Mid Autumn Festival

There are many festivals in my country. The most important one is the Mid Autumn Festival on August the 14 of the Lunar year. This is a special festival for children. The festival starts at the beginning of the night, about 6PM. In this festival, children usually receive many many presents from their parents. Most of presents are cakes or a beautiful light. Sometimes some of them also like making their lantern by themselves.

In this festival, most families go to the pagoda at the village. They give many fruits to Buddha and wish for good lives. I also used to go there with my parents for Mid Autumn holiday and I met so many of my friends there. On this holiday, there is a Lân dancing performance (Lân is a great animal of Asian Legend, he looks like a lion). Children usually really like this performance so much that they follow it around the village. They come to every house, do beautiful dance and give their best wishes to all members in each house. Then they receive some presents from them, usually cakes or money.

The festival finishes at midnight, when the Moon is really full in the sky (it looks like a big silver disk). It's the time of the most beautiful scene I think. Then my friends and I come back home and have a deep sleep with beautiful dreams about childhood.

LOVE AND HELP CHILDREN

Today’s children will become tomorrow’s civilization. Bringing a child into the world today is a little bit like dropping one into a tiger’s cage. Children can’t handle their environment and they have no real resources. They need love and help to make it.

It is a delicate problem to discuss. There are almost as many theories on how to raise a child or not raise him as there are parents. Yet if one does it wrong much grief can result and one may even complicate his or her own later years. Some try to raise children the way they were themselves raised, others attempt the exact opposite, many hold to an idea that children should just be let grow on their own. None of these guarantee success. The last method is based on a materialistic idea that the development of the child parallels the evolutionary history of the race; that in some magical way, unexplained, the “nerves” of the child will “ripen” as he or she grows older and the result will be a moral, well-behaving adult. Although the theory is disproven with ease—simply by noticing the large criminal population whose nerves somehow did not ripen—it is a lazy way to raise children and achieves some popularity. It doesn’t take care of your civilization’s future or your older years.

A child is a little bit like a blank slate. If you write the wrong things on it, it will say the wrong things. But, unlike a slate, a child can begin to do the writing: the child tends to write what has been written already. The problem is complicated by the fact that, while most children are capable of great decency, a few are born insane and, today, some are even born as drug addicts: but such cases are an unusual few.

It does no good just to try to “buy” the child with an overwhelm of toys and possessions or to smother and protect the child: the result can be pretty awful.

One has to make up his mind what he is trying to get the child to become: this is modified by several things: (a) what the child basically can become due to inherent make-up and potential; (b) what the child really wants to become; (c) what one wants the child to become; (d) the resources available. But remember that whatever these all add up to, the child will not survive well unless he or she eventually becomes self-reliant and very moral. Otherwise the end product is likely to be a liability to everyone including the child.

Whatever one’s affection for the child, remember that the child cannot survive well in the long run if he or she does not have his or her feet put on the way to survival. It will be no accident if the child goes wrong: the contemporary society is tailor-made for a child’s failure.

It will help enormously if you obtain a child’s understanding of and agreement to follow the precepts contained in this book.

What does have a workability is simply to try to be the child’s friend. It is certainly true that a child needs friends. Try to find out what a child’s problem really is and, without crushing their own solutions, try to help solve them. Observe them—and this applies even to babies. Listen to what children tell you about their lives. Let them help—if you don’t, they become overwhelmed with a sense of obligation which they then must repress.

It will help the child enormously if you obtain understanding of and agreement to this way to happiness and get him or her to follow it. It could have an enormous effect on the child’s survival—and yours.

A child factually does not do well without love. Most children have an abundance of it to return.

The way to happiness has on its route the loving and the helping of children from babyhood to the brink of adult life.

(Special thanks to: http://www.thewaytohappiness.org/thewaytohappiness/precepts/love-and-help-children.html)

Television and Children - Is It Always Wonderful? (2/2)

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The quality of children's programs is an especially important issue, because children are heavy television viewers who are strongly influenced by what they see. As we know, the most important interest of television companies is profit. They don't give much thought to what may be harmful for children to see. Some children's programs are educational and give useful and helpful information through cartoons, puppets, and movies. On the other hand, many programs show violence - fighting, chasing, shooting, and murder. With all this choice, children are affected in several ways:

1. Children don't develop a good imagination, because everything is pictured for them. When they read, they create pictures in their minds in order to follow story. With television, this is not necessary.

2. Children watch television rather than read book; it's much easier. Because children read less, their vocabulary is limited.

3. Many children don't understand the stories they watch but are impressed with the physical actions they see. They become aggressive in their play and are willing to hurt people. They learn that violence mean power: you can make someone do what you want by simply hurting that person. The strongest person "wins."

4. Children can't concentrate on a topic; they lose interest quickly. Pictures on television are usually fast moving. When a story slows down, the viewer changes channels back and forth. They get no practice in concentrating and then are bored with activities in the classroom.

5. Commercials teach children that being young, beautiful, and sexy are the most important personal qualities.

6. At an early age, children have a broad knowledge of what the world is like... near and far, below the oceans, and in outer space. They also become familiar with people of many ethnic backrounds working, playing, and living together.

Can anything be done to improve the negative points? The answer is yes, but it is not easy. Some helpful suggestions are:

1. Don't have television sets in every room in the house.
2. Don't allow television watching during mealtime or homework periods.
3. Discuss with children in advance which programs they can watch.
4. Watch television together with your children. Have discusstions about the characters; what is realistic; and what behavior is unacceptable.
5. Use some programs as a basis for more research of a country, an animal, a person, or a time in history.

Yes, television is remarkable... if we use it wisely!

Television and Children - Is It Always Wonderful?

Among the outstanding inventions of modern times, television definitely must be included. Without leaving home, we can see and hear queens, presidents, ordinary people, and animals in African jungles. In other words, the whole world is brought home to us through television. Interesting events from all parts of the world are pictured and explained on television for everyone to see. We can get to know people from faraway places, and people in foreign lands get to know Americans. Television is a remarkable invention!

In the United States, television stations are not run by the government; they are owned by companies that want to make a profit from the business of television. They put on all kinds of programs and always do a lot of research to find out how many people watch each program. Profits come from the money paid by various companies for commercials. (Advertisements on television are called commercials.) For programs with large audiences, the cost of commercials is high. For program with moderate audiences, the cost is lower. When a program has a small number of people watching it, it is discontinued. There is a variety of programs that one can see on every channel: news, sports (baseball, tennis), interviews, talk shows (where different topic are discussed), comedies, mysteries, game shows, musical programs, and children's programs.

(to be continued...)