Accelerated growth and its impacts on the physical and mental health of children
Imagine… An entire generation of “perfect” humans, toiling in the most efficient manner possible, to outrank each other in a display of merit and skills. In a world where everyone was equally equipped at engaging in the exact endeavours, will there ever be a need to worry about artificially intelligent bots taking over our planet? Our individualities, our differences define us as humans, adds spice to our lives. Mother Nature has created all beings distinctively, so we should allow our children to bloom in the colours they want to, at a pace of their own choosing.
Given the rate of competition prevalent in today’s age, it is understandable why no parent wants their child to fall behind. What we need to understand is that growth is not merely the marker of the immediate physical and emotional state-of-being of a child at a specific instance, it also encompasses the long-term consequences of the development process on the health of a person. Children go through a critical or sensitive period in early life and if we try to force or manipulate their growth into accelerating, it is bound to speed up their ageing as well. Compelling evidence is now available proving the detrimental effects of accelerated growth, particularly the increased risks of obesity and cardiovascular diseases.
In trying to make our children “perfect” right from the time they are born, we oftentimes forget to connect with them emotionally. While we try to do everything we can to make our children “successful” in the future, most of our attempts often boomerang. When we rush our children towards the success that we deem necessary for them, instead of showing them that they are children who are still evolving and we are here to help them in their journey, our behaviour shows them that they have permanent traits for which they are being criticised. This causes within the immature hearts extreme emotional distress.
When we praise our children only for their achievements and not their efforts, it makes them averse to facing difficult challenges, be it academically or emotionally. This takes the shape of learning disabilities, since instead of trying to work on them, our children become insecure about their short-comings. Even though our feeling of necessity to hurry their childhood is only born out of our wish for them to be successful and happy in their future, our children mostly end-up understanding that they have no value and don’t deserve to be loved unless they are perfect. This sense makes them feel detached from their own parents. The obligation of being perfect from an early stage of childhood will deter the children from engaging in new experiences and lead to the development of psychological uneases, especially stress and anxiety.
Who doesn’t like the concept of credit cards… “buy now, pay later”? But is the life of your child really an area where you would be willing to make that trade-off… “grow now, pay later”? Anything that tampers with the balance of how things should naturally be is bound to derive a cost. In this case the expense would be the physical and mental well-being of your children. Are you willing to let them pay the cost?
“…learning to walk isn’t so much about learning to use your legs. It’s more about learning to pull to stand and then balance and take steps without support. When babies are plopped into walkers, they don’t learn any of that.” – Claire McCarthy, MD. Allow your children to pull themselves up. Give them the time to balance themselves. When their growth and development happen naturally, the steps they take would be steadier and more permanent than artificially accelerated advancement.
Reference
Starostina, Yulia (2013). Forcing Child’s Development: Implications for Emotional Wellbeing of a Preschooler. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 86, 151 – 155.
Singhal, Atul (2017). Long-Term Adverse Effects of Early Growth Acceleration or Catch-Up Growth. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism, 70(3), 236-240.
McCarthy, Claire (2018). Parents: Don’t use a baby walker. Child and Teen Health. - https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/parents-dont-use-a-baby-walker-2018092714895
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