Narratives@najahnasseri.org

I ended up sleepless the other night because the last thing I watched was a TED talk by renown secularist, Sam Harris. I won’t go into details about the actual talk itself because I disagree with his opinions with regards to Islam, but there was a mental process that stuck with me.

He basically touched on morality and that the spectrum of right and wrong based on moral values shouldn’t as ambiguous as it currently is. He posits that there are and should be some basic rights and wrongs with regard to morality as it is related to the well-being of humanity as a whole.

Okay, so that’s something for another day. But it did get me thinking along the same line of logic, albeit for parenting and child development.

A friend lamented recently that her ambition to further her studies in the area of Montessori education met with some resistance from family members. It seems that for a Master’s holder, the job of raising other people’s kids is somewhat ‘beneath’ her. Plus it was assumed that anyone with a little common sense is seen to be qualified to raise kids and therefore, she need not spend the time, effort and money for a whole diploma program.

This wasn’t the first time I had heard of this. After I left my career to stay at home full time with the kids, I kept on getting questions about what I was “going to do with my life”. Then when I finally decided to equip myself with what Fische and I saw as the prerequisite knowledge for me to do what I wanted to do with my life at_that_point_in_time, it took a while to convince those around me that a course in early childhood was worthy of my time. People kept on looking for economical markers – like how much I could potentially make as a teacher, as a kindergarten principal or as a kindergarten operator, to justify the expense and the time. I was like a broken tape recorder whenever I explained to people that it’s for MY kids and whatever comes next will be determined after I figure out what I want to do with our kids. Fische saw the value of the course from the beginning – he’d pick me up from my weekly lectures, and we’d chat about what I learned that day and how we can apply it at home.

A few days ago, I chatted with Idris’ principal and she shared with me her experience when brainstorming about the venture – her hugely successful kindy/childcare. Their research suggested that the choice mothers make (it seemed mothers have more of a say in these things) when it comes to school was, for the most part, impulsive. Many base their choice on convenience, cost, how long they’d be free of their children, and what other people have to say about the school’s results, as well as their own childhood experiences.

The thing about preschool is other than the 3Rs, the foundation it lays for a child’s future will not be obvious until much further into the future. The course of a child’s development is something humanity has only begun to understand in recent time. Yet the discipline to do with early childhood has become a recognised science of sorts – there are good practices and bad practices and while we don’t know the full extent of our childcare practices today, we know a lot more than our grandparents did a decade ago (and in some respect, a lot less).

So it pains me to see, time and time again, people (parents/teachers/caregivers alike) resort to unsubstantiated logic to justify their opinions on how children should be raised. I’m not saying that all traditional methods are flawed – not surprisingly, those methods that are in tune with the mother’s instincts are often later proven to be beneficial. It is the flawed logic that came between the parents’ instincts that later on proved to be destructive – the campaign to promote formula milk a few decades ago came to mind, which lead to more babies being fed through bottles, which were propped up for convenience, resulting in choking hazards, and the lack of physical contact when being fed has been found to have psychological implications to the child later in life (trust issues with adults).

As a society, some flawed logic in child development gets propagated through the usual argument: “My parents did this to me (fill_in_the_blanks), but I turned out fine.” This could range from scare tactics to get you to sleep/eat/pray/study, to diet, to schooling choices, and a host of other aspects of a child’s life. Just because you turned out ‘OK’ (a very subjective measurement of personal development in itself), does not mean that it’s alright for a parent to use a lighter (or a host of other threats, the more common in our society being the sight of a cane) to scare a child into finishing his meal. Do we even question ourselves when we resort to these things?

The more important thing isn’t to make a list of what to do and what not to do. The recipe book is still being written on many things, so even between revisions of the “What to Expect” series, you’ll find some differences that can freak out a caring parent or two. But it is important to be mindful that parenting is not as subjective as we make it out to be. There are some established rights and wrongs. The balance between good hygiene and the need to develop a child’s immune system is one area where parents already know to seek professional advice. In terms of a child’s psychological development, there is a host of knowledge out there to start with, if only we would ask the right questions, and if only we weren’t too confident that we are OK.