LIFE AS IT IS

These are the books 📚  my 7-year-old finished reading in this lockdown...  Here goes the list:  ~ The Famous Five series by Enid Blyton ~ The Secret Seven series by Enid Blyton ~ Amelia Bedelia chapter book set ~ Roald Dahl complete collection ~ The Secrets of Droon book series ~ Magic Tree House book series  ~ Junie B. Jones book series These pictures here do not include, obviously, the couple of hundred e-books that she read on Epic! I want to congratulate myself on her achievement, even if no one else congratulates me on this. But the truth is, a lot of people did praise me and congratulated me when I shared with them these photos. As a parent, I would like to encourage you to sow the seed of love of reading in your child. If that seed ever germinates, your child will never get bored easily. I know every child is different, but I also know that when we were kids, all my friends and cousins loved to read. Reading was our favorite pastime. And that helped most of u...

“When can I go back to school?" asked my daughter. I find it difficult to tell her that there will not be any school for her for the rest of this school year. She misses riding the yellow bus to and from her school. She misses her teachers and friends, like hundreds of millions of children across the world who are at home because they are under some kind of lockdown. My daughter's daily routine is in disarray. The Daily Star link The White House announced that Americans would have to stay at home until at least April 30. In our state, the governor has ordered a shelter-in-place until May 15. From what I am hearing, watching, and reading, I can safely say that there will most likely be no more school for our children this school year. They will lose a chunk of their normal childhood in the process, but then again, this is not exactly a normal time from any perspective. As a matter of fact, closing down schools is having an immensely positive impact on our effort to ...

Many of us donate money, time, and belongings to good causes every year, and it is the least we can do for those who are less fortunate. However, acts of giving should not only be performed by adults, our children, too, should be taught about the importance of giving. It was only after my daughter started going to school that I realised how important it is to ingrain in a child the significance of helping those in need. The Daily Star link My three-year-old daughter goes to a pre-school in the United States, where they teach children about giving from the tender age of two. In her very first semester, my daughter's class teachers asked her and other students to bring loose change from home to donate. Every day, for two weeks, the children dropped coins, brought from home, into a jar that was placed outside their classroom. My daughter's school is relatively small but together they collected $386 last year, which they used to purchase treadle pumps, tree saplings, a g...

By the time a young gamer reaches his fifteenth birthday, he has already killed thousands of his so-called enemies. Even though he kills all of them virtually, he still feels the adrenaline flowing through his blood every time he makes a kill. His young brain derives pleasure from wiping people off the face of the earth, on a digital screen. When he fires his AK-47 or Colt CM901, his pupils dilate; his heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure increase every time he slays. And even though he slays people day after day, he is never punished for the brutality he commits. In fact, he is rewarded with points. He also moves to the next level of the game! The Daily Star link August 9, 2016 Video gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry. According to Newzoo, a global leader in games, e-sports and mobile intelligence, the worldwide revenue of the gaming industry is expected to reach 107 billion in 2017.  But children's access to violent video games is a debatable subject ...

Many of us donate our money, time and belongings to good causes every year, and it’s the least we can do for those who are less fortunate than us. But after my daughter started attending pre-school, I realized that the importance of giving needs to be ingrained in a child at an early age.  My two-year-old daughter goes to a pre-school, where they teach children about giving from a tender age of two. In their first semester, the teachers asked the students to bring in loose change from home to donate. The children dropped the coins into a jar that was placed outside their classroom. On that project, the school partnered with Heifer International, a global nonprofit organization that works towards ending world hunger and poverty. My daughter’s pre-school is a small one but together they collected $386, which they used to purchase treadle pumps, tree seedlings, a goat and a flock of chicks for communities in need.  The school also organized their annual harvest food driv...

Motherhood has instilled in me a different type of emotion, an emotion whose existence I was unaware of in those pre-mommy years of life. Today, when I see suffering children, turbulent emotions rupture my heart. Sometimes, I shed tears in silence. I ask myself if all this emotional overflow is because of my new identity as a mother. Perhaps. Every child deserves a happy childhood. But to millions of children around the world, "happiness" is a word that carries little or no meaning. Many a child’s childhood is snatched away at such an early age that they never know what it feels to go to school five days a week, eat three good meals a day, or sleep without having to worry about their houses being blown up by enemy troops. In any conflict, it's the children who suffer the most. When I see images and video footages of living and dead children of Palestine and Syria, I sit still before my computer and know not what to feel. Sometimes I wonder what I myself would have ...

It's hugely important for parents to introduce fruits and vegetables to a child at an early age. Growing up, vegetables were part of our daily diet. It began at breakfast time with round rotis and a preparation from mixed vegetables. Then during lunch time, vegetables were a must too. Lunch began with spinach or some kind of leafy vegetable, a single or mixed vegetable preparation, meat or fish and dal (pulses). Here in the United States, however, daily diet relies heavily on meat and carbohydrates. Children grow up eating calorie-packed burgers, fries and pizzas. Parents are not to be blamed alone - healthy foods are more expensive in this country. Meat costs much less than vegetables. In large families, parents are more worried about filling their children's stomachs and hence, resort to chicken, red meat, bread, pasta and canned foods. It's a sad scenario. I feel that there is often a lack of awareness too. Many parents do not even understand the benefits of eating f...

How can we dream of a better world when hundreds of people are dropping dead, falling mutilated and becoming homeless everyday in Gaza? What has happened to our dear earth? Has it survived millions of years only to see the collapse of the human race, the so-called ashraful makhlukat or, the best creature created? The images of the bloodbath on the world media only make me shudder, leave me paralyzed at times. My mind and body stay numb at the photos posted on the world wide web. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is taking the look of a catastrophe with hundreds dead, thousands wounded and maimed. An unfair war has been waged, a war where the opponent is too weak to combat. A friend of mine forwarded me an e- mail a day ago with gruesome images of dead and wounded Palestinians. My heart wept in silence for those small children who hung lifeless from the arms of their fathers and uncles. Their dangling hands bloody; their eyes shut; their faces innocent… What have these children done...