Kids are born new and innocent into our world — their joy, excitement, curiosity, and carefreeness notion of innocence and purity when we take a glimpse into their eyes. It’s the Parents, Guardians, and Teachers’ responsibility to guide and nurture them so they can flourish and discover their purpose in life.
To have a good relation with kids and set them on the right path, it is crucial to have a Positive Parenting belief and Attitude. Kids are unaware of the world’s current state. It is important to have self-awareness, not just for kids but for adults too. Children are curious, and we can’t hide things from them forever.
When armed conflict breaks out, children are the most vulnerable members of society who have been affected mainly by war consequences. The most common causes of death in children are sexual violence, abduction, war, and school and hospital attacks.
Our world is infused with Dangers, Terrors, and Violence, and while protecting children from it, grown-ups should also talk to kids about what is happening. But sharing all the things at once might be overwhelming for kids, so parents should limit the amount of information they share. As the most used phrase says, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it” matters.
How to Talk to Kids About Shooting?
With growing children’s emotional and mental development, the activities like shooting and violence stir negative emotions — sadness, grief, anxiety and anger in children. No parents ever want to talk about the term “shooting”, but with an enormous amount of such tragic events, this topic is impossibly avoidable.
Despite different kids’ ages, Gun shootings are hard to explain. In fact, it is an emotional subject matter for both parents and children. However, it is safer for children to learn about it from their parents than imposing the risk of hearing It from others. So, How should parents talk about shooting to their Kids? Well, let’s break down this topic.
- Before the Conversation: There’s a good chance that your Kid might have heard about shootings since news and media covers it more often. Be mentally and verbally prepared before talking about it. Do not retreat with silence because silence suggests that the topic is too horrible for discussion or you’re clueless about it. It’s okay to rehearse it multiple times in your mind before making a point.
- Ask Questions and Listen: It is crucial to listen and grasp what they’re saying. Start asking questions about what they know or heard about shootings. As your child explains, listen and find misconception, misinformation and their underlying fears and concerns.
- Gently Correct Their Misinformation: After grasping all their misconception and misinformation, it’s time you correct them gently — using simple, straightforward and child-appropriate language.
- Encourage Your Child to Ask Questions: Correcting your child’s belief might lead them to be more confused and curious. Encourage them to ask more questions and take your time to answer them. Having all of their questions-answered ensures ongoing child support and apparent hazards of fear in their head. Moreover, it helps them to cope with the range of emotions stirred up by this tragedy.
- End the Topic using Power of Positivity: It is essential that you end every topic positively — expressing the concerns, tragedies and sadness towards the victim and their families. It will help your child to understand grief and empathy. You may share the same worry, but you should also give them ideas on coping with tragedies and losses. Talk about law enforcement and medical assistance ready to help the victims and other people. Additionally, it would be best to share some heroic events by an ordinary citizen — saving people’s lives. In conclusion, you should mentally prepare your child not to feel hopeless and help them see, there is still good in the midst of a horrible moment.
What’s Happening in The World Right Now: 5 Good and Bad Things
5 Bad Things Happening in the World Right Now
1. Coronavirus Outbreak
Coronavirus (Covid-19) is still a threat to the human population. While many workplaces and schools have been reopened, coronavirus is still rapidly spreading, despite the heavy supply and dosage of the vaccine. In Addition, we’ve provided the chart showing coronavirus restrictions imposed in Europe during the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic (as of March 12, 2021).
Image Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/23330/coronavirus-restrictions-europe-map
The first coronavirus case was reported from Wuhan, China, on 31 December 2019. Later it was declared as a global pandemic on 11 March 2020 by the World Health Organization. Since then, many countries have faced lockdown and curfew, resulting in rising unemployment, economic unbalance and crisis.
Despite’s development of vaccines, Covid-19 still imposes a threat to the human population as new variants — mutation in the virus is discovered in many countries like the UK, Brazil, South Africa and India. However, the vaccines are expected to provide at least some protection against new variants of Covid-19.
While the Covid-19 may last some more years, different countries have been working together to end this global pandemic. It is our responsibility as well to take safety precautions like wearing a mask, maintaining social distancing, minimizing unnecessary travelling to stop further transmission of this virus and march our way towards freedom.
2. Rise in Kids Mobile Addiction
Smartphones, Tablets, and computers have been our grandest tool to communicate and be informed during this global pandemic. We all have spent most of our time using the Internet and digital devices, which has been a pretty good replacement for work meetings and classrooms. In fact, people’s reliance on gadgets and social media have undoubtedly spiked during this lockdown, compelling people to scroll more often, as it has been the only source of entertainment and information.
All the parents and children, in general, are spending more time on various screen devices, which is adversely affecting their physical and mental health. Recent studies show that Children with lower physical activities are spending three times more on their smartphone than others. Such soaring use will further invite addiction to the smartphone in kids — affecting their study.
The study is very concerning as scientific evidence shows that excessive screen time and sitting hours imposes a high mortality rate. Even with all the comprehensive benefits provided by the Internet and Gadgets, in essence, extreme addiction is still considered harmful.
However, parents shouldn’t feel powerless. Good News — Parental Control Apps let you monitor and limit children screen time. Like it or not, the internet is not a safe place, not even for kids. That’s why parents should prioritize the safe and limited use of digital devices and the internet.
3. Global Warming and Climate Change
Global warming and Climate change has been the major alarming concern for the world. It has adversely affected the world and about 97% of the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists agree that humans are the cause of Climate change and Global warming.
The degree of rising or increase in the atmosphere’s average temperature is known as Global warming, whereas Climate change is an unusual and unpredictable pattern of weather and seasons. Global warming is caused by the release of enormous greenhouse gases — heat-trapping gases — into the atmosphere like Carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH₄) and Nitrous oxide (N₂O), which further invites climate change.
According to NASA Climate Research, the global surface temperature has risen by 1.02 °C since the 1800s. This change might seem small, but it increases in accumulated heat, resulting in the loss of ice sheets and sea ice and an increase in average sea level.
Battling climate change is crucial because it affects the human population and all the species on earth. Fossil fuels, farming, and forest fires are the primary cause of carbon emission. Such concerns should be noticed, which can help minimize and stop further emissions of greenhouse gases.
4. Rise of HIV/AIDS
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a life-threatening chronic disease caused by the Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV weakens and damages your immune system, which disables the ability to fight infection and disease. What makes it scarier is, there is still no cure for HIV/AIDS. However, some medications can dramatically slow down the progression of any disease.
HIV is a Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) and is transmitted through unprotected sexual intercourse. Moreover, It can be transmitted through breastfeeding, pregnancy and childbirth from HIV-infected mother.
As per Global HIV Statistics, approximately 38 million people were infected with HIV/AIDS in 2019. Within these data, 36.2 million were adults, and 1.8 million were children below 15 years old. 75 million people have been infected since the start of this epidemic, and 32 million people have died of AIDS-related infection.
With several measures and precautions taken worldwide, AIDS-related infections and deaths have fallen dramatically, which had been accelerating for decades — planning to end this epidemic by 2030.
5. Religious Conflict and War
Every person in the world has their religion, and any threat to their belief and identity means a threat to their own lives. Due to racism and hatred of one’s other religious faith, we can see a religious conflict on a worldwide scale every day. However, all the world’s religions are considered peaceful and harmless — have specific rules and principles-based on love, peace and order.
In past decades, we’ve witnessed a colossal spike in religious tensions with bloody encounters among 50 countries. Some of the countries like Syria, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Myanmar were reported with lethal incidents involving minorities. Besides, Russia, Egypt, Indonesia and Turkey have imposed heightened restrictions on religion.
There’s no denying that religion does possess a threat and extremism, but is the actually sole cause of the ongoing blood bath? It might seem like it, but there’s an external factor included. People often use religion as an excuse and justification for violence, “Killing in the name of God” is often used the phrase, but never the actual reason behind pure hatred and ulterior motive.
With thousands of religious existences all around the world, removing or misinterpreting one’s faith and belief in religion is not the solution. In fact, people should embrace and learn it. After all, religion is still considered to preach peace and love. In addition, it’s not the religion itself that invokes peace and violence, but the individual greed and hatred towards other religions. If only people could grasp and live by the good principles of religion like Respect, Forgiveness, Truthfulness, Peace and Charity, the world might be a better place to live.
5 Good Things Happening in The World Right Now:
1. Growth of Electric Cars
Electric cars sound more promising than other conventional vehicles when battling air pollution by reducing carbon emissions. Research shows that electric vehicles emit fewer greenhouse gases in their life than petrol and diesel. Additionally, they produce less sound than other vehicles reducing noise pollution as well, Hence, proving Evs are better for our environment.
Electric Vehicles are quietly getting a soaring success: 10% of all the cars sold in 2020 were Evs, which is 28% more than 2019. Furthermore, the sales are expected to spike up to 50% in the year 2021.
2. Greener Forest and Cleaner Ocean
The ever-growing human population is the leading cause of forest destruction and pollution. Over 50% of the rainforest has been destroyed in a century, and eight metric tons of macro and microplastics end up in our oceans every year. This will not only affect our environment but will also affect all the marine’s life.
Countries together have put effort into “rewilding” to tackle forest destruction. In other words, Rewilding is a strategy to restore all the degraded natural areas — storing centuries worth of carbon emissions and saving 70% of endangered plants and animals. Let’s take an example of India, which planted 250 million trees in one weekend making it the biggest annual reforestation campaign.
Also, 14 nations owning over 40% of the world’s coastline banded together to create the world’s largest ocean sustainability initiative — focusing on eliminating plastics and repopulating aquatics life.
3. Medical Development and Revolution
Advancements in Modern Medicines have made us live a healthy and long life – curing and treating more diseases than before. Medical advances have done wonders and gave a second life to countless people, which further helps earn people’s trust and hope.
The recent Covid-19 vaccine is one of the miraculous developments, eliminating the risk of a global pandemic. Likewise: Robotic surgeries, Changing Genders, Decrease in Rate of HIV/AIDS and Chance, Curing Acid Burns, Transplantation of organs — Heart, Kidney, Liver etc. are some of the breakthroughs behind bright minds and medical advancements.
4. Artificial Intelligence and Technology Advancements
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a hot and trending topic for a while now. For instance, we’ve seen AI doing wonders everywhere — in our digital devices too. AI has severely improved in the field of medical science and technology. Additionally, AI is also helping people get more innovative, improving people’s lives, careers, and businesses.
Moreover, in support of Technical Advancements, Delivery is soon to be done by Drone. Amazon’s Prime Air — Drone delivery service got approved by FAA — stepping up drone delivery system. So, don’t get surprised if the mystery package started dropping from the sky into your doorsteps.
5. Production of Drinking Water from Sea
Momentarily, while facing scarce of pure and clean drinking water, a team of scientists has made a breakthrough in their quest to remove salt from the seawater using a graphene-oxide membrane. Currently, it’s being tested in a laboratory, but in the meantime, we could use this procedure to gather clean drinking water from abundant sea resources. This will solve the global shortage of drinking water and its marvellous development in science and technology.