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Welcome guide to effective parenting If it's tough being a child in today's competitive environment, it is tougher raising children without stress and anxiety. Two books can help hassled parents to negotiate their way through parenting
With parents grappling to take stock of the situation, help from any quarter is most welcome. They are making a beeline for counsellors and therapists. But wouldn't the help be of more use if we could avoid such a situation in the first place. Indiana publishers have taken the initiative to bring two such prolific books to the fore. Raising Gifted Kids by Barbara Klein tackles the oft-ignored issue of dealing with kids who are blessed with intelligence higher than the average kids. She has a Ph.D and is a renowned expert in child development. Diane Peters Mayer deals with the stress that children toady face in their day-to-day life in Overcoming School Anxiety. She has been a psychotherapist for more than 17 years. She specialises in dealing with anxiety disorders, panic attacks and school anxiety.
The central theme of both the books is to nurture and help the child to enable him to achieve his full potential. Klein deals with the category of kids who are gifted. Though every parent dreams of having such a child and at a certain level believes that his child is indeed special, it is difficult to bring up such a child without any guidance. For starters, apart from the usual tests that determine and affirm that your child is special, Klein gives pointers, including behaviour traits, of such children. Once it has been established, she guides you through a series of issues that have been addressed quoting examples from real life. She is resentful about the usual approach of "dumbing down" gifted children to make them follow the pace of other children. She advocates the need to recognise their special educational needs and provide guidance to them. The importance of consistency in your approach in dealing with your child and understanding his dilemma in a world that fails to value their pace is greatly stressed.
There is also the problem of schools labelling such children as trouble-makers, attention-seekers and inattentive. Most of the times the problem lies with the school for not being able to make necessary changes for a child who is bored in class and finds it dull. In India, this problem is compounded with little or no interest in taking care of needs of gifted children. She advises parents not to try to achieve perfection with your child and that being "good enough" is alright. Such kids tend to be perfectionists and need to be made aware that being fallible is a part of life. There should be emphasis on striking a balance between pursuing knowledge and socialising. Not just for the gifted child, the book is helpful for any parent looking to develop their child's prospects. Mayer teaches parents how to help their child deal with separation, tests, bullies, homework, anxieties and phobias. Every child is different and so are his ways of reacting to various stressful situations. She gives a detailed list of the ways in which various stresses and anxieties can manifest themselves. Not only that she gives a set of exercises and remedies for all these problems and explains each of them with appropriate examples. She gives great importance to finding out the reason for something that we might think of as trivial but is causing the child great anxiety, such as going to school, taking a test, etc. Creating mock situations could also help in identifying the problem and also in alleviating stress. With guidance for something like homework anxiety, it is indeed a book every parent could do with. It identifies situations that we tend to dismiss as normal school behaviour and addresses it before it snowballs into something more serious. Like Klein, Mayer also stresses the importance of making mistakes and understanding that they are normal. She details exercises to increase a child's self-esteem which could work wonders for him. There is also a section to help the child understand difficult issues like divorce and death. Both the books have been written keeping in mind that the best way to explain any situation is through examples. There are problems that have been identified and easy-to-apply solutions have also been given. The language is conversational and tips are practical. Both books aptly tackle the issues they set out to deal with; in all, enjoyable and definitely helpful.
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Childhood
is touted as the most stress-free period of anyone's life. Try being a
child in today's world and you shall do a double take. Unrealistic
parental expectations, mounting peer pressure, competitive school
curriculums and a race to surpass everyone, are taking their toll on the
children. They are plagued by problems unknown to occur at this age.
