Read first All About Good Parenting Part 1 here
For the past few days, if you had not noticed, the weather had not been that good – the day had been rather hazy and the nights has been warm and very sweaty. Can you imagine – I was sweating profusely eventhough I was pouring buckets of cold water onto myself. It was that bad. And as if that was not enough, I caught cold and started to cough and it got worse day by day.
One day I woke up, feeling like someone was sitting on my chest and I could not breathe properly. The chest felt heavy and I did not have a good appetite in the morning as well. I went to see the doctor and after registration, I was waiting for the nurse to call me in to see the doctor.
I was coughing almost nonstop and it did not take long for the doctor to come out and told me that sounded very bad. I was put on nebuliser for 30 minutes and despite taking a “crash course” tablets in the doctor’s room – I did not see my improvement. I was given the day off on medical leave and it took me another 2 days for the “burden” on the chest to subside to some extent. And 1 week thereafter I still have not recovered from the bad cough but it is improving, so I think so.
Anyway take a good look at the picture above and tell me what is grossly wrong with this picture – I got this from one of the Facebook shares much earlier but my thoughts even back then was that why this person endangering young kids and further riding around without any helmet for the kids.
And as if my worst fear becomes a reality, I was sending my kid to school one morning – it was about 6.20 in the morning and the traffic was already bad. As I inches on the fast lane, I noticed on the slow lane, a motorcyclist with a school girl at the back and the school girl was not wearing any helmet. Just then another bike overtook them and caused this motorcyclist with the school girl to fall down. For a moment, my heart stopped when I saw the school girl fell on the tarmac.
Not sure if she had hit her head on the hard, cold tarmac but she immediately stood up. Thank God for the heavy traffic in the morning – there was no speeding car that would have hit both the mother and the daughter into smithereens. It almost ended up as a very tragic morning.
The first obligation for any parents would be the utmost safety of their children. Having kids riding motorcycles without any helmets is a bad, riding around without proper attention to the surrounding traffic attracts the same. And now with the heat wave in place, there are greater calls to parents to keep a close eye on the kids in the car. There have been too many cases of parents leaving their kids in the car and completely forgetting about them. There is just too many unnecessary deaths to contend with.
The second obligation would be education for their children.
In the beginning, it can start with education on the aspects of safety – simple things like wearing a seat belt when in a car, the right way to cross the road, how to hold hands when walking in a crowd, how to hold something sharp like a scissors, how not to run around in the house, how to hold something that is hot, etc. Kids must always be taught to recognise potential danger and how to deal with that dangerous situation.
Be paranoid if you need to be and think of all the possible ways of your kids can get injured and do something to mitigate them.
One of the earliest form of safety education was for them to wear a seat belt whenever we are in the car and they know that we are not go anywhere until everyone had been buckled down. God knows how many times I got a shock seeing kids jumping in the car as the driver is speeding over 100 km/h. I wish I could shout and alert the driver but it seemed to be a futile effort.
The other aspect of education that all parents need to ensure is teaching the right things – what is right & wrong in general sense. The issue of morality and what is right & wrong is something personal and is a very subjective. That one I would leave it to the individual parents but it is an education that must take place in the end.
Personally I must admit that no one out there that is perfect and we all have some form of shortcomings one way or another. Education to my kids takes a mix form – from leading by example, “case study”, motivation & counseling and reflection of the mistakes & errors done in the past and what can be done to avoid the same in the future. And trust me, we adults have plenty to learn from innocent children as well and this strengthen our bonding. We learn from each other as we see things from different spectrum – experience vs innocence.
Academic education is essential for one’s future, no doubt but how & where one gets his / her academic education will be something that one need to decide when the time is right. Ambitions, opportunities and interests changes all the time – I know – I once wanted to be a fire-fighter but ended up something else.
Give a thought – after all, nothing is more important than the well-being of our kids