Page 12 - ParentsWorld March 2020 flipbuilder

nurturing 21st century children
cover

story

Calming

YOGA AsANAs

oga guru Ravindra Singh Thakkor recommends
Ythe following exercises to beat stress and anxiety:
• Warm-up with 12 suryanamaskaras — a sequence of 12
asanas which calm and relax the body.
• Sarvangasana or the supported shoulder stand, improves
blood circulation, reduces stress and relieves lower back • Breathing exercises. start with deep breathing
pain. through both nostrils. Then move on to nadishodhana (alter-
• Machasana is mandatory after sarvangasana. It in- nate nostril breathing); and sheetali, also known as cooling
creases lung capacity and eases breathing. breath.
• Also try the child, dog, and cat asanas to relax the For detailed instructions on practising these asanas visit
mind. yogavibes.com

ing has intensified double-income working parents.
parenting pressure “External chaos increases internal stress. External fac-
on women who are tors such as traffic congestion, poor public transport and
finding it increasingly lack of children’s parks and playgrounds, limit the time
difficult to balance that parents can spend with children. Moreover, Indian
parenting and careers. society is very judgemental with all and sundry given to
Moreover, the advent commenting about parenting styles and blaming negative
of ubiquitous social child behaviour on parents’ especially maternal, neglect.
media and constant All this adds to parental stress which transfers to children,”
sharing of parenting says Joy Srinivasan, Bangalore-based president of the
notes has added to Indian society for Applied Behavioural science, chairper-
their stress. symptoms son of NGO Makkala Jagriti and an expert on organisa-
of parental burnout tion development and time management.
include anxiety, de- srinivasan’s warning about stress transference is note-
Dr. Satish Ramaiah
pression, anger, sleep
deprivation and loss of appetite. Parental stress adversely Anxious parents queue to collect school admission forms in Delhi
affects workplace productivity and could damage mar-
riages and alienate children,” warns Ramaiah.
Though parenting has always had its pains and strains,
parenting 21st century children is an unprecedented chal-
lenge. With exponential growth in the number of nuclear
households, increasing participation of women in the
workforce, rising pressure to keep up with the Joneses (or
Patels), and incremental technology dependence forcing
lifestyle changes, a rising number of couples are expe-
riencing unprecedented difficulties in discharging their
child nurturance obligations. Moreover, urban India’s
traffic-choked streets, inefficient public transport, intensely
competitive school/college admission processes and lack
of child-friendly public spaces compound the stress of

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