Family Tips

It’s a common thing for our children to watch TV, chatter on ICQ and search for something in Google simultaneously. But how this jugglery by digital technologies affects their mentality and family life?
According to sociological researches, 82 % of the children by the seventh form are confident Internet - users today.
The important opening as the result of a survey over 2005 Americans in the age from 8 to 18 years was not that children spent the most part of the time using an electronic means of communication - approximately 6,5 hours a day, - but that for this time they mastered a lot of information due to simultaneous use of several means: children listen to a player, look DVD and communicate with their friends over Internet Messenger.
The person always has ability to be engaged in several things simultaneously. And simultaneous work with several electronic devices is not a new thing: since 1930th we drive the car listening to the radio.
However since the beginning of the Internet era this tendency has got unprecedented scope.
But what are the consequences of such intensive consumption of the information? And how does it influence children training, their ability to think and interact with others?
 

Social researchers and teachers only start to approach to this problem, but scientists already have their point of view on this matter.
Though children, capable to carry out simultaneously several tasks, can be better prepared for requirements of a modern life and work in particular, but cognitive psychologists are seriously concerned with this tendency. «Children who simultaneously do homework, play, watch TV and communicate through the Internet with friends, according to my forecasts, in long-term prospect will face serious problems», - said Jordan Graphman, head of the cognitive neurology department in National institute of neural disorder and insults.
The positive factor is that children of M generation (from Media) possess powerful skills in search and processing of the information. Especially successfully they process the visual information and images, marks Claudia Cuntz the professor of  history from University Duka. More and more teachers use films, audio records and presentations with the help of PowerPoint to involve all abilities of their students and to capture their attention.

Many teachers and psychologists say, that parents should work actively to draw teenagers away from their obsession to the screen and to induce them to spend more time in the company of real people and friends. To carry out all this is more difficult not only because modern technologies present so convenient alternative but also because the life of the modern children is very much loaded and simply there is no place for old-fashioned dialogue or joint family dinners.
As a positive example, and for the own benefit, from time to time it would be useful for parents and teachers, even vital, to disconnect all technical equipment, stop and think over a little.
In fact, “M” generation problem is not in technologies actually.
«The problem, - says Edward Hallowell, the psychiatrist from Massachusetts and the author of the research, - is in that, what you do not do when interaction with electronics occupies too much time». It is too much for teenagers and for their parents who frequently are adhered to the devices too.
“The matter is not that computer games corrode brain, the matter is that your life is corroded by absence of things, replaced by computer”.

Children - an ideal audience for advertisers. They are naive and trustful – and naturally wish to get the promoted goods straightway.
They selflessly sing advertising melodies, repeat words and do not get tired to look advertising which they liked. But let’s think whether the advertising is harmful and how it influences children’s minds.
Firstly, it tempts the child not with the most useful goods (such, as sweets, cuds, soda water) from which children have tooth- and stomach ache.
Secondly, advertising inspires parents in constant waste of money which has an effect on material welfare of the family.
Thirdly, advertising of the adult goods causes unnecessary questions, which adults cannot answer. Besides, some plots of advertising contradict moral. For example, when children cannot resist temptation and take sweets - when mum says  ” it is impossible”, advertising teaches: “ If very much desired, it is possible ”.
And look on the children’s speech. To each question we receive the answer from the advertising. Certainly, it sounds funny. It is enough for them to look it one or two times to remember words with amazing accuracy. On one hand, it develops memory and artistic skills, but, on the other, children stop to communicate normally: they repeat all set of the advertising phrases, without thinking over the meaning.

And what may be told in the justification of advertising? Well, first, due to it we get known about novelties on the consumer market and receive the first information about the goods. Furthermore, parents say that some advertising teach children to behave correctly (day regimen, help to parents, personal hygiene, care of relatives, etc.). Everything is done perfectly there - cleaning, walk, cooking or meeting of guests. Imitating heroes of advertising, children also with pleasure begin offer home help, are ready always to wash hands with soap and to clean teeth two times a day.
There is one more advertising trick which attracts children greatly - lotteries. “Collect so much corks, labels, covers… and receive a prize ” - advertising says. The opportunity to receive a prize seems to children very real. In their imaginations they have already become winners and consequently no wonder, that they would tell you whom they would take in the won travel and what would shoot with a new camera, etc.
How to react? It is no use to dissuade visionaries - let them participate in several drawings. The more vain messages - the less enthusiasm for similar experiments. Sometimes there’s success and pleasures and delight! But, alas, it happens not always.

Many parents simply cannot buy everything that their child could wish. But the child asks, demands, runs to buy it for the pocket money. And what should do parents? First, in purchases should be a sense of proportion. Parents should set restrictions on purchase of favourite delicacies by a child. If purchase of something depends on a price, it would be better to tell the truth. However, do not expect understanding from his side and do not abuse it, otherwise the child will think, that he is poor and can buy nothing. Choose the most important present for the time being or tell that you will save money and buy the present at the end of the month.
One American teacher from Indiana has told the following about influence of advertising on children: “In America the great anxiety causes that fact that small children frequently confuse advertising with TV programs. It turns out, that the TV uses a children’s audience, which it is the easiest to effect, to promote goods. And parents simply do not have time to control what programs look their children.
Lack of parental attention to children’s life is an international problem. Daddies and mummies eternally occupied with their affairs, simply have no time to keep up with the life of children which mature and change before their eyes. Just try to think through the leisure of the kid, so that he doesn’t spend the most part of the time at the TV and get knowledge about outward things from there.

Not to tempt a child by a kind of the “forbidden fruit”, it is easier not to buy them and not to eat in child’s presence. For sure, all relatives and friends of your family bring sweets for a child only for his good. But it lies within your power to talk to them and explain that instead of candies, they would better bring a book, pictures, toy, etc.
The bad hygiene of oral cavity (or its complete absence) results in dental deposit, remaining on teeth after meal, grows into the so-called dental (bacterial) plaque, which contains bacteria, producing lactic acid, and acid, in its term, can cause the damage of enamel and influence appearance of caries.
With eruption of the first teeth a tooth brush and paste must appear for a child, according to his age, of course. The early forming of a habit to clean teeth 2 times per day (in the morning and in the evening after a meal) will help to avoid many problems.

To serious secrets people usually relate conjugal infidelity; existence of illegitimate children; sexual problems; previous conviction of one of family members; intricate relationships with the nearest relatives.
It is important to stress that absolutely all of the above-stated facts shouldn’t be necessarily hidden or passed over in silence. Only person’s  subjective perception of the event determines, what it will be for him in future — the ordinary (though not very pleasant) fact of family biography, a simple secret or a fatal secret.
The carriers of the hidden information suffer from insincerity and lack of freedom in relationships with the nearest people. The promise of newly-weds to tell each other truth deserves every respect, but sounds fuzzy. In any case it is important to remove omission before marriage and to tell as much as possible about yourself.
The secret may be not so frightful, simply unpleasant, and may be it is better to tell about it, rather than continue to keep silence? In fact, first or last all secrets become obvious, and often in very undesirable moment. Often reaction of those, whom a «fatal secret» was told, becomes the powerful instrument of healing: «Ouch, it was yet worse with me».

This article is addressed both the married couples with experience, and young people who only approach to creation of their own family. Young people quite often face a problem whether to tell to their future partner in life all truth about themselves, the health, family, unpleasant, and even disgraceful facts of the biography. Everybody has a right to decide, how to deal with ambiguous information, concerning only him. But decision should be made with the opened eyes — it is important to estimate soberly all unlike signs, both true and silence.
The popular English saying says: each family has the skeleton…
If to think over, it becomes clear: to the kind of «skeletons» quite possibly may be referred not only utmost secrecies but also small secrets.
It is the closed themes, interfamily taboos, different sort of reticence and reservations. This secrets often make no sense, but oppresses a person for many years.

Home relations considerably differ from official, and the few succeed harmoniously combine them. In most cases joint work of the married couple results in an intricate knot, to extricate which even the professional psychologists not always succeed.
Actually examples of domestic business-tandem, in experts opinion, quite a bit. “From one side, there is nothing reprehensible, that a husband and a wife work together, - says Bela Dzasokhova, chief of the department FMCG of Cornerstone company. - But, from the other side, there is a risk, that all of their domestic confusions will be automatically carried in office. Very few are able to leave the personal problems in the walls of own house”.
Joint service of relatives is not especially welcomed in large western companies. If employees get married, one of them often ask to leave a company, says Dzasokhova. For example, according to consultants, similar limitation exist in TNK-BP and Russian representative office of Royal Dutch/Shell. But in that very companies extremely reluctantly tell about existence of some limitations. HR-manager of the Russian representative office Royal Dutch/Shell Natalia Petrovicheva specified, that they do not welcome work of the married couples in one subdivision, and also family relations, when it refers to the choice of provider for some services. “Foremost we follow business interests, but not interpersonal relations”, - Petrovicheva says.