Child Psychology

27- Allow the Child His Moments of Privacy

The son got married. The lingering display of the henna-dyed decorative patterns on the hands of his wife continued to proclaim her as the new bride in the family. The couple were relishing the moments of the conjugal ecstasy (excessive matrimonial joy). otherwise known as the period of "honeymoon". They were the moments to be cherished in the memory and reminisced on the occasion of each anniversary with gratitude to Allah.

However. the honeymoon at home was not perfect in its setting nor the period there- after. The couple would want to steal a few short moments of being together holding hands as and when at leisure and alone in the privacy of their room during the day time which is normal for a newly-wed couple. They couldn't.

The mother continued with the old habit. since the childhood of the son. of appearing suddenly in his room. To her nothing changed nor did she want anything changed. The son and the room both remained the same -within her domain -and her right to it remained the same. Locking the door meant banning her right. She would be the prosecutor. the jury and the judge in a verdict against the bride as the scapegoat. There was yet another ramification. For the parents to barge in was to cause the son to reveal to his wife his annoyance to this habit of the parents. and consequently he was offering a license to the wife to begin to develop a dislike for them.

It will be no surprise if the son as a child had and still has the habit of curling himself in the bed while in the state of sleep. This of course may not be as much in that fetal (unborn baby in the womb) posture as he was used to when he was a child. Curling Posture.

Curling himself in the state of sleep comes about instinctively to a child, especially the one with a slim physique, when the bedroom is normally cold or the child has a habitual sub-conscious fear of insecurity. That posture like that of a coiled reptile exposes the least possible body-front to a threat to the body.

There is yet one more reason. The instinctive curled posture offers the satisfaction of some semblance of privacy as the child begins to become conscious of the need for it. This is normal where a child goes to sleep early under the glare of light while others around him in the room are still wakeful robbing him of the privacy for his sleep.

In fact, the curling posture is part of the manifestation of the human Instinct for self- preservation. The exposure to cold and the fear of insecurity of the body while in the state of sleep with the lack of privacy -all seem to trigger this instinctive posture. The message is simple to the parents. Allow the growing child "his" moments of privacy "also". Teach him to want his liberty to keep the door of his room partly closed (ajar) whenever he feels like doing so; and further teach him to expect his parents to call first or knock before entering the room.

Personality

Teaching the child the enjoyment of his certain convenient moments of privacy in his room is .one of those factors which determine the extent to which the child develops his independent personality. The child needs even more consideration from the parents, especially from the father, when the child is girl.

Where there is more than one child, the need for their moments of common privacy will still be the same and should be respected by their parents all the same.

Besides, teaching the child his own needs of the moments of privacy will teach him also to respect the parents' moments of privacy which the holy Qur'an too mentions in the verses 24 : 58, 59. Such training serves as a mould for the rules of polished decorum within the family and ensures respect and decency among the members.

Let us remember that the first human experience even before a person is born is that he is "conscious", ("aware", "exists"), and the first thing which he is conscious of is the privacy and comfort of the womb. The human will always prefer his moments of privacy and comfort. Personal privacy is now considered a human right and there already exists laws against its intrusion in many countries. Childhood is no excuse for deprivation of privacy. The excuse is childish!

28- Save the Child from Risk of School Antipathy

It was a primary school. The geography teacher asked for a volunteer among the pupils in the class. One of them was quick to oblige. He went to the Atlas Library and brought a canvas roll of Africa map and. as enthusiastically, proceeded to hang the now spread canvas across the tripod blackboard. This practice though usual. required some height and prior experience for any volunteer.

On this occasion, however. the canvass map slipped from the hands of the pupil and fell onto the floor much to his embarrassment. The mishap was greeted with a lively roar of laughter in the class. Surprisingly, the teacher got visibly angry. He thought that the pupil had obliged the class- mates with an amusement at the cost of his respect as a teacher.

The teacher asked the pupil to stand to attention in a corner of the class. The teacher however got further angry at the pupil when he saw that some of his classmates were making signs of teasing at him for his punishment as if he was the one who was prompting the spectacle. So the teacher asked the pupil to go out and wait for him outside the office of the headmaster while he was continuing with his period. A Real Dilemma.

The headmaster on the other hand finding the pupil outside his class missing his les- sons. directed him to return to his lessons. The pupil seeing himself in a real dilemma decided not to venture back to face the teacher while he was in that ugly mood. Instead, he moved about in the lobbies until the period was over and returned to register his presence outside the office of the headmaster as instructed earlier by the teacher. .

Later the teacher informed the headmaster that he was not surprised that the pupil had defied the instruction to return to his lessons because he was already proving himself a cause of indiscipline in the class. He recommended punishment and perhaps a note also to his parents. He was punished.

The pupil though already hurt, was relieved of the apprehension about an additional punishment at home when it appeared certain to him later that no communication was however sent to his parents by the school. Antipathy.

The pupil feigned (pretended) severe headache and absented himself in the school to avoid the following period of the geography teacher. It was obvious that he was developing antipathy (a bitter dislike) towards the school as his only alternative to his emotional reaction to the injustice and humiliation meted out to him.

Incidents of open injustice and humiliation are normally wrongly supposed to be accepted as a fair-play and a normal part of the school- experience by the victims according to the parents' antiquated adage that: 'the teacher is always right'. It falls upon the victims however to suffer silently the agony of the memory of the humiliation for long periods of time while hoping that the news of the incidents do not reach the ears of their parents. Their avenues for a redress do not exist.

There happens to be also other avenues of injustice which are not uncommon in the school. Boys are subject to intimidation or punishment at the hands of "some" teachers when boys cannot help themselves being boys. Boys tend to be lively. and some even more than others, and this is often misinterpreted naively as misbehaviour.

Highly Spirited.

A teacher need hardly take it serious if, as an example. a pupil having raised his hand high chooses to wave it in the air vigorously to seek preference for answering a question that was directed to the class. To keep ignoring him purposely for being highly spirited is to be unkind. To warn him is to question his healthy sense of rivalry. A tactful response to put an immediate stop to this. if need be. is to announce: "Those who are not sure of the answer can still raise their hands but wave them in the air; however. preference will be given to those who think that they know the answer."

And there was this pupil who was chided and then mentioned in the assembly hall by the headmaster. His serious misconduct was to be imaginative and venture into some exercise of creativity. Toying with a pen. he drew spectacles across the face of a teacher peering from his picture. The pupil had made a use of his own copy of the monthly school magazine for the exercise and for his own personal satisfaction of the moment. He might as well have added beard too to give the face a distinguished Touch like his father's who sported a beard and wore glasses. This is again an example of the din created disproportionate to the cause, if there was a compelling cause! The Message.

The message to the parents is to understand that such incidents of unfair treatment, punishment and humiliation are not uncommon in schools in general, and that they have a disastrous result. The victims develop antipathy towards the school and also towards his studies to ruin his aspirations and prospects for a pursuit of good education., and that the children, however badly hurt, avoid mentioning the incidents to the parents for fear of additional victimisation.

Parents should therefore discreetly pre-warm the children of such incidents of injustice. This will encourage the children to reveal these incidents to the parents for a balanced discussion, which can then be extended, if need be, with the school management respectfully and fairly with the assurance that the intention is to assist both, the child and the school. Only those who are wrongly punished and hurt will have the confidence of discussing the incidents with their parents. This will enable parents to protect their children from the risk of the children developing an antipathy towards the pursuit of education.

At a private picnic of friends studying in a primary school, there was a game-session of making up a good story. This is from the author's own experience. One came up with a spontaneous story in which the bad guys were the teachers and the heroes the pupils in a fictional plot involving a school. Bandits had attacked the school to get after the bad teachers. Obviously, from the tell-tale signs, it is also a story of a victim of a school-antipathy.

He himself never knew that while he was spinning his fictional story he was revealing the true story of his antipathy which even he did not grasp. The ending is that he veered his way out while others found theirs into a secondary school.

The author has reason to be still remembering the fictional story. He landed in a trouble when he repeated it during the dinner time that evening at home. That was way back in 1946. Have things changed with regard to the antipathy…?……Much? Then the author wouldn't be mentioning the story!