Parents' Guide To Combating The 23 Bad Habits In Kids cont'd...(2)

 Continued from previous one...

5. Teeth- grinding:

Teeth-grinding or Bruxism is a distasteful behaviour in both children and adults. It takes place in children when they are in stress and in a deep sleep. Some causes of teeth-grinding are misalignment (disarrangement) of teeth in the upper and lower jaws, teething period in children, and pains in the mouth. Many teeth-grinding children outgrow the habit once the baby teeth (milk teeth) have fallen down. Other ones continue in the habit till teenage and adolescence, and even adulthood. Adults who engage in teeth-grinding usually make nasty noise while teeth-grinding. Therefore, it means that an adult who is teeth-grinding may have learnt the bad habit at childhood and persisted in it tenaciously till adulthood. To eradicate teeth-grinding, the following steps should be taken:

1. Talk to the child if he/ she is matured enough to understand you. Tell him/ her that teeth-grinding is not an acceptable conduct to the modern society. You can also consult a dental professional for an expert advice concerning it.

6. Excessive screen time:

Naturally, all children are imitators of good and evi conducts that their parents and peers do. As their parents are using their smart phones, tablets, laptops, cordless devices and other gadgets excessively on daily basis, the children will immediately learn the trade from them. They can even be more habitual to the bad habit than their parents whom they learnt it from. The advent of technology (televisions, smart phones, tablets, laptops and other devices) bridged the huge communication gap which separated people living in one continent of the world from the orhers. Unfortunately, in contrast to its innumerable advantages, it has also contributed negatively to the cognitive, social, emotional, physical, and health development of most children across the world. The frequent and excessive use of smart phones, tablets, laptops, and other cordless devices has done more harm than good to the children, teenagers, and adolescents in particular. 

All over the world, in every split second of the day, children are habitually glued to the television screens and spend endless hours using their parent's smart phones for games etc. Much as we all know that offering the phone to a disturbing and fussy child can calm him/ her down and keep him busy, we should also know that the side-effects of giving the cell phone is too much on the child. Once a child becomes addicted to smart phones and other screen related products, the cognitive, emotional, physical and social development of that child has been buried under the earth's crust! The chances of a child addicted to smart phones, tablets, laptops and televisions becoming very useful and great in this competitive world is 3/10! I mean it. Why? It is because that child has no time for academic studies which can make him/ her come out with flying colors in an examination. He cannot perform creditably well because his "darling smart phone" does not allow that child to study his/ her books. Once a child spends more time before the screens, playing games and watching videos, it surely affects his/ her overall development. Medical experts said that 90% of brain growth takes place before the child gets to the age of five. If this is true, what do you think will be the fate of your child whom you always give your smart phone daily so that he/ she can be happy? What will be the condition of his/ her cognitive state? Many parents want to tell us that they love their children so much. It may be so. What of the cognitive, social, physical, and emotional disruption that the smart phone will subject your beloved child to? What about that? When your child is only familiar with smart phone and unfamiliar with the environment where he lives, he suffers from gross developmental deficit. It is vital that your child should have good knowledge of your environment than knowing everything in the cell phone. Excessive screen time makes the children not to have time and interest in their environment, and this will surely interfere with their developmental ability. 

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry recommended that children below 18 to 24 months should only be allowed screen time only when parent or caregiver is present with the child. And, for preschoolers, that is 2 to 5 years old, the organization recommends only one hour screen time per day. Unfortunately, many parents are unable to limit their children's access to the brain-rusting technology. Globally, children, teenagers, and adolescents, are no more serious with quality education due to the proliferation of smart phones in particular. All the good and bad information under the Sun are in the smart phone. Now that the depraved human nature loves evil above good, it obviously means that the child will opt for the evil information in the phone first. That is why most children are occupied with pornographic videos daily in the smart phones. I hope to talk about it next time because it is among the bad habits that children exhibit. When last did you as a parent, guardian, and caregiver monitor and investigate what your children are viewing in their smart phones? Once the knowledge of woman and man has filled the heart of that child, other good information will find it difficult to be absorbed and retained in the brain. That is one of the greatest impacts of early sex engagement on pupils and students. It retards the absorptive capacity of the brain, thereby causing low academic performance.

 The global standard of education has helplessly fallen to the lowest ebb. Pupils and students feel encumbered with their class works. It is as if parents are forcing them to go to school to acquire the knowledge of western education. They are reluctant to study!  They have no time to do their home works. They flagrantly refuse to do their home works. All their heart desire is smart phone and getting connected to the social media. Everyone wants to be like another person whereas it was not supposed to be so. That's what they want. Nothing else. Failing class tests and examinations mean nothing to them. Laptops and internet technology have replaced physical books which students used to read. I don't not know why the United Nations allowed education to be so modified and reduced to nothingness. There is a universal drop in academic performance. Education has long lost its value and beauty. Experts have cautioned that all parents, guardians, and caregivers should drastically limit excessive  screen time among children if they want their  children to have overall development. 

There is increase in violence, illicit sex, and substance abuse. There is decrease in morals, values, ideals, good mannerisms, and civic responsibilities. The American Academy of Paediatrics recommends that children of ages 2 to 5 be limited to one hour screen time per day with consistent limits for older children. The screen time can be defined as the time spent utilizing any technology that involves a screen: they are televisions, smart phones (the silent brain killer), tablets, video games, and computers. People in the deveped world spend an average of 7 hours daily on these gadgets. That is nearly 1/3 of their waking moments spent in the digital. Here in Africa, it is worse. Almost all men, women, children, teenagers, adolescents, and adults everywhere are holding their smart phones in their hands even when they are walking in extremely busy highways. Their smart phones are more important to them than the oxygen in their lungs. Those who are driving on the highways are not exempted from this smart phones madness. When they are driving with one hand, the other hand is either receiving or making calls, thereby causing distractions. In the process, they will be involved in ghastly motor accidents.

 Automobile accident rate is simply geometric today. No Government is doing anything about it. It is as devastating as that! Interactive screens use can be beneficial to us truly, but there is evidently an impact of sleep deficit or disruption resulting from it. In order to outsmart the smart phones, screens, and their impacts, parents, guardians and caregivers should set healthy limits on the time that the children should spend in front of televisions, smart phones, tablets, laptops, computers and other cordless devices. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that,"children under 5 years of age should spend less time sitting and watching screens, get better and quality sleep and have more time for active play if they want their children to grow up healthy." The WHO also posited that there should be limit or no screen time for children under 5 years of age. It reported that failure to comply with the recommended current physical activity was responsible for the death of 5 million children recently. The UNICEF has reported that, " babies need humans, not screens."  The negative effects of the much screen time for babies and toddlers range from shorter attention time to lower empathy. Excessive screen time or gaming is associated with health risks. It replaces healthy behaviours and habits such as physical activity and quality sleep and leads to poor cognitive development. In summary, to prevent excessive screen time and its litany of impacts on child development, the following things are suggested:

1. Parents, guardians, and caregivers should set screen time limits. No child in that family should violate it and go unscathed.

2. Parents, guardians, and caregivers should ensure that children use smart phones only for academic purposes and only when the parents are present at homes.

3. Keep the children busy with good activities to divert their attention from the smart phones.

4. Parents, guardians, and caregivers should make sure that they know the quality and nature of contents their children are consuming. 

5. They should lead by example. Parents, guardians, and caregivers should first limit their own use of the screens and smart phones so that the children might learn from them to do the right thing. 

It is my belief that parents, guardians, and caregivers will read this piece and respond appropriately by doing the needful to recover our children whom we have lost to the proliferation of modern technologies, especially the smart phones. The Governments of the nations and regions of the world, including international organizations and agencies, should participate in capacity building to successfully combat the spate of excessive screen time. But, if this warning is not heeded, let the Earth know assuredly that we are heading towards the pit. Our children will be under-developed cognitively, physically, socially and emotionally. Karl Marx said that the production of many beautiful things in the world will result in many useless people. There was no single technology in the world when he said it. Yet, he was convinced in his mind that time shall come when mankind will become very useless and retrogressive because of technologies! He was sure that in future people will want to be wealthy but without hard work and sweating. What Karl Marx said has happened completely! Modern technologies, especially the smart phones , have truly made mankind very useless and under-developed. The people who existed before us in the dim past centuries were stronger and better than us. The addiction to screen technologies, especially the smart phones, has become a bane to human development.

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