Day: August 2, 2014

By: Dr Khushboo Shah Sawant

As mentioned earlier in this column, the birth of a child in the family brings along with it joy, hope and happiness for the family, but it also brings along with it a whole lot of responsibilities on the part of the parents. Just after the child is born, parents often fret about the weight of the child being healthy and look out for various means by which they can improve the weight of the baby. But, is just the weight of the baby being normal the indicator that all is well? Is that a validation that the child is developing normally? The answer is ‘no’. So how does a parent know whether their child is developing normally or not? Today, there are various means to keep a track of the child’s importance. The best and most important way is by keeping track of the child’s developmental milestones.

That brings us to the question, what are developmental milestones? These are set up by experts as markers from early childhood to compare and identify a child’s growth in primary areas of development like, speech and communication, intellectual, social, emotional and gross motor development etc. To specify further, gross motor development means using many muscles of the body to do activities like; sit, stand, keep balance etc. Fine motor development means using finer skills like to use hands to write eat play etc. Language or communication means using or learning signs and signals to communicate emotions to other people using body language, gestures, and also understanding what they say. Cognitive skills include the ability to think, learning, understanding and memory. Social development means interaction with others, bonding with family and friends etc

Developmental milestones are markers along with which one can compare the growth of a child to ascertain the child’s normal development and growth. But why is keeping a track of a child’s developmental milestones so important? Along with it being important to keep a check on the child’s normal development, it also helps to identify in case if the child has abnormal functions and helps in timely observation and diagnosis, thereby giving the child and doctors a chance for timely management of the special need of the child. Assessing a child’s milestones is importance and requires keen observation towards the child. A child achieves most of his milestones on his own by natural instinct however to observe them and make a note of it helps in confirming the child’s progress. However, we move on to the next question, what is the child does not achieve the milestones on the specified time or misses them completely? If the child is not meeting any of the milestones as noted by the parent or the doctor concerned, then the child needs to be encouraged in the direction of those milestones. However, if the milestones continue to be missed, it ought to be marked as red flag. A ‘red flag’ acts as an early indicator that early intervention may be required on the part of the parents as well as the doctors concerned who can support in the cause.

Given below are some basic developmental milestones for parents to keep a track of:

At Birth: Lies in foetal position, reacts to bright light, unable to hold neck, bonds with mother, makes eye contact and cries to indicate need.

3 months: Able to hold up neck when held in sitting position, grasps objects, turns head to observe things, gives a social smile, takes interest in surroundings, playthings, attentive to sounds made, cries differently for different needs.

6 months: Sits up with support, enjoys standing and jumping, visual sense is well established, responds to mother, shy in front of strangers, starts making verbal sounds like ‘mama, baba’ etc

9 months: sits unsupported, wriggles and crawls, holds bottles, claps hands, shows intrest in pictures, books, communicates with sounds etc

1 year: Stands holding furniture, takes a couple of steps unsupported, waves good bye, understands simple commands, babbles simple 2-3 words

15 months: can crawl upstairs, can place objects corrects, indicates soiled or wet clothes, very curious, can communicate needs

18 months: can walk alone, begins to jump on both feet, drinks from a cup with both hands, repeats adult’s last words, and imitates action

2 years: Can kick large ball, tries to run, throws tantrum, tries to speak in sentences, talks to self, uses own name to refer to self etc.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/08/developmental-milestones-in-a-childs-growth/

By: Soibam Haripriya

“We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families”, Philip Gourevitch’s writing on Rwanda so titled is an anatomy of the genocide in the republic of Rwanda (a small African country in central Africa, flanked by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Gourevitch in his writing and dissection of the genocide illustrates for us what a compelling work of journalism actually is. The title of the book is from a letter written to a Hutu Church Pastor from his congregation, a group of Tutsis asking for his intervention. His response: “Your problem has already found a solution. You must die”. The fetishisation of the difference between the Hutus and the Tutsis (the majority and minority) ethnic group of Rwanda is not too old, an insertion into their history.

The point of the need to recount this genocide for us today is this. Convention holds that the Hutus come from south and west of Rwanda; the Tutsis from the north and east, both with time lived together, intermarried, intermingled, spoke the same language. One could become another and therefore cannot ‘scientifically’ be called as distinct ethnic groups. This remains true for most ethnicities elsewhere and here too. The Tutsi minority became the ruler and the majority Hutus the ruled. There is not much in their pre-colonial history to dwell on ‘origins’. Much of the differences between them were written about after colonisation, and an impact of the “race science” of Europe of those days. The catastrophe that the amalgamation of “race science” and myths that created the idea of a superior and an inferior ethnicity is not something that the colonials will accept as of their doing. While many of the world’s greatest nations looked appalled at the genocide of Rwanda of the 1990s, the cleavage being drawn into the two groups leading to such a tragedy is something that no one till date from among the formers rulers would claim responsibility for. The point of the need to recount this is that one should not buy in the notion of superiority or inferiority of an ethnicity. Certain cultural practices are not superior to certain others; that choice of food or religion is not better than others and as Gourevitch writes about (Rwandan) history is worth a thought for us “So Rwandan history is dangerous. Like all of history, it is a record of successive struggles for power, and to a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality…” The fetishisation of a history as being “unique” and therefore different from all others is a tall claim so is a claim for a certain “civilisation” of purportedly many thousands of years that is superior because of practices of oppression, because one group had oppressed another. To try and learn from such a catastrophe seems appalling. Learning from history however is a resistance to such occurrences, to resist the script given to us by powers that try to drive in a cleavage into communities and people.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/08/a-breach-past-and-present/