A Running Start: How Play, Physical Activity, and Free Time Create a Successful Child, written for the parents of children birth to age five. Her website: www.raepica.com