Burdensome education

A new school year is here! Lugging heavy bags to school have become an integral part of school life.

Check that bag
Children between the ages of 6 and 14 are typically in their formative ages. At this stage the body's vital organs are not fully developed and are therefore more vulnerable to injury. The heavy book load that children are subjected to carry lead to physical stress and poor posture, which may have repercussions on spine health.

Dr S. P. Mandal, senior consultant, department of orthopaedics, Sir Gangaram Hospital reveals the health hazards of lugging heavy backpack. He expresses, “Heavy backpacks affect your child's health in many ways. The pressure of the belt in the bag presses the vital structure of shoulder and neck, due to which in the long term can cause muscle fatigue and neurovascular embarrassment.”

“Ideally for a ten-year-old child the weight of school bag should not exceed beyond two to three kilos”, advises he.

Tips to load-off

• Encourage your children to check their timetable carefully to minimize the load to be carried.
• Your child's school should provide lockers as a storage space to lighten the load.
• Help your child to avoid countless bulky books, which make your child's load too heavy.
• Keep a set of textbooks, which can be shared by groups of students.
• Provision of safe drinking water and hygienic food in the school canteen instead of allowing them to carry these from home.
• Also encourage your child's teachers to plan ahead and inform students when texts are not required for lessons so that they are not carrying unnecessary loads.

Some schools like Excelsior American School, Gurgaon believe in the philosophy of going ‘bag-less’. Parents need to help the school in this effort and Shalini Nambiar, Director of Excelsior American School, Gurgaon, gives some advice in this regard— “Check that backpack on a regular basis. They are typically full of unnecessary items. ... I think if you went through the backpacks, you could shed 10 pounds just like that.”

“Isn't school a place to study and home a place for parents to spend quality time? I often have parents insisting on homework but one needs to give this keeping the age of the child in mind. Homework should be re-enforcement of what is being done in school and if it is well planned then children don’t need to carry loads of books back home,” she adds.

When kids learn to lie

Parenting is akin to enrolling yourself in a school. Everyday springs new surprises and has lessons to offer, wise parents keep learning and moving on. Often, parents feel shocked when they learn that their otherwise honest and truthful child has begun to experiment with lies. While some lies are innocuous and are products of overactive imagination, there are some, which are spoken intentionally. Now, there is a good and bad news attached to it—the good news is that the child has become grown up enough to tamper with facts to wriggle out of awkward situations like an adult to save his skin and the bad news is that he has learned to lie.

Agreed, these lies are not big and are usually in response to the questions that children prefer to avoid, yet lying is not good.

Why kids lie?
Lying is a symptom and it calls for parental affection and concern. My friend's eight-year-old, daughter Sagarika complained of unexplained aches and pains in her leg just before the Kathak class. The pains would last only for an hour. Her mother insisted on taking her to the class and sat through out the session. She found that Sagarika was not able to dance like the older girls in her class and felt de-motivated for this reason. When she joined the class meant for girls of her age group, she became the star dancer and her pains vanished. ‘Now, in fact, she looks forward to her Kathak class’, says the beaming mother.

Sometimes what we call lying is just a figment of imagination. Kids live in make-believe world and their thoughts correspond accordingly.

Many a time unknowingly parents introduce their children to the web of lies. What do we expect our children to learn when we ask our spouse, friend or staff to answer a phone call for us and concoct an excuse for us. The impressionable minds of children are quick to learn that adults tamper with facts, and so can they.
Often, parents tend to attach strings to their love towards the child. Sometimes this can coerce your child to tamper with truth because s/he wants to conform to the standards set by parents.

If you find that your child experiments with lies make them understand that lies erode trust. Have faith in your children and try to get to the root of lying; you might find a fear lurking there.
As kids grow they become more independent and want to exert that too. Often lying becomes an escape route to wriggle out. Try to see them the reason behind your questions and they are likely to conform to your expectations. Have faith, your kids are going to get out of this habit.