Wrong Priorities Harming Children

By Suganthi Suparmaniam, Laviinia Dhanangunan and Ili Liyana Mokhtar

(Although this article was written in Malaysia, i found it pertinent and relevant to modern parenting life in Singapore too)

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA: Four children go missing every day. One in three children has mental health problems.One in 11 children scored straight As in their Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah this year.

These figures and the growing legion of obese children, with rising cases of Type 2 diabetes, high-blood pressure and high cholesterol level, have got experts wondering whether Malaysians have got their priorities right -- focusing on educational excellence to the detriment of the children's safety and health.

They are questioning if the misplaced focus could be the cause of the woes facing children.

The medical profession has blamed parents' indulgence for the growing number of obese children and health problems such as diabetes, high-blood pressure and high cholesterol level.

Sri Murugan Centre director and founder Datuk Dr M. Thambirajah said everything began with the family unit.

He said in the past, teachers took it upon themselves to play the dual role of educator and parent.

"But today, because of the workload and pressure to perform, they can no longer play the dual role. It is unfair to expect that from them."

Thambirajah said children from middle-class families faced competition every day in examinations, piano lessons, art classes and others. He said these children faced stress.
Human Dynamic child counsellor Wong Yee Men agreed that children were stressed out these days, but disagreed that this problem was confined to middle-class families.

"Today, both parents have their own careers. Children want their parents to spend time with them, period."

Wong said she had seen an increase in referral cases from parents, teachers and counsellors for children with behavioural problems, learning difficulties or even emotional blockages.

"I feel the root problem lies with the parents."

Wong said parents often brought back their "baggage" from work and this would have an adverse impact on the child's life.

"For example, because of a bad day at work, the parent could have snapped at the child over a simple matter like watching television. This will stress out the child."

Children's safety has also become a crucial issue.

With more than 8,000 children reported missing over the last five years and more than 500 in the first six months of this year, experts are wringing their hands on what can be done.

Even the missing children alert system remains just a proposal.

Health-wise, our children are not doing too good, either.

Children as young as 7 are developing Type 2 diabetes as a result of their couch-potato lifestyle and high-calorie food.

Hospital Putrajaya, the referral hospital for diabetes cases in the country, has been recording an "alarming" increase in the number of cases.

Hospital Putrajaya paediatrics department head Dr Fuziah Md Zain said children with a propensity for Type 2 diabetes were usually the youngest in the family.

"We believe that because the youngest child is usually the pet in the family, parents give in to their demands for high-calorie food."

The latest National Health and Morbidity Study showed that 20 per cent of children and teenagers in Malaysia have mental ailments.

The figure was 13 per cent in 1996.

Gleneagles Medical Centre Penang consultant psychiatrist Dr Zasmani Shafiee, during a Family Day gathering last month, said some 130,000 Malaysian children and adolescents suffered mental illnesses.

Selayang Hospital saw a 300 per cent increase in the number of children seeking psychiatric help in the past four years.

HELP University College's developmental and counselling psychologist Dr Brendan J. Gomez said depression, stress, violence and suicide were on the rise among young people.

"It is a really worrying trend, and we want to try and address that problem right now."

Universiti Teknologi Mara's Faculty of Medicine consultant psychiatrist Associate Professor Dr Osman Chik Bakar disagreed that parents should be blamed for the malaise.

"Genetically, children are not the same, so parents need to approach their children by how they respond. Sometimes, a child can respond just by communicating with the parents.

"Other times, a more forceful approach is needed."

He said other factors could also contribute to stress experienced by children such as influence from peers, media and Internet.

"We can't protect our children from everything.

"After all, we live in very challenging times where everything is made available to them."

National Union of the Teaching Profession secretary-general Lok Yim Pheng said parents could control and monitor younger children but it was not that easy with older ones.

"Parents should control their children but just how much can they control them?

"Cyber cafes, for example, are like a magnet for children.

"If the attraction is too great, how much can the parents control their children?"

Lok said the authorities should not allow cyber cafes to operate near schools and should stop schoolchildren from entering them.

"If it is difficult for the child to enter the cyber cafe, I think he or she will have no choice but to go home."

Women's Aid Organisation executive director Ivy Josiah said it was insensitive to place the blame on parents alone, as keeping a child safe was the responsibility of the whole community.

She said the focus should not be on parents but on creating a safer environment for children.

Obama and Abortion

Did you know that Barrack Osama (oops, sorry i meant Obama ;-) is one of the most extreme pro-abortion candidates ever to seek the Presidential Office of the United States?

According to articles like this (http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/viewarticle.php?selectedarticle=2008.10.14_George_Robert_Obama's%20Abortion%20Extremism_.xml) and videos like this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfL_H7zg1QI&feature=related), Obama is NOT only pro-abortion, but he is pro-infanticide too. This means that if a baby were to survive a late-term abortion, he believes that he/she should be left outside to die. In 2002, he voted AGAINST the Induced Infant Liability Act, which would have protected babies like these. As an Illinois legislator, he also voted against a bill that would give babies who survived abortions the same rights as other babies.

He is extreme because he is not only pro-choice (which could be defined as supporting the right of a woman to choose abortion in certain circumstances but also respecting pro-life Americans not to fund abortions with their tax dollars or to implicate themselves in other feticides), but pro-abortion in all its forms.

"Just for the sake of argument, though, let us assume that there could be a morally meaningful distinction between being "pro-abortion" and being "pro-choice." Who would qualify for the latter description? Barack Obama certainly would not. For, unlike his running mate Joe Biden, Obama does not think that abortion is a purely private choice that public authority should refrain from getting involved in. Now, Senator Biden is hardly pro-life. He believes that the killing of the unborn should be legally permitted and relatively unencumbered. But unlike Obama, at least Biden has sometimes opposed using taxpayer dollars to fund abortion, thereby leaving Americans free to choose not to implicate themselves in it. If we stretch things to create a meaningful category called "pro-choice," then Biden might be a plausible candidate for the label; at least on occasions when he respects your choice or mine not to facilitate deliberate feticide.

The same cannot be said for Barack Obama. For starters, he supports legislation that would repeal the Hyde Amendment, which protects pro-life citizens from having to pay for abortions that are not necessary to save the life of the mother and are not the result of rape or incest. The abortion industry laments that this longstanding federal law, according to the pro-abortion group NARAL, "forces about half the women who would otherwise have abortions to carry unintended pregnancies to term and bear children against their wishes instead." In other words, a whole lot of people who are alive today would have been exterminated in utero were it not for the Hyde Amendment. Obama has promised to reverse the situation so that abortions that the industry complains are not happening (because the federal government is not subsidizing them) would happen. That is why people who profit from abortion love Obama even more than they do his running mate.

But this barely scratches the surface of Obama's extremism. He has promised that "the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act" (known as FOCA). This proposed legislation would create a federally guaranteed "fundamental right" to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, including, as Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia has noted in a statement condemning the proposed Act, "a right to abort a fully developed child in the final weeks for undefined 'health' reasons." In essence, FOCA would abolish virtually every existing state and federal limitation on abortion, including parental consent and notification laws for minors, state and federal funding restrictions on abortion, and conscience protections for pro-life citizens working in the health-care industry-protections against being forced to participate in the practice of abortion or else lose their jobs. The pro-abortion National Organization for Women has proclaimed with approval that FOCA would "sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies." (Robert George, The Witherspoon Institute)

In this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDX52pEC7_w&feature=related) Jill Stanek talks about Barrack Obama's reaction during her testimony about how as a nurse, she witnessed many babies who were born alive and then left to die. He was unmoved, and even later opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. For your info, on a federal level, EVERY Democrat in the U.S. Senate has supported this Act (including Clinton, Kerry, Kennedy, Boxer, etc) and even the hard-core pro-abortion group NARAL didn't oppose it. BUT Obama was the only one who voted against it!

In speeches like this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0faPpO0CaY), Obama - in the same breath that he uses to describe his own daughters as "miracles" - implies that having a baby would be akin to being punished.

If you don't know what late-term abortion is, watch these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THS2zZ4m260&feature=related (The Silent Scream)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCVVXbAOSko (Killing Girls Documentary)


By the way, Barrack Obama himself was born as a result of a teenage pregnancy. By his own measure, then, does he consider himself as a "punishment" to his own mother?