Definitely a thought provoking discussion. I was in a similar situation till last year, though not new to the country and having a wonderful career untill i decided i wanted to be a stay at home mom for a few years till my son starts going to school full time. Well though I thoroghly enjoyed my time with him...(and I know those days are not going to come back....thus do not regret any moment of it)....I went through my phase of depression. Thus my advice would be get out of the house and meet and talk with as many people as you can. Thats the only best solution to come over this sort of depression. You need to see people. What happens is you dont talk to any one else during the whole day and the only adult talk that you have is with your husband during the whole week. So get out of the house. I would say that though Early Years Centres are good, try to join some hobby classes atleast twice a week in the evenings. You could arrange with your husband to take care of the child for 2 evenings in a week which is not too much to ask for. You need to be out and thinking about other subjects than the house and the baby. And this is the emotional need of every adult. In India we have a huge social network to support us even when we are staying at home as full time moms. But here we need to put an effort to have that social network.
So ladies, step out....try a hobby class, join the jym, volunteer or do anything that you like and get some "Me Time". Thats the only solution to come out of this depression.
19 September 2008
ADHD
Here's a brief about this syndrome - as per child care workers and doctors - this syndrome is most commonly observed in children rather than adults. Some of the distinguishing characteristics of children suffering from this syndrome are
> > Short Attention Span
> Difficulty to concentrate and complete a given task
> Difficulty to understand set of commands and follow them
> Hyperactivity
I have put these characteristics in a very lay mans language and parents who would like to get more info can go to www.adhd.ca as it is a pretty exhaustive site and covers everything related to adhd. Also if you google on adhd you would get hundreds of links giving you tons of information on the subject
However I would like to CAUTION parents and advice them to take this information with a pinch of salt. Though there may be genuine cases of ADHD, they are very rare. Most of the times the care taker, especially in this part of the world, does not want to handle active kids. And generally speaking, kids from south asia are more active than white canadian kids. Thus labelling them with adhd provides the caretaker with an easy way out where the kid then goes on sedatives and thus is much easier to handle. So when your child is diagnosed with adhd, either by the care taker or the doctor, you would still be the best judge of your child capabilities. The symptoms that I mentioned above are so common and could be found in every child in varying degrees. So you be the judge and dont get bogged down by what the care taker says. You always have the right to question them back because you would know at the bottom of your heart whether or not your child is> having any kind of problem.
Every child is different and has a right to percieve this world from his or her perspective. (S)He is meant to be mischevious, be lazy at some times and thus not concetrate on given tasks and break rules (commands) at other times. However (S)he is not meant to be on sedatives and drugs that would curb his/her natural enthusiasm. > So parents....you be the judges before taking any step towards such diagnosis.
> > Short Attention Span
> Difficulty to concentrate and complete a given task
> Difficulty to understand set of commands and follow them
> Hyperactivity
I have put these characteristics in a very lay mans language and parents who would like to get more info can go to www.adhd.ca as it is a pretty exhaustive site and covers everything related to adhd. Also if you google on adhd you would get hundreds of links giving you tons of information on the subject
However I would like to CAUTION parents and advice them to take this information with a pinch of salt. Though there may be genuine cases of ADHD, they are very rare. Most of the times the care taker, especially in this part of the world, does not want to handle active kids. And generally speaking, kids from south asia are more active than white canadian kids. Thus labelling them with adhd provides the caretaker with an easy way out where the kid then goes on sedatives and thus is much easier to handle. So when your child is diagnosed with adhd, either by the care taker or the doctor, you would still be the best judge of your child capabilities. The symptoms that I mentioned above are so common and could be found in every child in varying degrees. So you be the judge and dont get bogged down by what the care taker says. You always have the right to question them back because you would know at the bottom of your heart whether or not your child is> having any kind of problem.
Every child is different and has a right to percieve this world from his or her perspective. (S)He is meant to be mischevious, be lazy at some times and thus not concetrate on given tasks and break rules (commands) at other times. However (S)he is not meant to be on sedatives and drugs that would curb his/her natural enthusiasm. > So parents....you be the judges before taking any step towards such diagnosis.
Making More Hours in A Day
This is a very good topic and I was thinking of writing something on this since Ferzana posted it a few days back. But again, it got delayed due to the lack of time which I felt was very paradoxical. Here I wanted to write something about making more time during the day which I was not able to do due to lack of time. That is when I realized that our minds automatically makes time for things that it thinks is important. It automatically schedules those tasks and allocates time for it during the day. Whereas the things that it thinks are less important, it just side tracks them. So it is necessary for us to re-prioritize our options.
Agreed that most of us spend around 8-10 hours at our work places and for commute. That leaves us with 14 hours to spend with our families and our selves. I am a strong beleiver that a person should not sleep for more than 7-8 hours in a day. So that leaves us with around 6 hours.Now it is really upon us to decide how we want to spend these 6 hours. Essentially that is all that we have to play around. And I feel that it is nearly impossible to fit everything that you want to do in those 6 hours. And that is the reason that we need to train our minds to prioritize our activities.
If we want to spend time with our kids, we should see what are the other activities where we could save time. For example, could I save time during cooking and maybe spend those extra 15 minutes with my child reading a story. Or could I afford a maid and save time on the cleaning of my house. If I want to take time out for exercise, I could try and see if there is a gym near my office where I can go during lunch time. Or could I combine spending time with my kids and exercising by going for a walk in the park. Or maybe riding a bike. Or trying out an activity like dancing with my kids.
So there are a number of ways that we can make more time in a day. But it really depends on what tasks we feel are more important to us. It is really interesting to see that when we keep telling our minds that a particular task is important, how it automatically makes time for it during the day. I think it is worth a try for everyone.
Having said this, 2 things which I feel are great hinderances towards having more time during our day are watching T.V. and sleeping more than 8 hours a day. That is not to say that you completely avoid doing these things. Its just that, they should stand last in our priority list and that way our minds would not crave for them when we are busy.
Agreed that most of us spend around 8-10 hours at our work places and for commute. That leaves us with 14 hours to spend with our families and our selves. I am a strong beleiver that a person should not sleep for more than 7-8 hours in a day. So that leaves us with around 6 hours.Now it is really upon us to decide how we want to spend these 6 hours. Essentially that is all that we have to play around. And I feel that it is nearly impossible to fit everything that you want to do in those 6 hours. And that is the reason that we need to train our minds to prioritize our activities.
If we want to spend time with our kids, we should see what are the other activities where we could save time. For example, could I save time during cooking and maybe spend those extra 15 minutes with my child reading a story. Or could I afford a maid and save time on the cleaning of my house. If I want to take time out for exercise, I could try and see if there is a gym near my office where I can go during lunch time. Or could I combine spending time with my kids and exercising by going for a walk in the park. Or maybe riding a bike. Or trying out an activity like dancing with my kids.
So there are a number of ways that we can make more time in a day. But it really depends on what tasks we feel are more important to us. It is really interesting to see that when we keep telling our minds that a particular task is important, how it automatically makes time for it during the day. I think it is worth a try for everyone.
Having said this, 2 things which I feel are great hinderances towards having more time during our day are watching T.V. and sleeping more than 8 hours a day. That is not to say that you completely avoid doing these things. Its just that, they should stand last in our priority list and that way our minds would not crave for them when we are busy.
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