All About Your Child

This happened on 25th July, Saturday

Just before I was hospitalised, for the 2nd time, in the afternoon, kids and I had great fun at Go Go Bambini in the late morning.

A lovely team from Edelman Singapore put together a mini-blogger-gathering there, with the hope to spread the anti-smoking campaign held by the Health Promotion Board (HPB)

“Stop Smoking Before Your Child Starts” is a new campaign launched by HPB that focuses on the influence that parental behaviour have on children. The campaign was developed based on a study done by Dartmouth college.

Research studies have shown that children are highly attentive to their
parents’ smoking habits, and are more likely to regard smoking as
appropriate and normal behaviour in social settings, thus resulting in a higher likelihood of them picking up the habit later on in life.

This is probably the 2nd or 3rd time I’m talking about smoking, remember my shocking video blog post of the TODDLER smoking like a professional, last year in October, which resulted in so many heartbreaking comments?

And this is the ‘umpteen’ times I’m talking about how parents should watch their behaviour and speech when they are with their kids, ‘cos the young ones are always watching their ‘idols’ in action.

The sweet representative from HPB first showed us a video which I was way too familiar with, because I did a post on that video too, back in April 3, 2008: Children See Children Do.

This year’s anti-smoking campaign is no longer geared towards the possible health hazards which smoking brings along, but the impact of it on our children. With that, the birth of this new television commercial :

To get the ball rolling the kids were ‘put to the test’. *giggle* They get to shop for things that ‘Daddy and Mommy’ would like. An activity which reflects how much the kids observed their parents during shopping time. Luckily none of them took the packets of cigarettes on the shelf, anyway Allan and I are non-smokers.

However, in the end, my boys took what they like, instead of what Allan and I would like! *Laugh*

These were what the boys took from their short shopping. According to Keatkeat, the bar of Mars was taken specially for me. Thank you baby. As for the honest Binbin, everything was for himself, except for the can of Coke, which he ‘allows’ us to share with him. *laugh*

Thereafter, the kids were brought to the 3 storey massive play area while the adults stayed on, in the cozy room for more ‘serious’ talk with Dr Daniel Fung, Chief of Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Institute of Mental Health who shared about the impact of parental behaviour and tips on how to deal with them.

Dr Fung mentioned that our children are very much like us, because of Biological reasons. So if you (parents) are a smoker, you may have passed down some ‘cigar-craving-genes’ down to your little one too, causing him/her to have a higher chance of picking up the cigarette.

But all is not lost, if parents could correct that through close bonding and stubbing that butt once and for all when their children are still young or unborn. Through actions, through examples, the kids learn, the kids remember.

Another key point noted was a mother has a big influence in the children early development and father in later years beginning from teenage. So everyone has a role to play at different stages of the kid’s life.

He also discourage using force or cane as punishment. He suggested that what’s used as a reward can be a punishment too. For example, if the child misbehaves, instead of using the wooden stick to hit on the flesh, you can choose “No TV for the rest of day.” With that mindset in mind, a reward can be a removal of a chore which the kid does not like, instead of giving something the kid likes.

So IN MY OPINION, if your kid do pick up smoking, I think a proper punishment would be to bring him or her to the professionals to help kick the habit before it sinks too deep.

Note, the word I used is ‘Habit’. Like the famous Chinese saying, it takes 3 days to pick up a bad habit and 3 years to break it. So DON’T even risk it. Build a closer bond with your children right from the start. Behave as you would want your little ones to behave. Do it when they are young and babbling in those kiddish language and not wait till your daily actions sink deep into their brain.

When the speech from Dr Fung was over, Allan and I joined the kids and found them happily munching away their lunch. We were sitting together with Leonny. To meet her and her family was such a pleasure. *smile* Seriously, the team that put up this event are really good ‘baby sitters’. Thank you ladies, you were great!

We left the fun-filled place with hands filled with goodies. They kids get to keep what they had ‘shopped’ for earlier and on top of that, they received these:

My boys literally went crazy!!! Because they are going to watch “UP” in the cinema for sure now!!! *laugh*

Because of my increasing abdomen pain during the event, I didn’t snap much photos, but the professional photographer of the team did. He posted many pictures over here. Hop over to leave a

comment or two. *wink*