EPISODE 35
SMOKING -- PART TWO
SMOKING AND DEVELOPMENTAL HEALTH
CIGARETTE SMOKING
1. Reduction in birth weight and are shorter.
2. Placental complications
3. Premature rupture of membrane
4. Preterm labour
5. Uterine infections
Birth defects of the heart, brain and face are more common in babies of smoking mothers
Acti on: thought to be caused by carbon monoxide, and may reduce oxygen supply to the body’s tissues and nicotine and stimulate the release of hormones that construct the vessels supplying blood to the placenta and uterus.
Cocaine also constructs blood flow to the fetus, reduced growth, skeletal defects, abnormalyy narrow sects of stomach, hyperactivity and uncontrolled trembling in toddlers.
EPISODE 36
ALCOHOL AND FETAL EFFECT
Fetal alcohol syndrome include growth retardation before or after birth, facial defects, a small head (microcephaly) probably caused by subnormal brain growth, and abnormal behavioural development.
Mental retardation occurs more often from fetal alcohol syndrome than any other source.
Also miscarriages, anti-social behaviour and attention deficit in the child. Low birth weight (1/2 half).
EPISODE 37
DRUG USE DURING PREGNANCY
Drug use can affect the foetus in several ways
By acting directly on the foetus, causing damage, abdominal development or death.
By altering the function of the placenta, usually by constricting blood vessels and reducing the exchange of oxygen and nutrients between the foetus and the mother.
By causing the muscles of the uterus to constrict forcefully, indirectly, injuring the foetus by reducing its blood supply
17th-57th day after fertilization – period of organ development.
Sex hormones like synthetic oestrogen, can cause vaginal cancer in adolescent girls whose mothers took this drug during pregnancy. These girls may later suffer from abnormal uterine cavity, menstrual problems, weakened cervix and higher risk of having ectopic pregnancies. Boys who were exposed as foetus may have penis abnormalities.
Tetracycline: cross the placenta and are stored in fetal bone and teeth – where they combine with calcium. As a result, bone growth may be slow, baby’s teeth may be permanently yellow and the teeth enamel may be soft and susceptible to cavities.
Streptomycin may damage the fetus inner ear possibly leading to deafness. Chloramphenicol may cause some problems in the new-born. Ciprofloxacin cause joint abnormalities in animals. Most sulphonamides may lead to jaundice – brain damage.
EPISODE 38
DEVELOPMENT -----THE CRITICAL YEARS—1 TO 10
THE CRISIS YEARS --- TEENS
(tree of effe ctive parenting)
Challenges
FORMER NOW
1. Fear and reverence for parents and elders. 1. Children now bolder, less respectful and parents more persuasive.
2. Gro w up slowly with warm environment and less challenging outside influence. 2. Grow fast, thinks quickly, have access to other climax via the media and have constant challenge on what is being taught at home.
3. Less status competition, less media bombardment and more adult support. 3. Stiff competition, media bombardment, individualistic families, drugs, premarital sex, alcohol smoking.
PAENTING DURING THE CRITICAL YEARS
1. Love unconditionally and don’t show favouritism.
2. Don’t be a laisser-faire parent.
3. Begin early to disabuse the minds of external influences.
4. Imperative to teach decision-making skills. To be able to say NO when everyone is saying YES and stick to it.
5. Love them enough to let them learn.
6. Allow significant learning opportunities by letting them face consequences of decisions.
7. Be their model.
8. Let go and allow SLOs.
9. Self-esteem comes from accomplishments.
10. If you are happy, they are; if you forgive, they learn to.
Self-concept is acquired from childhood and if poor – leads to self-loathing, bullying, arguments with teachers and peers, hatred.
Better to build on positive self-concepts and attributes rather than always highlighting mistakes or set-backs.
Parents who hover around children and don’t give them a breathing space and do everything for them.
Drill sergeants who are so bossy that the children are immune from thinking for themselves.
- Mistakes/failure means severe punishment.
Laisser-faire parent don’t give a damn about anything and expect the children to run the home.
The consultant parents – they give thoughtful guidelines and firm, enforceable limits.
Child teenagers abstract thinkers.
The parents ask questions, enlighten about possible consequences of available options and allow children to make the choices.
God gives us choices knowing that free will may lead to failure. But in failure, we learn.
EPISODE 39
BEDWETTING
Bedwetting (nocturnal enuresis) is accidental, repeated urination by a sleeping child who is old enough to be expected not to wet the bed.
About 30% of children still wet the bed at age 4 years, 10 percent at age 6, 3 percent at age 12, and a 1 percent at age 18. Bed-wetting is more common in boys than in girls and seems to run in families. Bed-wetting is usually caused by slow maturation, although it sometimes accompanies such sleep disorders as sleepwalking and night terrors. A physical disorder- usually a urinary tract infection- is found in only 1 to 2 percent of cases. In rare cases, other disorders, such as diabetes, may cause a child to wet the bed.bed-wetting occasionally is caused by psychiatric problems, either in the child or in another family member.
Sometimes bed-wetting stops and then begins again. The relapse usually follows a psychologically stressful event or condition, but a physical cause, such as a urinary tract infection, may be responsible.
Behaviour Therapy for Bed-wetting
Child’s responsibilities
Keep a calendar to record wet and dry nights
Refrain from drinking any fluids for 2 to 3 hours before going to bed
Urinate before going to bed
Change clothing and bedding when wet
Parents’ responsibilities
Do not punish child for bed-wetting or get angry when bed-wetting occurs.
Give praise and rewards (a star on the calendar or other rewards, depending on child’s age) for dry nights.
EPISODE 40
EPISODE 40
EFFECT OF NEGLECT/ABUSE ON CHILDREN
Neglect due to separation/divorce, job demand or death can intoxicate the body as much as other physical toxins like the smoking we’ve been talking about.
Divorce diverts the attention of adults away from children and focuses on their painful experiences. And this privation is more critical during the first two years of life for the boy child because of tis psychological and neurological effects.
This is because the brain is a dynamic and interactive organ that requires stimulation from the outside world to develop well. And so when mistreated or shuffled from one caregiver to another, terrible losses occur in thinking capacity.
Researches have shown that most violent kids have increased male hormone (testosterone) and more enlarged amygdala, areas of the brain responsible for risk taking and violent acts.
And research at Harvard on college students 91% of those who lacked parental bonding developed CHD, HB, ulcers, alcoholism e.t.c at midlife compared to 45% in those that grow normally.
1ST TIP
You have the power within you and the grace of God to reclaim your life from whatever has been eating you up. If you want us to talk about it, write us at askmay@yahoo.com or call the number on your screen and it shall be well with you.
Bye now.
CHAPTER 41
SOCIAL EFFECT OF depravity on children
We have highlighted the fact that chronic neglect, abuse or shuffling hurt children badly during their developmental age and increases the tendency to violence, anti-social behaviours and Godlessness.
Recommendations
Let us reclaim our extended family values. Economy might be biting a bit hard on us but money cannot buy love. Better a home with scanty luxury but plenty love than one with plenty luxury and constant strife. Besides parental love and character formation have a critical time frame which you cannot reclaim if the time passes by.
I co-ordinate a spectrum of widows and orphans from different strata of social level and I can tell you that nothing as yet, can replace quality time and care given to a needy relative or neighbour. In short, there is no prosthesis for a broken heart.
1. All social media, extended family units churches, mosques, courts, police should be encouraged to participate in reducing the level of family disintegration. Old values of being our brothers’ keepers should be re-enforced.
2. Schools need to integrate family values, emotional healthiness and character moulding as core subjects in their curriculum instead of leaving it for NGOs.
3. Children who are hyperactive or who are detached, uninterested and miserable need to be properly counselled, loved, encouraged and fed with meals and supplements that sedate nerves and improve memory such oats, ginseng, thymes etc. Banana is rich in tryptophan and is a precursor for building the pacifier hormone – serotonin.
4. Those who are matured and now indulge in violent acts – should be arrested (to secure the society) but should be camped in an institution properly equipped for counselling, brain-monitoring and other forms of psychotherapeutic processes. Because it is only when you know truly what moves them that you can help them, help the society and prevent or reduce the causative factors of their anti-social behaviours. Anti-stress supplements such as ………….. should be.
5. Street boys and girls and even those who have turned to adult miscreants should all be picked up and institutionalised. The houses should be homely and social experts such as trained psychologists, health experts, qualitative religious institutions should be employed to try and heal these people, refocus them and position them for a normal life in the society.
TIPS
If you suffered so much in your childhood, don’t keep blaming your past and the people who neglected you. Determine to rise above your impediments and the Almighty who says he is the father of the fatherless & husband of the widows will show what he can do. Keep in the right path and write me if you still need to talk.
Episode 42
PUBERTY GIRLS---I
Puberty is a transitional period from childhood to adulthood during which physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and other changes take place and usually between 10- 19 years of age.
SIGNS: Breasts shoot out, Growth on 4inches/year, spurt of female hormones, Menstruation or menarche, oily and pimply faces, mood swings.
Fat begins to deposit on the hips to give the typical female feature and the girl becomes more self-conscious. Internally, hormone interplay give rise to menstruation and ovulation and this means the girl’s reproductive organ can now conceive a baby, house it and nurture it to birth.
At this stage any who indulges in sex with the opposite sex may get pregnant. But if intercourse does not happen, the prepare uterus disintegrates and gets washed off with blood in a process called menstruation and this goes to midlife when the hormones get so low that menstruation ceases and the woman is said to go into menopause.
NOW ALL THESE PROCESSES TAKE PLACE IN A REPRODUCTIVE ORGAN HOUSED IN A BONE CAVITY CALLED THE SACRAL BONE. SACRAL IS FROM THE WORD SACRED indicating that what happens in that organ is sacred.
Reflect on this sacred process that goes on in every woman and send me your comments/questions to askmay@yahoo.com
EPISODE 44
PUBERTY GIRLS II
In the last episode we arrived at the fact that reproduction happens in a sacred enclosure indicating that the act of intercourse and childbearing are acts that should be kept sacred. But what do we have?
It is now fashionable to defy Divine order and yet w lament about proliferation of sicknesses like HIV/AIDS, VVF, CERVICAL CANCER spread by human papilloma virus, herpes simplex and other STIs. Also issues like abortions, unwanted pregnancies, premature termination of education, broken dreams and unplanned/unwanted marriages continue to plague us and we don’t want to take the root cause of the problems seriously.
If you miss your period when you know you had intercourse with a boy in recent times, you are most likely pregnant and the baby in your womb is already 2weeks old. On examination when scanned the baby may look like a clot of blood but it is already throbbing in movement as it breathes. THE BREADTH OF GOD IS ALREADY IN THAT CHILD AND ANYTHING YOU DO TO FLUSH OUT THE BABY IS MURDER.
It is bad enough to violate the sacred housing but the evil should not be multiplied by commiting murder. Many women who flushed out their babies are regretting the act even 40 years afterwards.
Confide in your parents or trusted relatives; they may rebuke you but they should relent and help you handle the situation. You may have to be relocated to live with other relations until the baby is born, then you must go back to school and be determined to stay off intimate relationships that may land you in another trouble. Don’t jump into marrying someone you don’t want to live with cos that may condemn you to life of misery, don’t be in a hurry to give up your baby for adoption- some who did are mourning the loss of their baby for life.
EPISODE 44
PUBERTY –BOYS
SIGNS: Voice grows deep[er, Growth about 4in/year, testosterone surge, hair in chest, pubic area chin. Some have pimples on their faces.
Teenage, when puberty happens is the age the male hormone multiply most creating those physical changes and also making the youths want to take risky ventures- including unreasonable ones like driving excessively on the road, fighting to exhibit strength and approaching the opposite sex for friedship as the emotions run soar. They are natural.
But then that’s when character is supposed to be firmly established as the values we were taught as children begin to take root and emotions begin to be trained to be subdued. A wild teenager will display a loose character by displaying all his emotions like shouting at his peers and even elders when provoked, insist on fulfilling all emotional cravings when heated up, and joining all kinds of associations to prove that he is macho. While a real youth will concentrate on learning how to be a real gentleman by taming his emotions, listening to wise counsel so that reason is elevated above passion and studying to expand his brain capacity and be truly educated. This called is EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE.
- You must learn to wait for things you want in life;
- You must learn to decipher what is good and bad and say emphatic NO to the bad ones irrespective of what everyone else is saying;
- You must begin to dream about your future—your career, your vocation, your role in the society and what you will like to be remembered for. What kind of home would you like to build and with what kind of woman? What and what must you do or avoid to make sure these dreams become realities in your life?
- I WILL LIKE TO SHARE YOUR DREAMS SO FEEL FREE TO WRITE VIA SMS OR MY E-MAIL and rem to check blog site,
