The Bhutanese Leading the way.
A Parent-children interaction program was conducted in Zilnon Primary School in the capital on 19 April in collaboration with the Career Education and Counseling Division (CECD) under the Department of Youth and Sports (DYS) where over 500 participants gathered at the RBP ground.
The participants included both parents and students. The school has about 832 students with 35 teaching staffs.
The School’s Principal Kuenzang Thinley said “It is basically to strengthen interaction between parents and children because children are being neglected since parents don’t get enough time because of their work.”
Therefore they rely upon the school for everything, he added.
The program is divided into two sections , one for the upper primary and the second for lower primary.
Groups were divided into four colors of red, blue, yellow and green where two groups were in art and crafts group while the other two groups were in physical activities groups. Later the tasks were switched which means each group had to participate in both the tasks.
Each participant was kept busy with the assigned tasks where parents and students working as partners in arts and crafts team were found surrounding one table which was filled with materials for the tasks such as glue and color books.
One of the parents of a class iv student, Tshewang Penjor, a policeman said, “It is really fun and I want to spend time in similar kind of activities with my kid at home.”
While a mother of a student from the same team said, “I am feeling good doing such activities with my kid.” She was being scolded by her daughter at the time for the paper size she had cut for a pasting-work. Apparently her daughter found it to be too big and told her to cut it in smaller sizes.
She said such activities would really foster bonding between parent and child.
In the physical activity, groups indulged in three legged race, passing the musical hat and passing the ball. And despite the dusty task on the dusty grounds parents and kids with their legs tied ran as fast as they could. While some aced the sport, few fell down in the dusty ground, but laughter and smiles filled the atmosphere anyway.
Refreshments were served by the school to the parents and students in between tasks. The program also had cultural activities and later parents at the end of the program offered their feed backs on the event.
Chief Program Officer with the CECD under DYS Tashi Pelzom said we wrote to all the schools that we are going to designate April, the positive parenting month. For the month of April ‘interaction’ was encouraged as a theme.
“We have purposely used April because it is a month of spring, which signifies new growth and new leaves sprouting which is indeed beautiful and also to celebrate everything that the family does, the togetherness of the family,” she added.
The chief program officer said the positive parenting program is not only for the April month, and it is just the beginning.
“Throughout the year with the start of academic year we want our parents to be involved in the education of the children which is not happening right now,” she said.
April has been declared as positive parenting day throughout the country. The Positive parenting program was started in 2009.
