I am sure most of the mommies out here must have seen this picture. Also I am sure enough most of you would have resonated with it and many of you must have also posted it on your timelines or stories.

Throw back to when my child ate everything I made for dinner/lunch/breakfast! Are you quite sure of it?
Remember the time you threw up when you were pregnant? Your child rejected some foods even then.

Many parents complain that my child is a fussy eater, he/ she says no to everything. Let me ask you something…
-Did you give up when your child rejected food?
-Did you give up when the child rejected to follow the morning routine of brush, bath and milk?
-Did you give up when your baby refused to go with anyone else but you, to every place that you took him?
-Did you give up when the child refused to take medicine or a regular dose/injection of vaccine?
And the list goes on….
The answer is No!!

You made sure that your child ate at regular intervals, you made sure that he/she followed the hygiene routine and you made sure that your child socialized and was comfortable with other relatives. But all this did not happen over one day, one week or one month! It took lot of consistent efforts and trying ways and means to make things happen.

Go back to the first day of your child’s school. That clinging and crying and vomiting and throwing things for not going to school. Did you give up then? You still made sure your child went to the school no matter what, no matter for how long or for how many days or weeks they were crying. Even when the child came to the school he/she went over to every corner of the class without sitting on the chair or exploring the toys provided by the teacher, it also took days and weeks for the teacher to settle the child but even the teacher did not give up.

Did any teacher ever say to a parent that your child doesn’t sit attentively for the class so stop sending him to school? Or did you as parent ever say that my child is refusing to come to school and hence he/she will not go to school at all?

No doubt you must have discussed with the teacher for this sort of behavior and vice-versa and found a solution together. Because it was always for the benefit of the child.

Then why is it now that parents are judging their child’s capabilities to attend face to face online interactive sessions with their teachers? Why are they not giving their child the opportunity to understand this medium of education? And most important why they are missing on their learning during the most important years of the child’s brain development.

School heads and teachers are trained to facilitate your child, they follow research based curriculum and modify it time to time as per the developmental milestone of each child. A nursery or playgroup child at home may be taught to write ABC directly without knowing or working on the pre-writing skills, believe me this affects the learning process and then unnecessary expectations are set, children and parents both get stressed over learning. So always make sure your child learns through right, qualified and trained people, having 30-40mins of face to face interaction with their teacher and friends will help the child in his/her learning process it will help set up a routine for the child. It will aid their social and emotional development through such sessions, I would again repeat it is all for the benefit of your child!

• Jui Bijapurkar Joshi