Parents in today's nuclear family setup often find it difficult to deal with the crucial first five years of a child's life and early childhood educationist Vasavvi Acharya seeks to address issues like this in her just published book.
"Many research studies reveal that the first five years of a child's life play a pivotal role in the complete development of the brain but many are still unaware of the importance of an enriched environment imperative for the development of a child," the author says in "The First 5 Years: Demystifying the crucial period of parenting".
Parenthood is a blessing and should never be taken for granted, says Acharya, who is associated with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Guwahati as a faculty and is also the managing director of Inner I Foundation, the parent company of the preschool brand 'Tender Petals'.
With increasing work pressure or demands of society, some parents tend to ignore the need of personal care, quality time, love and comfort that a child needs to grow up well, she points out.
"Over the years, I was loaded with innumerable queries from parents regarding their child's behaviour, attitude, likes and dislikes, character traits, teaching morals and values and this encouraged me to write this book for young and expectant parents," she says.
The book is a guide for parents who want to "know more about rearing their child in the most nurturing manner".
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"Without the comforting presence of elders in nuclear families and with both parents often working outside the house, it helps immensely to have a book of this kind at hand to understand the psychological and physiological aspects of the growing toddler and be guided on how best to handle the inevitable challenges," says author-columnist Mitra Phukan.
The book is sectioned into four parts with the first dealing with psycho-social development, brain development, socio-emotional development, emotional intelligence and quotient and basic characteristics of toddlers and ways to deal with them.
The second section focuses on how to shape children the right way, need to talk, being a role model for the child, instilling values, impact of storytelling, importance of fairy tales, teaching children empathy and spending quality time with the child.
The third section highlights the ways to deal with a child's curiosity, creativity, handling disobedience and lying, how much stress a toddler can handle and above all addresses the most important issue that most modern-age parents have to deal with is how to deal with screen addiction.
The final section has some very interesting subjects like finding the right preschool for a child, what to look for in a preschool facilitator, the child's first day at school and classification of parents in different categories like the over involved, uninvolved, difficult, over sensitive and the unaccommodating parent.
"The author has successfully created a judicious combination of the science and art of raising a child from birth to five years and a must read for parents and teachers to understand their children given the complexities of modern life and society," says editor of Guwahati Plus Swapnil Bharali.