Parenting 101 (1)

I have 9 children, a very large family by today’s standard, and easily the largest family in the last agency that I worked for. But surprisingly it seems that my family have the least medical claims amongst all the families, and my colleagues sometimes asked me how we did.

In anything related to parenting, the most important obviously is for both spouses to have a compatible understanding of the way they want to bring up their children, what they hope for their children. In this context we are “lucky” in that my wife and I have the same outlook on life and agree on the main principles of children development.

It is also helpful if the parents educate themselves a bit on things like nutrition, education, mind development and things like that because obviously the more you know the more better informed you are when you make decision. You decide based on certain knowledge, not on how much pleading or crying your children make when they want something. That way you can be firm and not easily swayed by tears or tantrums.

In this context, there are 2 things that we are very particular about that I feel contribute to our least medical claims.

1) Control Junk Food

We are very strict when it comes to junk food, the attractively packaged titbits and carbonated drinks. There are numerous documented evidences linking junk food to children health and more importantly to mental development. We are especially strict about buying from street side vendors.

But we are realistic in the sense that we know we cannot totally forbid our children from eating junk food. Eventually they will come into contact with the foodstuff from friends, well-meaning relatives and grandparents bent on spoiling them. So we do buy some junk food and drinks once in a while.

But what we do is, for example, we forbid them to buy ice cream from the street side vendor, but we once in a while will buy a tub of ice cream and eat as a family at home. It’s the same with chocolate. Instead of indiscriminately buying chocolates for individual child, we buy a large slab of chocolate and share as a family. In this way, we satisfy some of the craving for junk food but still maintain “discipline” of not indiscriminately buying junk food easily available outside the school gates, not to mention inculcating the culture of sharing with family members.

2) Over-the-counter Drugs

We do not believe in over-the-counter medicine or drugs especially painkillers. Even to this day we do not keep any Panadol or other commercially available pain killers in our house. All drugs and medicine we take are prescribed by the doctor if we are ill enough to merit a visit to the doctor.

I personally have never taken Panadol or anything to counter headaches or fever or even toothache, and I make sure the same goes for our children as much as possible. I would rather let my body do the fighting on its own and we believe that our body become stronger because of it (i.e. stronger immune system). Our body is surprisingly tough and can cure most of our illnesses on its own, if we allow it to. I will gladly suffer a bit of short term pain in order to achieve a long term stronger immune system.

Some people are too quick to pop one or two Panadol pills or syrup as soon as a slight pain or fever crop up. We believe you are not building up your own immune system and in the long run your body cannot counter the ills by itself and will depend on more and more pills. This is especially true of children. We believe if you are too quick to pump your children with painkillers or other over-the-counter “medicine” you are doing a long term disservice to your children by not allowing them to strengthen their bodies’ immune system. So as adults they will be dependent on drugs and painkillers even for slight pain or fevers.

As Stephen Covey puts it “begin with the end in mind”. It’s important to have a long term outlook on achieving a stronger immune system and not just react to short term fix-its.