This weekend, I had the pleasure of rebooting Ririe and Sophie’s Qur’an lesson. Previously, Ririe had reached almost one thirds of the Senang Baca Qur’an (easy to read Qur’an) book, until she gave birth to Sophie, after which we had some trouble re-adjusting the weekly schedule. Starting off again at the basics, I introduced them to the Arabic alphabets using the flash card system developed by my good friend Wahid Darmawan who is also the author of the SBQ book.
The flashcards had pictures that helped the reader visually hook on to the different Arabic alphabets. It somewhat corresponded to images that have the same sound if pronounced in Bahasa. It’s gonna get a bit technical if I explain it more, bottom part is, it had a lot of animal pictures that got Sophie really interested in it.
The picture that corresponded with ‘Ain = ع , was a picture of a lion roaring. So I flashed the card to which Ririe responded with ‘Ain’! And I, mimicking a lion’s roar in the Indonesian onomatopoeia, would roar “Auuuuu!” Sophie burst out laughing. And continued to giggle at the flash cards and the sounds that I made with it.
A child’s laughter is a beautiful thing. And spending those precious moments with Sophie and Ririe is the best thing a man can ever wish for. Sophie was born with a condition where part of her brain grew outside her skull, due to a congenial defect that caused a deformation, a hole in the back of her head. She’d gotten through surgery at the age of 6 months, and had the brain that grew out of the skull removed, and the opened part covered up.
Stimulating her cognitive behavior is part of her growth therapy, and seeing her progressing to catch up to the babies her age is a great joy. The last time we consulted with her growth and development specialist, Dr Luh Karunia Wahyuni, Sp.KFR(K), she said that Sophie doesn’t have any restrictions at all in terms of learning process, her spine is straight, she maintains a good eye contact, and is overall curious about the things around her. So it’s our job as parents is to stimulate her cognition as much as possible: take her on bus rides, take her on the train, take her riding on the motorcycle (Allah help us!), just do anything so she could use her observation skills to learn and interact with her environment as much as possible.
I did that with Ibrahim, my kid brother when he was a baby. I’d like to take him out to the backyard, to our garden, and have him see the plants and play with the cats. I’d put him on my lap behind the steering wheels of our Daihatsu Feroza and pretended we were driving. Little did I know then, that he’d grow to be a better driver than me, that is, except when he’s texting while driving. Ibam, if I see you texting while driving, I’ll toss your phone out the window.
Kids have an aura of innocence around them, their thought process, their minds, their imagination and their vision are still pure. In the Islamic Faith, every child is born into this world in a state of ‘Fitrah’, meaning purity or pureness. In other words, they’re born with a pure heart and faith. It is their parents eventually who’ll teach them of whatever beliefs they have, and the child will grow into the fold.
Children grow up with imaginary friends, they play make belief, talk to themselves and do stuff we grownups envy about. They could make the simplest of things be enjoyable for them. Give em a stick and they’d have a lightsaber, give em a doll, and they’d be a fashion designer, give em books and crayons and they’d be the next Picasso. It’s like Spongebob and Patrick playing inside a cardboard box:
Nowadays, most kids are growing up without enough environmental stimuli. I pity the parents who rely on tablets and smartphones to keep their kids quiet. The bright colors and graphics can keep them occupied for a bit, but the harshness of the display will damage their eyesights overtime. Some types of tablets are even marketed as kid-friendly, with the parental lock configuration, and a sturdier body that could withstand falls and literal child abuse. I’ve seen kids who throw a fit whenever their parents take away their tablets. It’s like they’ve lost all of their inhibitors and go apeshit crazy just because they can’t have their fix on talking tom or whatever crap they’re playing these days.
Experts may argue that tablets and phones are beneficial to the kids learning process, that it helps in hand and eye coordination, and reflexes. It may be true, but I believe it only applies for kids that are much older, not a toddler. For me, putting a tablet in a child’s hands is just lazy parenting. Every child is born different, and have different attention spans and interests. But introducing technology to them early on isn’t the best of parental practices.
Kids need time to develop their motoric skills, be more interactive, engaging, and unleash their powers of imagination. Long ago when I was a boy, I’d spent countless hours playing legos. Following the instructions, dismantling them, and building just about anything limited to my imagination. My proudest creation, that I still have a fond memory of is the Thundercat’s ThunderTank. If I’m not indoors, I’d go out to the playing fields, and play football, cricket, or just ride around Uttara on my bicycle.
City goers could argue that they’d rather have their kids play at home cause there aren’t enough playgrounds in Jakarta. That may be the case, but the recent governor has commissioned the building of 300 RPTRA (Ruang Publik Terpadu Ramah Anak ) or public playgrounds in Jakarta. So it’s not much of an excuse to limit your child to the confines of your home.
And if you do have to confine them to the secureness of your home, there are a lot of activities you can enjoy with your child, or keep him or her busy with, such as reading, drawing etc. Frankly, our parenting skills aren’t perfect either; Ririe would play nursery rhymes on Youtube for Sophie to watch while feeding her, but as I noticed how glaringly bright those colors were in the animations, I’d limit them from watching it too much. Alhamdulillah my wife complied, and did other things to keep Sophie occupied while feeding her.
One of the earliest music videos ever released on MTV in the 80’s was Buggle’s “Video killed the radio star”, It didn’t just killed the radio star, it killed every child’s imagination and unleashed a new generation of family entertainment, that stopped the bonding of parents and children over bed-time stories.
And nowadays, with WiFi being a household item, precious family times watching TV together is also becoming a rarity. Family members nowadays just chill in their own rooms watching their YouTube subscriptions, play online games, binge watch Netflix, or masturbate to porn. There’s just not enough family time anymore.
Thus, I fear for the future of my child, that I may waver in the midst of all these new home entertainment systems and succumb to the dark side of parenting. Buy a console and play games with Sophie, or build the ultimate PC that’ll give us both hours of fun and raise our ranks as a member of the PC Master Race – Among other indoor activities that I might consider doing with her.
I had a healthy dose of a bit of everything back when I was growing up, aside from legos and outdoor activities: I also played countless hours of Sega, PC games and watched TV shows. Unlike other expatriate kids of the Indonesian Embassy staff, my parents didn’t allow us to have Satellite TV, nowadays commonly known as cable. It was called Satellite TV cause you needed a satellite dish hooked up to an indoor decoder to watch the Starworld networks. I was only limited to the local Bangladesh TV, or BTV. Programs aired on that channel range between CNN in the morning, BBC in the afternoon, and BTV programs in the evening. I’d watch the news, back when it wasn’t as fake as it is now, documentaries on the BBC and educational programs in BTV. On Fridays, which was the weekends in Bangladesh, we’d watch movie of the week which used to air Spaghetti Westerns, Iranian Film and some Film Noir. Watching action series was a real treat as we don’t have a lot of those aired consecutively at the same time. Over the 80’s we’d watch The A-Team, Knightrider, Street hawk, Airwolf, The Equalizer, Spenser for Hire and other shows I don’t really wanna relive at the moment, (let the magic stay in our childhood). We also had cartoons like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and….. uh, just TMNT I guess, can’t really remember anything else, oh yeah, we had Thundercats and some other stuff. My memory betrays me as to what I was watching on TV and what was from our VHS collection.
Coming on to the matter at hand, nothing could beat the awesomeness of diving into the world that books could provide you with, whether it’s real-life or fiction. My parents had a good start in collecting a large array of children’s books, even before we could read. We had comics like Tintin, Asterik Archie to encourage our reading, and steadily we moved on to picture books, fictions, novels, biographies, history books, encyclopedias and everything else I could find in our library. And once I’ve exhausted the plethora of books in our library, I’d use my pocket money to read whatever’s available at the bookstore. I completed the Enid Blyton’s children’s books, ranging from the Secret Seven, Famous Five, Adventure Series, Mystery Series and so on. When I was done with Enid, I went on to Frank W. Dixon’s Hardy Boys, cause that’s what cool boys would read back then. At least, nerdy cool boys. Once I’ve finished reading them, my friend Aisha Padamsee introduced me to the R.L Stine’s Goosebumps series, and I read em all too. Eventually I needed more scary stuff so I got the M.D Spenser’s Shiver series, and then I got edgy and went through the Spooksville collection.
I was a voracious reader, and would just about read anything printed on it. Reading brought me to another dimension of entertainment, a world where we’re part of those characters that the writers so lovingly craft and pour into their works. I could’ve been the third Hardy boy, or even a flea on Timmy’s fur. Whatever adventure they’re on, I was a part of it. With my heart and mind in it….. I longed to roam the English countryside, ski up the Alps, enjoy buttered scones with jam and all those delightful treats in the stories that Enid Blyton would make us live through.
Sadly, nowadays I don’t have that anymore. I can revisit the memory, but the joy that I felt around it is now gone. It’s one thing to reminisce about how awesome a cartoon series was when we’re younger, but try watching it again now, and you feel like you’re out of touch. That’s what’s sad about growing up. We lose the simpler things that make us happy. When I look at the younger generations, I wonder if they could relate to anything I just wrote about. Do they have the same interests? Do they even still read books? Or is everything just neatly directed into a well made YouTube video with high production values aimed for the sole purpose of garnering more views, and cramming more ads, and leading the mindless generation to watch their “Feed” instead of searching for something more substantial and more memorable.
With information technology, we’re processing visual data in an alarming rate. It’s easy for me to watch an action movie a few weeks ago, and then watch some drama and comedy, and totally forget about the action movie’s plot.
I’ve uploaded this curious case of mine as a meme in 9gag, only to be met with the typical neingag troll comments, criticism and assumption that I was suffering from Alzheimers. Could be as simple as the action movie being a total garbage, and that the grey matters of my brain just refused to store any information of how horrible it was?
Do I simply have a software installed to filter all the shitty worthless information out of the precious corners of my head? Or do I have conflicting memories of a particular story because everything is plagiarized nowadays? I can surely remember Hodor’s tragic end in GoT, but I can’t pick my brain to remember if he ever showed his dong (something that my friend Hosni reminded me of later on). I even had to look it up on Google. My memory don’t serve me right these days….probably it might have to do with the data overload that our brains have to process through. We got work, we got the internet, we watch YouTube, read the news, listen to music, and do a lot of things that require a high functioning brain to enjoy.
Entertainment has gotten so sophisticated over the years, approaching another milestone in it’s advancement: the era of virtual reality. And the countless possibilities that comes with it. I grow wary and weary of it.
As I sit and look back to what have changed in terms of the pursuit of happiness, quality family time, reminiscing my past, how good it was, and then I snap back to reality, I see Sophie smiling with her twinkling eyes, and hear her gleeful laughter, “All is right Dada”. All is right sweetheart.
Alhamdulillah.
Ichsan Rahmany's 