Was struggling for subjects to write about and decided that i will not do a marketing post but something more in the vein of a discourse.
Read an article yesterday titled "Bringing back horseplay" in The Star 2 section about this book called "The Art of Roughhousing"...basically a parenting guide on how to roughhouse with a child. In this article, I learnt a new term..."helicopter parents"...which are basically parents that hover over their children, being overly protective and restricting their children from doing things that could potentially cause harm to the child.
In the book, the protagonists are very credible, a PhD and an MD, both fathers, and they consider it crucial to kids' self-esteem and physical development that parents cut loose with their kids and. My question is, how did parenting come to this? Where we need a manual for this most natural of a child's urges?
The book claims that "technology has taken over playtime" and while my natural instinct would be to disagree, I have seen the most hyper of children, running around nonstop with unparalleled imagination coupled with boundless energy, fighting aliens and chasing bad guys, more than happy to sit quietly with an ipad and play games for hours while their parents sit around a cafe and chit-chat wth their friends. I feel that this "caging" of the child is unfair and selfish on the parents' part.
The proponents of the book say that roughhousing is "rowdy, but not dangerous" and I agree. It is the parents' responsibility to ensure that the playing environment is as safe as possible. You might ask, then WHY get rowdy and roughhouse in the first place? As the authors have eloquently put it:
"when we roughhouse with our kids, we model for them how someone bigger and stronger holds back. We teach them self-control, fairness and empathy. We let them win, which gives them confidence and demonstrates that winning isn't everything".
Parents out there, let me know what you think on this subject...I would like to think if I were blessed with a child one day that I will neither be a helicopter parent...nor a parent that needs to read a book on how to have spontaneous, improvisatory fun with my child.
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