Without true love and patience, parents and teachers cannot encourage children to learn and grow. I spent two hours at an activity session organised by a non-profit organisation on Saturday afternoon.
Half of the children at 3 seem like normal pupils. They pay close attention in classes, enjoy making crafts, following teachers’ directions, and doing fun activities with other children.
Half of them have very short attention spans. They find watching a video very boring and want to walk around or explore new things in the classroom.
The Indian boy I looked after on Saturday was smart. He constantly looked for creative things to play with in the room, for example, the swirling chair, or the buttons of a fan. He knows the way to grasp a teacher’s attention and makes the teacher let him do something he likes to do. For the first 45 minutes, he was fine sitting down and drawing, but then he lost patience and began to jump around corners. It was like a physical challenge for me to stop his explorations. I did not want him to get hurt.
For the second half hour, I observed how he interacted with the teacher he knew. He was still restless and did not want to calm down. The teacher asked him to count from one to twenty, which kept me focused for 2 minutes. Eventually, the teacher had to take him for a walk in another room before returning to the small classroom.
The boy knows the name of transport means in Cantonese. Intellectually he appears to be a normal child.
Through the volunteering experience, I have empathy with the parents who raise a hyperactive child. I am still unable to convince myself why doctors prescribe more ADHD drugs to children. Psychiatric drugs require long-term or lifelong use. Why do doctors give 8 – 10 pills to 11-year-old boys and girls whose physical and mental development is not yet complete?
Maybe simply giving them space to jump around, like young puppies, can benefit their well-being. Maybe we can set a boundary for the stimuli we expose ourselves to. Managing expectations for ourselves and our children will help maintain mental wellness.
experience today 