Maria Mohsin :
Kids are the most important part of every family and the most important factor about them is their safety. But the safety of the kid depends on the kid him/her self. Understanding the kid and making the kid understand something is the most difficult situation for every parent.
At present, most kids found to have slight or full Hyper Active because of the food habit and situations. Parents thinks the kids will not feel the situation and they will fail to make the kids understand their point for the lack of sensibility of kids and that’s why they often don’t even bother to try to speak.
That’s the biggest mistakes of parents. Research proved that if the kids are taken as a part of conversation, counselling and situational analysis with the soothing manner its possible to make them understand the importance and meaning of safety and danger.
Learning not to touch a hot stove, or climb up on a steep roof in search of a lost baseball is key to making it through childhood unscathed. Now, new research suggests that parents can help their kids understand these risks with explanations, not orders.
Researchers found that mothers tend to guide their children in conversations about the danger of injury. And there’s good news: Kids do listen. About 80 per cent of the time, these conversations led kids to agree with their moms’ opinions.
Study says, “When kids have done something that isn’t safe,” or hurt themselves, it’s easy for parents to say, “Don’t do that again,” or “Be more careful,” According to researcher Jodie Plumert, a psychologist at the University of Iowa “That’s fine to say, but I think the real lesson here is for parents to really explain to their kids why something isn’t safe.”
To prove the point Plumert and her co-researcher Elizabeth O’Neal, recruited 63 mothers and their 8 or 10-year-old children for an experiment on safety conversations. First, both mothers and children saw photographs of kids in situations with various levels of danger – trying to split wood with an axe, for example, or skateboarding down a driveway.
The moms and kids individually rated how dangerous the situations were on a scale of one to four. Next, the moms and kids came together to look at the photographs again, and discuss them and decide on a safety rating together. The researchers recorded the conversations.
Moms frequently started by asking the child his or her opinion, and then often guided the child’s thinking by pointing out dangers the child had missed – a sleeve dangling over a red-hot stove, for example. The mom would then tie those features to a particular danger, such as the sleeve catching on fire.
The result came out as, about one-third of the time, the child and the mother started out in disagreement over the situation’s safety. But in the ensuing discussions, mothers were able to sway the child to their point of view 80 percent of the time. Plumert said, “The parent is really able to talk with the child about why they think something is dangerous.”
The researchers also found a hint that for some kids, such discussions might be particularly important. Children with a history of injuries requiring medical treatment were less likely to note potential dangers in a scene.
It might mean that kids who are bigger risk-takers are more likely to discount danger she. For those kids, mom and dad’s counsel might be most important of all.
The study looked mostly at white mothers with college degrees, and more research is needed to see if there are differences in the way moms from other social classes speak with their children, Plumert said. The researchers are also interested in studying how dads talk about safety.
That was all about proves; now the question is how to explain and what to explain? Child Psychologists says, “kids can batter understand situation with self experienced examples.” For example we can say, if one want to make a child away from cooking stove, fire and hot things, the mother and for once and for a moment can make the kid touch a hot thing to make understand how it feels and why should not the kid ever again try to do so.
Again, if a child want to run around here and there with possible risk of being hurt, let him do so until the kid get hurt for the first time. Then one can explain why it should not be done. But of course the minimum risk and injuries have to be ensured before doing the experiments. Research says it’s the most effective way to explain something to kids.
The parents even can show examples of others getting hurt or having disadvantages on similar situation to make kids understand. For example, one cannot make a kid go to the riverside alone and play or catch kite from the adage of the terrace to explain the risk of the situation. But it can be done by showing examples by reading out any articles from the news paper with such incident or telling other incident which happened near by as a story. The explanations have to be narrated as a story or general matter of discussion in this situation, not in a manner of explaining anything.
By the above way, anything and every thing can be making the kid understand by the parents. Parents can easily tell the kids about safety from fire, electricity, hotness and injuries etc. another important topic to make clear with the kids in these days is Internet. At present there is no age limit of using Internet. So parents have to make the child understand the harmful side of Internet, online crime and other necessary concepts regarding using Internet for the kids and these things can be explained with the help examples and self experience too.
So Plumert has proved that parents have to stop saying “they won’t understand!” and try to make a soothing environment to make them understand and keep trying as long as the kids don’t get it. It’s not only about the interpretation of safety for the kids but also a medium to create a friendly environment with the kids to discuses about their like and create a bond. n
