Holistic Approach – Even though in India academics is a top priority for parents, there has been a lot of change and parents and even schools are taking the holistic approach of concentrating not only on academic excellence but areas of interest of the child and fostering the same.

Anxiety is normal – Present-day, people are able to understand that it is okay to be anxious, it is normal. Be it adults or kids, everyone is prone to anxiety. A survey in Australia proved that one in seven kids within the age group of 4-18 years having mental health conditions, obviously anxiety is there. People and Parents are accepting this, talking about it and ways to handle the same.

The Technology Effect – Technology has transformed life and has become an integral part of everyone’s lives today. With the pro, there comes the con, that includes its effects on children in terms of over usage or addiction, abuse and more. In 2019, people and parents alike are talking about dealing with the technology cons and balancing the family time and tech time with an objective of using technology for personal enrichment, not entertainment only.

Extra-Curricular Activities – From the beginning of time, to say, academics has always topped the priority list of parents. But, now times are changing and extra-curricular activities could just turn out to be a passion for your kid, a stress buster or rejuvenator for that matter and help in the overall wellbeing as well. Parents are paying attention to extra-curricular activities as much as they do to academics.

Meaningful Conversations – The only way to establish a connection with your child, a bond and friendship is to converse. Meaningful conversations with parents can help children outgrow their anxiety, fears and more. Be it at the meal – table or while indulging into extra-curricular activities inside or outside the house or just having fun, meaningful conversations can work like magic.

With time, the only constant is change, and we need to learn to change. It applies to parenting too and the trends are a harbinger of the same. Well, that’s good news.

*Sourced from Internet

The parent-teacher association of Vydehi School of Excellence is an active body of the School. Every parent and teacher is a member of the association, as VSE strongly believes that parents and teachers must work together with children to improve the quality of education.

Well, parenting a child with special needs is an uphill task. But, with school and community support can be managed in a better way in urban areas. The task becomes really steep when you are in rural or remote areas and it’s not easy for the parents or children. There are a lot more problems that hinder the quality of life and development of children with special needs in rural areas. Here’s a look through some of the main challenges that children with special needs in a rural setting have to face –

Lack of Individual attention – This is one of the most common challenges faced by children with special needs. Obviously, schools with a larger setup have more resources including special education aids that help teachers and special educators work around with special children. While working in rural setups with lack of infrastructure and resources, it is not possible to work with every special child on an individual basis.

Lack of Staff – As rural setups of schools are in remote areas, bringing in professional staff isn’t easy. Staying in such places is rarely a preferred choice. In cities professionals have their own social life at the end of the day or week where they hang out with friends, watch movies together, feel rejuvenated get ready for the next day. But, that’s not the case in rural areas leading to teachers and staff feeling isolated or lonely. Hence, there is scarcity of staff and the existing ones have to shuffle across multiple locations making it exhaustive for them as well.

Lack of Training – A special education needs to be dealt with multiple disabilities at a time. At remote locations, it becomes tougher to deal with it and hence, training the teachers for managing this task properly individual training programs need to be implemented.

Parental Support – Some parents, particularly in rural areas are ignorant about special needs and at times not interested as well in providing the needed support to them. On the flip side, even overtly caring parents can make it difficult for the teachers and educators to work around these children. But, adequate parental support can help make the life of a child with special needs much better and help the kids bloom to their fullest.

Low Packages – While teachers are given good packages in many good schools, specials educators are not paid the same comparatively, while their task is much tougher because they are already dealing with kids who need additional support with learning. This also is a factor that is resulting in scarcity of special educator jobs.

*Sourced from the Internet

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But, there are people who are well aware of the need of books for this huge chunk of children that amounts to over 2 million between the age group of 0 to 6 years. Obviously, the population is more in rural India compared to urban India mainly due to lack of infrastructure. One such initiative by the Tata Trust is the Parag initiative. The objective of this project is to work with Indian authors and publish books on children with special needs. As per one of the project heads, their objective was not only to work around creating books for kids with special needs but in a way that it feels as if the books are for any other child on earth. They had apparently read some books, which depicted kids with special needs in a heroic manner and whatever they do as magical is what they did not want. They wanted to share good stories but not emphasizing on disabilities. The Parag project also happened to create a contest for the same alongside wherein they received over 120 entries and published four out of them. Their criteria on judging the books was primarily the entertainment value besides that these stories are not judgmental about children with special needs. The author of the book Simply Nanju, Zainab Sulaiman said that the trend was slowly seeping in peoples mind and more authors are coming out with stories that are about children with special needs but not with the tag of being special.

Here are snippets into few books published by Duckbill publishers around children with special needs

Simply Nanju – Authored by Zainab Sulaiman, this book is a story of a little boy called Nanju with spinal defect. He studies in a school for children with special needs and is on a mission to find out who in his school are trying to steal and tear pages from notebooks for class toppers. So, though this story weaves around a boy with special needs is about handling bullying and pressures from peers as school like another normal school.

Vibhuti Cat –Written by Shikhandin, this book is about a boy called Magesh who talks less due to communication skills issues but is focused and good at art. How he carves out his own path through art and particularly drawing pictures of cats.

These are just two examples

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*Sourced from the Internet

How to figure out whether the child is depressed, is a common question for parents. Here are few tips to help you know whether your child is caught in the depression trap.

Self Esteem Issues– Children suffering from depression might experience intense feelings of unworthiness, ugliness, shame, and failure.

Internet/ Phone Addiction – To distract themselves from depression, children may stay online extensively or may be addicted to mobile phone games. But they themselves aren’t aware that in fact, this addiction could further lead to isolation.

Unacceptable Behavior – Children with depression might exhibit reckless behavior like speeding, unsafe sex, excessive drinking, but to name a few.

Issues at School – Depression can lead to issues like poor attendance in school, feeling aloof, frustration with school-related work, drop in grades and more.

Violence – This issue is more rampant in boys suffering from depression. They turn aggressive, violent and self-harm themselves, besides showing disorders around eating.

Here are a few more symptoms that are common among depressed teens -
1. Feeling sad or hopeless
2. Feeling angry, irritated and hostile
3. Frequent crying
4. Poor performance at school
5. Lack of interest, motivation or enthusiasm
6. Fatigue or low on energy
7. Issues with concentration
8. Detachment from family and friends
9. Aches and pain that cannot be explained
10. Suicidal thoughts

Warning around Suicide

• Google search history showing searches around suicide, death, pills and weapons
• Showing reckless and self-harming behavior
• Speaking about death, suicide even if in a jovial way
• Giving away favorite stuff
• Saying goodbye to loved ones
• Writing poems or stories associated to death

As a parent you observe your child for such behaviors and if you feel that the child is showing any of the alarming signs around suicide act immediately.

Factors of Choice – Now taking up a day care for your child is not a pocket friendly event. These days day cares are highly expensive and the better the facility the bigger the hole your pocket is likely to get. Sometimes, it’s that stay at home parenting is not feasible due to the poor financial condition and the need for both the parents to work to earn a living. Survey states that in a country like USA parents spend 7% of their income of child care. Many other factors like timings, distance from home or office, disposition, child’s adjustment capabilities play an important role while opting for a day care against stay at home parenting.

Pros – Day Care – A quality day care often provides a structured schedule for the children which in turn helps them to hone their skills like sports, art, craft and more. Children at day care tend to become independent early on as compared to kids living at home with parents. Their intellect, social and cognitive skills also increase and thus they tend to achieve be better at academics.

Cons – Day Care – At a day care children tend to come in contact with other children and hence the possibility of they catching infections and fever increases more than usual. Also, spending a significant amount of time away from home can be exhausting and frustrating for the children as well. A survey has also indicated that the rate of positive interaction between mother and child is quite less if the child is left in a day care.

Pros – Stay at home Parenting – On the flip side, stay at home parenting has its own benefits. One of them being constant love, security and parental care experience for the child increasing the bonding between the parent and child and making him feel confident and happy. Due to the one on one ratio the child feels loved and special with stay at home parenting.

Cons – Stay at home Parenting – Stay at home parenting many a times leads to slow learning abilities in terms of social skills compared to the day care peers. Even the maturity ratio is less with added disadvantage of higher stranger anxiety once they are put in school. Even the parents who stay at home seem to be fatigued, exhausted and isolated from the social life due to the 24 hour routine.

Mixed Reviews – different people have different opinions when it comes to parenting at home vs day care. While the traditional lot feels that a parent specifically a mom is needed for a child in his or her early years around and day care isn’t a reliable option. There is the contemporary lot which feels working and being ambitious and independent is important for a better life style for the family on a whole as well hence the alternative. Even moms are not that up for day cares it’s observed and basically are interested in having best of both worlds but they seldom succeed to do so.

1. When you allow your 5 year old to dress up like a pop star.
2. Allowing them to watch movies that are not their age
3. Giving the child best of toys and clothes, may be because you never did
4. Dressing up a 4 year old who can well by himself/herself dress up or wear shoes

These are just a few examples of what over indulgence in children is all about. But, while your motive is that of providing your child with the best of stuff you can, the fact remains that over indulgence is not a good idea for children. So what can be done? You can apparently draw the line somewhere. Firstly let your children know what is a need and what is a want and how they both are miles apart. You can let them know how their wants can always wait, but needs cannot. It does not mean that they stop wanting stuff, but they it rather means they wait for it or work for it. They could either wait for their birthday or Diwali to get it as a gift or work or may be score well in their daily chores or study to earn it off.

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The children will be moulded the way you mould them, if you start early. Here’s how you can inculcate a few habits that can help you resolve this situation

1. Teach them to have patience – In today’s fast paced world, when both parents are working throughout the day and are home by evening, you always want to make everything fast too. Be it feeding the child, stop them from whining and more. So, in order to do that you give up to their wants. Well, that’s not the way, it’s better that they do a bit of struggle to get something. Teach them to have patience and they cannot get everything they want primarily and not at all instantly.

2. Make them feel their responsibility – Give them some daily duties or chores and hold them accountable for that. Assign them age appropriate duties and make sure they do them.

Well, last but not the least, limiting their over indulgence does not mean you limit your love or show of affection to them. Rather do that in abundance, let them feel your love, care and attachment. This will only help make things easier for you and make them feel secure with you.

Keeping up the spirit Vydehi School Of Excellence celebrated The Annual Sports Meet- FINESTRA SUL MONODO – Window to the world of Sports on 13th January, 2018. The day was marked as a journey of self-discovery for each child in the field of Sports.