Alzheimer"s Action Day: Fostering Healthy Relationships with Grandparents

The idea of writing this blog emerged as I was taking a community seminar for the elderly in our hospital in Shalimar Bagh today. As I spoke about the mental health and related concerns for the elderly as a part of the Fortis Alzheimer's Action Day initiative, we came to discuss the sadness experienced on account of the absence and lack of involvement with their grandchildren. So I thought why not write on this forum, where parents come and look towards ways of enhancing the quality of life of their children and share some of the ideas that were shared today and what my thoughts are about some of these aspects.

What A Large Proportion of Grandparents Experience

For a large proportion of grandparents, their experience of the time that they spend with their grandchildren frequently makes them feel more like caretakers and nannies, and not as people who deserve love, respect and care. They miss spending time that is unstructured and free of structured activities that need to be completed, craving to enjoy some of the simpler pleasures with their grandchildren. 

At the same time, we have a large segment of grandparents who remain cut off entirely from the pleasures of being involved in the lives of their grandchildren. This of course is a sad reflection of the increasing nuclearisation of families within our society, where more and more of us have moved away from our parental homes, setting up our own independent spaces, leaving behind parents who continue to crave for attention and support.

This is not to say, that all there is is only bad experiences for all individuals who are elderly, but these probably are the most disturbing elements. Most grandparents, would and do love to do the maximum they can for their grandchildren. They tend to be more than willing to go out of their way to take care of things. And yes, at times this does tend to border on the tendency to spoil the grandkids which can be an area of concern for us as parents.

 How Can Grandparents Contribute to the Life of Your Child

Many a times we forget the important role that a grandparent can play in the life of our child. Whatever may be said and done, it is a fact that a grandparent has a plethora of information and has enriching experiences which can be shared. Their view of life, though different from the current times, tends to bring with a knowledge and an understanding that encompasses several different views and perspectives.

Having a bond can significantly benefit the child, as they can socialize grandchildren into the cultural heritage and family history, things which we may not be able to provide. Thus, they enable the transmission of family values and beliefs, things which you yourself have been raised to believe in and engage with. At the same time, their presence and continuous support in the family life cycle provides a great strength and stability to the grandchildren and to the family as a whole. 

Bridging the Gap: Your Role as Parents

Parents act like gatekeepers, forming the bridge that connects the grandchildren with their grandparents. The more contact and closeness you have with them, the better the relationship between the grandchildren and the grandparents as well. Your positivity and ability to balance between the two plays the most important role as there are multiple ways in which grandparents and grandchildren can connect to each other, whether it is on account of affection, affiliation, roles and positions, sentiments, or the sheer support they may provide to each other.

A large number of problems tend to occur on account of the much talked about generation gap. Regardless of belonging to different generations, any two people tend to have differing perspective, which impact their relatedness to each other. Providing more opportunities for interactions and sharing of experiences is an essential to help bridge this gap.

If there is a difference in opinion then talk about it. Yes it is sometimes difficult to get through, but it is easier than just cutting yourself away from your parents. Find ways of communicating and sharing and be calm and respectful. It may take some time, but eventually they would listen and your patience would play a particularly important role in doing so. Discuss the rules with them rather than just pushing them through so that they feel to be a part of the decision making process and do take their opinion on the same. If you get them on your side and work with them rather than against them, it would make things much easier.

Uphold their respect and dignity in your house. If you are in disagreement with them, discuss it with them in the absence of children rather than having a shouting match in front of them. How you behave with them will strongly determine their quality of relationship with the grandchildren.

Grandparenting is thus essentially "Grand"...so allow them to be a significant part of your child's life. This Alzheimer's Action Day enhance the mental health and well-being of the grandparents by enhancing the quality of their relationship with their grandchildren, your children.

Learning Problems in Children: The Way Forward

Academics are a significant part of any child's life and excelling in academics is an integral first step to success in life as each future step tends to be contingent upon how you may have performed in your school. Very frequently, however, we do come across children who tend to have some difficulties related to learning. It's aspects though known to many, particularly through the movie Taare Zameen Par, still tend to baffle many parents and students alike, as they are not always aware of what needs to be done or what can be done.

The fact is that the process of learning can be impeded due to various factors and at various stages. Problems can happen on account of either a difficulty in understanding or comprehension, or due to difficulties in grasping concepts or due to problems in retention due to the use of ineffective strategies for memorising.

Numerous times, even though as parents we understand where the problem resides, we are not able to either explan it to the child or to the school or we are not able to develop alternate approaches to teaching which would be ale to take care of the deficits. Learning disabilities form a significant proportion of the problems that children face, accounting for about 2-3% of the problems experienced by school aged children.

What is Learning Disability
Learning Disability, or LD, as it is commonly referred to, is a neurological condition, which essentially means that there is a difference in the way in which a child's brain is wired to learn and grasp concepts. The problem in learning can be in reading, spelling, writing, comprehension, mathematical abilities and in memorising.

Having a Learning Disability does not indicate a problem in intellectual capacity or intelligence. In fact, the criteria for being diagnosed with LD includes having a normal intellectual quotient or IQ, which rubbishes the myth that many individuals have relating to intellectual deficits in thos echo have LD.

What are the Common Types of Learning Disabilities
LD consists of different subtypes which include the following:

Dysgraphia - it is a writing disability in which an individual finds it difficult to structure and form alphabets and words and also finds it difficult to write within a defined space.

Dyslexia - is a condition in which individuals have a difficulty in reading and understanding written words.

Dyscalculia - is a difficulty in grasping and working with numbers and mathematical concepts.

Auditory and Visual Processing Disorders - these are conditions in which individuals have difficulty processing language despite normal vision and hearing.

What Are the Signs to Identify a Learning Disability
Learning problems in children can be identified as early as in preschool. For a lot of children who are at a young age, disabilities tend to show themselves in the form of difficulty in communication with a slow rate in the development of speech due to which children also do not engage in play with other children. As a child grows older and starts pre-primary and primary classes, the difficulty tends to be in forming alphabets and numbers, with frequent reversals or mirroring of the same.there tends to be a confusion between words or arithmetic signs along with a problem in memorisation.

In middle school, spellings become a significant complaint and writing can also be a concern wherein a child refuses to write, ignores grammar and punctuation or at times reading may become a difficult task with a child not being able to utilize phonetics to form words and would ignore punctuation while reading as well. In high school these problems only worsen and the adolescent experiences a worsening of grades at each subsequent level and conceptual understanding of concepts tends to be weak making picking up of new material more difficult. As a result, some of these children can become more inattentive as they are not able to understand and grasp things or they can have behavioral problems as their restlessness may increase as well.

What Can You Do?
As a parent it is important that you be able to pick up the early signs of a problem with learning. Frequently we do not give much weightage to what is being told to us by teachers as we may feel that they are not doing their job well. However, as a parent it is your responsibility to ensure that if there are problems which are being reported by the school then you too try and look into them. If problems are ignored for too long they only worsen with time and tend to impinge into behavior and conduct issues in the future if left unchecked at an early stage.

Discussing with the class teacher and the school counsellor is an important first step and if the same feedback is being received from everyone regarding your child's academic performance, then it would be important that you consult a Clinical Psychologist registered with the RCI to get an evaluation which would give an accurate understanding of where the problem lies so that work can start in helping solve the difficult areas for your child.

In most cases, where the problem is purely learning related, the work tends to circle around a special educator. When there are motor issues or problems with inattention or distractibility, a lot of times an occupational therapist may be needed in conjunction with a special educator. And in case there are behavioral problems, the work with the child would be done in collaboration with the psychologist who did the evaluation.

At each stage, regardless of who the specialist is who is working with your child, do ensure that you are also involved and know about the work that is happening. Typically in working in the area of academics, motor functioning or even behavioral problems, the support of the parents is strongly indicated to ensure that what is being worked upon in sessions is also being followed at home. So you should ensure that you too understand the processes that are being utilized with your child so you too can implement the same, which would allow for a smooth transition when session with the child need to be suspended as well.

Do also ensure that your specialist is in touch with your child's teacher or school counsellor so that everyone who is working with your child is on the same page. Frequently, the mistake that happens is that there are too many people who are working but no one is working collaboratively with each other which creates significant problems for the child who ends up being pulled in different directions.

So be an advocate for your child and also remember that the ultimate aim is your child's enhanced performance at school along with behavioral competence!

Parenting: Challenges for the Modern Day Parent

I work in a hospital set up and on account of the role that I have I end up working with a lot of children and their parents.

One day as I sat waiting in my OPD for my first-time visitor, a 11 year old male child who had sought an appointment for himself, I wondered what it could be that he would want to discuss with me. The bigger factor was what could be the reason that he himself sought an appointment and not his parent or guardian. I wondered is there a parent? And when he walked into my chamber I got all my answers. His parents were busy. They have hectic work lives on account of the positions they hold in their organizations and that made it impossible for them to accompany him or even take an appointment for him.

This may sound like an extreme case or one where the parents were probably too self-centered in their perspective but it does highlight the fact that parenting in the modern day is most definitely a challenge. We have seen our parents struggle and now we ourselves struggle with our new found status of parenthood.  The struggle then existed on account of the the fact that it needed parents to act and behave in a way that shapes the child's growth and development - emotional, psychological, cognitive, behavioral - in the best way possible, enabling their success later in life. And these days it gets compounded on account of the lives we lead, the stark need to balance multiple roles and also to take care of multiple factors that act as an interface and interact with our child's growth and development, impacting it in a variety of ways.

Where The Challenge Lies
The modern day parents face a significant challenge on account of various factors. These relate not just to their own selves but also to the environment that surrounds us and the facilities that are available to us. For anyone who is trying to parent a child these days, it is not just about what you do or say, but also about the child absorbs from the environment around him or her which has an impact and needs to be monitored. At the same time, as a parent it is important to be involved with the life of one's child and doing that is not always an easy task and the older children grow, the more difficult it becomes to keep up with them.

In the face of such situations we frequently turn to experts, because our own parents no longer stay with us to guide us and well, even if they have something to say, we feel they probably don't understand the basics of being a parent and maybe come from Mars to suggest what they do. It pains to see that things that were once easy and manageable have become so difficult. And to top off all the problems that come in the way of being a parent, we also tend to have our own expectations from our children which tend to complicate matters, for, frequently we forget that this is not about us. Being a parent is not about the parent...it is about our children - a fact that we many a times forget because we end up making it about our own selves.

What We Need To Do
Parenting is most definitely a challenge. The need of the hour is to face it head on and to develop mechanisms that counteract these challenges in the most effective and efficient way. Some of the things that we need to take care include spending more time with our children, time that is not polluted by work and other things we need to take care of and time that is exclusively directed towards talking and sharing with our child. It is important to talk about things, to talk about the things that happen around us, to talk about the things that they end up seeing around them and also to talk about the things that they may not understand because of their age.

Ensuring that there are open channels of communication is probably one of the first, most important steps in being a parent. And along with that it is essential that we act as sieves through whom they can filter the information that impinges upon their world so they absorb the right things and reject the incorrect ones. All of this requires us to strike a balance. We can not make work, our professions, our social lives the prominent aspects around which we revolve. We need to do the things that we need to or want to, yet at the same time we need to ensure that we balance it out with the parenting that needs to be done as well.


Being a parent is a responsibility for we shape the future of a child who becomes a member of the society in which we live and helps it progress. Ensuring that we are giving the right inputs is of the utmost importance, but the foremost step to doing that is recognizing the road blocks that we may face and the hurdles we would have to overcome.

World Tobacco Day: Saying a NO to Tobacco/Cigarettes

31st of May has long been recognized as World Tobacco Day and over the years there has been a lot of talk about the need to say NO to tobacco. But for a lot of us, even though we know of the impetus the movement has gained over a period of time, we are not able to let go of the habit of smoking or the consumption of tobacco.

In the light of such knowledge it becomes important to try and understand the various aspects that are associated with the behavior of smoking and the consumption of tobacco in its various other forms which can give us insights into the reasons that make it difficult for people to quit. And probably an integral aspect of this is knowing the reasons why people in the first place choose to smoke.

With all the materials I have read and all the people I have interacted with, some of the more common reasons for initiating smoking have included seeing significant role models smoking, thinking that it appeared rather cool, presuming that it helps deal with stress and pressure, along with a need to conform and fit in with one's peer group, and including the need to simply try something that was in a way forbidden. Multiple reasons and yet a single common outcome - for most people who tried it, they became hooked to it. And once hooked, they did not know how it is that they can come out of it.

Many have made attempts. In fact, many keep trying to make attempts to quit tobacco and smoking. Yet it seems to be something far more difficult than what one would presume. There has to be something that does seem to work and identifying that is an absolute imperative.

And I would state here that one of the most important things in being able to quit is one's own inner strength, motivation and drive to do so. Nothing is more important than having a full recognition of the impact the use of tobacco or smoking is having on you and utilizing that knowledge to build resilience within one's own self to be able to say a "NO" and to be able to stick to it. And this I feel is probably of greatest significance among the other things that one can do in order to quit.

Once the drive and motivation is there, it is about being able to follow a few simple steps. These include, but not exclusively so, the following:

• Be cognizant of the adverse effects that smoking and tobacco use can have on your health.
• Never buy a pack of cigarettes at a go. Always buy one cigarette at a time.
• Never consume the entire quantity or cigarette in one go. In fact stop mid way through your cigarette and throw the remaining away. 
• Ensure that you do not have people around you who can go and fetch it for you. Make it a habit that if you want a smoke you would go on your own.
• In the initial stage you may need to avoid the places and maybe even the people with whom you would have a smoke. The brain automatically associates places and events with a particular habit, so once the trigger is there one automatically goes to the tobacco or cigarette. That is the reason why one may need to avoid some places and people.
• You can always use a chewing gum, clove, or a nicotine gum to help initially with the craving that you may have for a smoke or tobacco.
• Decide in your own mind a quit date and then once it arrives give up entirely. If you plan to wait for the day that the craving may become zero, it may not really happen. So you would have to be proactive in this regard.
• Do not look at an entire lifespan without smoking or consuming tobacco. Instead take it one day at a time and work towards it.
• Remember it is difficult at first, but once the initial battle is won, it's not such an up-hill task.

Quitting can be difficult but not impossible. Do not ignore the warnings that are there on the cigarette packs that you smoke, it could become a reality for you. So quit and start saying a "NO" to tobacco.

Visions and Missions...The Path to Growth

Often I wonder what makes one man successful and the other not so much. And more often I come up with no answer. At least not till quite recently. My initial, early assumptions were that money begets money and more success. But I feel over time I am becoming less certain of that assumption as well. This may be sounding like mumbo jumbo, but it is in fact quite a crucial issue I feel.

The fact is, we all want to be successful at the end of the day. We work hard, put in hours of labour, get exhausted, frequently neglecting the very things we love and the very people we want to be with so that we can enjoy the success, yet it just keeps on appearing to be an uphill struggle. I am sure most of us wonder why?? Why is it that one man succeeded and not I. I may be really good at something but I don't end up becoming the next Tata or Ambani. And the answer keeps eluding us.

Most successful businessmen, it is said come up through the ranks. They were not always born rich, yet ended up making it big. The difference I feel lies in the vision that they had for themselves. It's not that we, the rest of the world, lack a vision. It just seems that the clarity with which we view our vision and pursue it is just not the same. It is this lack of clarity which acts as an impediment, and which does not give us the required push to stretch ourselves and reach out for the dreams that we hold.

Thus, the vision combined with a concrete mission seems to be amiss somehow. Or is it just that? Maybe it is a combination of these with the fact that in such a situation when an opportunity does turn up at our doorstep we do not end up seizing it because that vision and mission are just not etched enough within our psyche and hence we end up missing out on things. It's not that we do this intentionally, it's just that we get so caught up in the regular, mundane daily activities associated with our everyday lives, that the more important things elude us.

I guess this is something which we all should look at. Maybe if we are able to identify these aspects within our own selves, we would be able to push ourselves and reach the heights of success that we do in fact crave for.

Relationships....Oh! So complex!!!!

Being in a relationship with anyone seems to be so complicated. Any relationship seems to be so challenging these days. Staying in touch, feeling connected, feeling a sense of belongingness, being cared for, and being able to trust just seems so illusive these days...

I know I may be sounding like a cynic...but trust me these are the things I hear these days. It's as though the ability to be in a relationship with another person is getting continuously compromised in some form or the other. Whether it is trying to maintain a friendship or being with your boyfriend/girlfriend or your spouse, things seem to have gotten so complicated.

I wonder why...

And the answer I feel lies in the shape that our social worlds are taking. What I mean is I feel we are not able to get the kind of time we want to spend with the people we care about and at the same time it is breeding a sense of insecurity within us as to what the other person may do or who they may end up being with and all of this tends to make things yet again complicated...complex!!!

It appears to me more and more that we trust lesser and disbelieve far more than we can afford to and in the process end up compromising the quality of quite a few cherished relationships. And the sad part of all of this is that we don't even realize when all this is happening. It only strikes us when relationships go sour and lose their vitality that may be things went wrong somewhere. And then...it can frequently be too late.

So the solution is spend more time...do what you think is needed to nurture your relationships...yet do give space and don't end up making life suffocating for those who are with you. Relationships are not that tough...they do not need to be so complex and complicated...and even if they are then you need to ensure that you have quite a few good solid relationships that insulate you and ensure that when rough patches intersect the trajectory of your life you are able to transcend those difficult times.