A Stormy Adolescent Affair

Adolescence (Latin adolescentia, from adolescere, to grow up) is the period of psychological, social, and physical transition between childhood and adulthood.
As a transitional stage of human development, adolescence is the period in which a child matures into an adult. This transition involves biological (i.e. pubertal), social, and psychological changes.
It is a time of rapid physical development and deep emotional changes which can be confusing and uncomfortable for child and parent alike.
This is what I think you should know about preventing problems associated with adolescence.
DietYour child's nutrition is important to the overall health.
Proper nutrition can also prevent many medical problems, including becoming overweight, developing weak bones, and developing diabetes.
It will also ensure that your child physically grows to her full potential.
The best nutrition advice to keep your adolescent healthy includes encouraging her to:
Eat a variety of foods
Balance the food eaten with physical activity
Choose a diet with plenty of grain products, vegetables and fruits
Choose a diet low in fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol
Choose a diet moderate in sugars and salt
Choose a diet that provides enough calcium and iron to meet her growing body's requirements.
A balanced diet with regular exercise and a proper amount of sleep will go a long way in maintaining the state of health.

Hygiene
During adolescence hygiene is very important to remove oils and body odour.
They must be told the importance of washing their face, underarms, pubic area, and feet daily.
Have your children wash their hands frequently to decrease the spread of germs, especially before eating and after using the bathroom.
Underwear should be made of cotton for better air circulation. Tight jeans also prevent air circulation and can cause friction of the labia (private parts).
Hygienic care revolving around the monthly cycle needs to be conveyed. Girls must learn how to anticipate and prepare for their menstrual cycles so they won't be caught by surprise. Daily bathing and special padding must be undertaken for this cyclical phase of their development.
Tampons or pads should be changed every few hours to prevent bacterial growth; tampons should not be worn overnight.
Avoid all feminine hygiene sprays, douches and scented sanitary products since they may irritate the pubic area.

Reassurance and advice
Reassure your daughter that one breast may develop faster than the other. She may also experience tenderness.
Prepare your daughter for her first menstrual period.
Menstruation may last from 1 to 8 days, and initially the periods may be scanty and irregular.
A warm bath or a hot water bottle to the abdomen may help menstrual discomfort.
Severe discomfort or pain (called dysmenorrhoea) can be easily treated with homoeopathic medicines.
Your daughter might notice a yellow stain on her panties. Leucorrhoea or a white discharge is also a common complaint during puberty. If the discharge is white, non-irritating, non-offensive and is not associated with any urinary symptoms, then it is a physiological phenomenon. This can be corrected with the help of constitutional homeopathic remedies. However, an acute onset of leucorrhoea, with an irritation, itching and redness of the parts, may be due to a fungal infection.

Mutual supportParents need to:
Agree between themselves about their basic values and rules.
Support each other in applying them.

Listening to their problems
Adults need to be a source of advice, sympathy and comfort and not pass judgement, be criticising or give routine advice. Listening comes first.
It is always better to spend time on praising good decisions or behaviour.

For homeopathic consultation for your symptoms you may visit Homeopathic Healing or send an e-mail to office@drvaishnav.com to meet the Homeopathic Specialists.

Disclaimer: A detailed history followed by constitutional treatment by good and qualified homeopathic specialists is necessary to treat the complaints that appear during any disease. It is not advisable to resort to self-medication for any disease. 

Hey Teacher, leave them kids alone

I used to listen to this popular Pink Floyd number as a child and I think it had a cult following. It still does. My 19-year-old son now listens to Pink Floyd and tries to strum this number on his guitar.
This anthem is still relevant in the present times. I have been teaching for over 23 years and I sometimes feel that this number is a current favorite with the kids because of the reality it portrays.
Teaching, like medicine, is supposed to be a noble profession. I am a doctor as well as a teacher but I can’t completely agree with that statement.
When I was in high school more than 30 years ago, I was in a different era. Personal or private coaching was unheard of at that time. Teachers are now more mercenaries than anything else. The greed to earn more money has driven them to do things that would leave even a shameless person red faced.
Schoolteachers now openly solicit students for private coaching. They zero in on the unsuspecting pupils and talk about their poor performance and drop hints about how their academic graph would improve if the teacher specially coached them. Those who are being privately coached are favored in the class and are given special and easy assignments. Miraculously, these students also get special powers and are able to predict the questions that would be asked in the examinations! Obviously the grades improve. If the schoolteacher is not coaching you, then you are left to fend for yourself and also made to feel like a pariah. You would be ignored completely and even if you give the correct answer to the questions that are asked in class, you are a nobody.
Then there is another class of teachers that would not have the ingenuity to ask you to be coached by them. So they resort to passing sarcastic comments about the students in general. They would rant and rave about the fickle students of the school who trust outside teachers and flock to them for private coaching. They would use every possible trivial incident to insult the students and scare them into believing that they made a wrong choice of the private tutor. To make sure that the students cannot go for their coaching after school, they give a lot of assignments that have to be completed and brought back the next day.
I know of a teacher who told the class that she would not be able to teach them unless they requested the Principal of their school to increase her salary. The school is a private school that has recently increased the fees, ostensibly to pay the teachers a higher salary!
When my son was in junior college (Class XI), the teachers went a step further. They would rarely take their regular lectures and if you had a doubt that needed to be solved, they would say that this would be discussed in their private coaching class.
I have a patient who often comes home feeling insulted and humiliated because of the way the teachers treat not only her, but also her classmates. They all have to suppress their emotions because to react would mean educational suicide. She says that her teacher is only interested in teaching those students whom he is privately coaching. He uses flimsy excuses to cut the marks of the other students and even gives credit of the work done by others to his pupils. Fortunately we have a medicine in homeopathy called Staphysagria that we give her to calm her down and to get over this feeling of indignation and humiliation. It has always worked. At one time, my daughter’s friend developed a severe abdominal colic after her teacher ridiculed her. Once again homeopathy came to her rescue and a few doses of Colocynth took care of the colic and also helped her become less sensitive to the emotional assault.
A young girl was brought to us with severe depression. She did not want to go to school and had remained absent for over a week. She had no desire to talk to anyone and would shut herself up in her room. Her parents often found her weeping and when they would persistently quiz her problems she would say that she wanted to die and end her suffering. We talked to this young girl and traced this depression and suicidal thoughts to the humiliation that she had to go through everyday at school. Her teacher had apparently taken a dislike for her and would use a greater part of her teaching time in trying to insult her and erode her self-esteem. The homeopathic drug Aurum metallicum, helped this girl come out of her depression. The parents were also counseled and asked to take up this issue with the school.
In the kindergarten class and the lower grades teachers, are next to God. Even the parents are secondary to the teachers and whatever the teacher tells the child is the gospel truth. When the child reaches middle school, there is a sudden realization that the teacher is not an angel but a mere mortal. The parents once again rank higher in esteem. Finally in high school, the teacher turns into a devil and the child develops disgust for the petty, mean and egocentric teachers. This translates into a hatred for the school.
So, hey teachers, leave them kids alone.

For homeopathic consultation for your symptoms you may visit Homeopathic Healing or send an e-mail to office@drvaishnav.com to meet the Homeopathic Specialists.

Disclaimer: A detailed history followed by constitutional treatment by good and qualified homeopathic specialists is necessary to treat the complaints that appear during any disease. It is not advisable to resort to self-medication for any disease. The above-mentioned drugs are just a few of the remedies and are mentioned solely to create awareness about the efficacy of homeopathic medicines.