By Dr. Lucianna
Discipline: A parent’s dilemma
Your neighbour’s kids are always indisciplined, right? Your own kids are nice and well discplined, right? A certain lady posted a video of kids uncontrollably playing in the train, commonly referred to as SGR by Kenyans. There were very entertaining comments on the state of indiscipline of the three little girls. The mother, who had proudly posted the video got a real tongue lashing from netizens. How much discpline is considered too harsh and how much is too soft? The balance is delicate.
Way back in high school we were allowed one day off each term, we called it “outing”. The nuns usually announced it on the very Saturday morning we were going out to protect us from “bad plans”. On this particular day one of our classmates invited us to her home which was in a nearby town. And Holy Moses! amongst other things, we were served sausages! Oooh! Aaah! And of course there were no sausages served in school. Each one of us a whole sausage! Back then sausages were the ultimate delicacy. Pizza never existed in our world. And then this little boy, our friend’s baby brother, horrifyingly as I watched, came and took my sausage in his little hands and proceeded to eat it. Slowly and tantalizingly. Agony!
Everybody saw it, including the hosts. Even as I plastered a painful smile on my face, my heart was crying for my sausage. Even my friends didn’t consider sharing, friends indeed! I’ve eaten numerous sausages since then but my heart still cries for “that” sausage. Here I’m talking about being too soft with a kid. Somebody should have stopped that kid. The chance of teaching the valuable lesson of “mine” and “yours” and “theirs” was lost. On the other hand some parents are a bit too harsh with their kids in the name of discipline.
In my story today, the setting is KNH, Kenyatta National Hospital. These days the name is longer with the words “teaching” and “referral” inserted somewhere. My simple brain prefers to just call it KNH, simple. I was still a student at the University of Nairobi School of Medicine based at the KNH. It was customary for the students to go to the casualty department (others call it ER) to learn a few tricks of the trade.
One day a child aged about 8 years was brought in with difficulties in breathing. It was reported to have started very mildly a few days before, maybe 3. The doctors tried everything they could to save the child, but he got worse and worse. It was an unusual presentation. It was not a typical asthmatic attack. It was not in keeping with normal paediatric problems. It was a puzzle. After a short while they lost the kid.
It was real puzzling and so a post mortem was requested. You won’t believe what was found lodged in the wind pipe, a safety pin!! Still closed in safe mode. How did this happen? None of the adults accompanying the kid could explain. So they got back to the other kids, that is, the siblings and playmates. The kids said that a few days before, as they were playing, their playmate “swallowed” a safety pin. Why didn’t anybody report? They were scared of the beating that they imagined would surely follow. Everybody thought that the parents were such harsh disciplinarians that the kids could not risk yet another beating. It may be so, it may not be so.
So why didn’t the safety pin **** immediately, you wonder. Because the safety pin lodged in the wind pipe, by the very nature of its design, allowed air to pass through so the kid was initially okay. By and by the child’s body recognised a foreign object and reacted. The body reacted by increasing the blood flow to bring fighter cells to the site and by increasing mucous secretions to try and sweep out the enemy. If it had been dust or other small particles the body would have won the battle. But this was one huge enemy. The body does not give up its fights, it would rather die trying, so it continued fighting and eventually the tissues around the safety pin started swelling. That’s when the parents must have realised that there was a big problem and took the child to hospital.
It was such an unusual thing nobody knew what was happening. The only people who knew were little kids too scared of a beating to say anything. Accidents do happen. They happen to disciplined kids, they happen to indiscplined kids. I have examples of accidents that happened because parents were too soft. Kids who knew that their parents would not even reprimand them for being naughty.
All we can do as parents and guardians is make sure that our way of bringing kids up does not contribute to accidents. God help us.
Discipline: A parent’s dilemma
Your neighbour’s kids are always indisciplined, right? Your own kids are nice and well discplined, right? A certain lady posted a video of kids uncontrollably playing in the train, commonly referred to as SGR by Kenyans. There were very entertaining comments on the state of indiscipline of the three little girls. The mother, who had proudly posted the video got a real tongue lashing from netizens. How much discpline is considered too harsh and how much is too soft? The balance is delicate.
Way back in high school we were allowed one day off each term, we called it “outing”. The nuns usually announced it on the very Saturday morning we were going out to protect us from “bad plans”. On this particular day one of our classmates invited us to her home which was in a nearby town. And Holy Moses! amongst other things, we were served sausages! Oooh! Aaah! And of course there were no sausages served in school. Each one of us a whole sausage! Back then sausages were the ultimate delicacy. Pizza never existed in our world. And then this little boy, our friend’s baby brother, horrifyingly as I watched, came and took my sausage in his little hands and proceeded to eat it. Slowly and tantalizingly. Agony!
Everybody saw it, including the hosts. Even as I plastered a painful smile on my face, my heart was crying for my sausage. Even my friends didn’t consider sharing, friends indeed! I’ve eaten numerous sausages since then but my heart still cries for “that” sausage. Here I’m talking about being too soft with a kid. Somebody should have stopped that kid. The chance of teaching the valuable lesson of “mine” and “yours” and “theirs” was lost. On the other hand some parents are a bit too harsh with their kids in the name of discipline.
In my story today, the setting is KNH, Kenyatta National Hospital. These days the name is longer with the words “teaching” and “referral” inserted somewhere. My simple brain prefers to just call it KNH, simple. I was still a student at the University of Nairobi School of Medicine based at the KNH. It was customary for the students to go to the casualty department (others call it ER) to learn a few tricks of the trade.
One day a child aged about 8 years was brought in with difficulties in breathing. It was reported to have started very mildly a few days before, maybe 3. The doctors tried everything they could to save the child, but he got worse and worse. It was an unusual presentation. It was not a typical asthmatic attack. It was not in keeping with normal paediatric problems. It was a puzzle. After a short while they lost the kid.
It was real puzzling and so a post mortem was requested. You won’t believe what was found lodged in the wind pipe, a safety pin!! Still closed in safe mode. How did this happen? None of the adults accompanying the kid could explain. So they got back to the other kids, that is, the siblings and playmates. The kids said that a few days before, as they were playing, their playmate “swallowed” a safety pin. Why didn’t anybody report? They were scared of the beating that they imagined would surely follow. Everybody thought that the parents were such harsh disciplinarians that the kids could not risk yet another beating. It may be so, it may not be so.
So why didn’t the safety pin **** immediately, you wonder. Because the safety pin lodged in the wind pipe, by the very nature of its design, allowed air to pass through so the kid was initially okay. By and by the child’s body recognised a foreign object and reacted. The body reacted by increasing the blood flow to bring fighter cells to the site and by increasing mucous secretions to try and sweep out the enemy. If it had been dust or other small particles the body would have won the battle. But this was one huge enemy. The body does not give up its fights, it would rather die trying, so it continued fighting and eventually the tissues around the safety pin started swelling. That’s when the parents must have realised that there was a big problem and took the child to hospital.
It was such an unusual thing nobody knew what was happening. The only people who knew were little kids too scared of a beating to say anything. Accidents do happen. They happen to disciplined kids, they happen to indiscplined kids. I have examples of accidents that happened because parents were too soft. Kids who knew that their parents would not even reprimand them for being naughty.
All we can do as parents and guardians is make sure that our way of bringing kids up does not contribute to accidents. God help us.