Taking serious note of the parenting gaps adversely affecting children in their growing stage, the Women and Child Development Department is set to launch a long-running series of webinars to promote good and responsible parenting.
The first in the series of webinars on positive parenting will be held on Saturday at 7.30 a.m. T.V. Anilkumar, Professor of Psychiatry at the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College, will address the doubts of parents.
“We allow advance queries from parents over a WhatsApp number (82818-99479) and in the first two days alone, we have received over 65 queries. These queries will be categorised by our team of nine resource persons based on which the topic of each webinar will be decided,” said Nishad K.M., programme officer, Integrated Child Protection Scheme, Women and Child Development Department.
The webinar will be held live over Zoom but will be available over the department’s YouTube channel and Facebook page. Parents can send in queries during the course of a session through these social media platforms and the resource persons will address them at the end of each session. Webinars will be held every alternative Saturdays and will last two to three hours.
“We will run the webinars as long as queries keep coming in, and based on the nature of doubts, we will bring in subject experts on parenting as well,” said Mr. Nishad.
The department conceived the programme after numerous studies attributed the conflicts and propensity to crime among children to the absence of proper parenting. A recent study commissioned by the department on increased children suicides had also pointed at parenting issues, including excessive scolding by parents, for the psychological distress among children.
The department had also run a campaign for good parenting in October the findings of which have inspired the creation of messages for the latest programme, which will focus, among other things, drug addiction, academic pressure and Internet and cartoon addiction among children.
Plans are also afoot to take the message of good parenting to individual households with the help of a handbook using anganwadi workers. Publicity campaigns for the programme roping in parenting experts and celebrities are also being planned.