Yousafzai – PEDS mothers’ sessions

The package is, it basically works around the concept that if you look at activities, stimulation activities, they could be play activities, they could be communication activities and you can take something very simple: like a child banging on pots and pans; and you can get the lady health worker to introduce that activity to the mother; and while the mother is working with that child, you are teaching her how to read her child. How to see when her child is happy. How to see when her child is, wow I have achieved something I can make these sounds. 

She sees her child lighting up and when she sees that she’s starting to understand that she is the first teacher and she can get that child to move from here to the next stage of his development and she doesn’t need to have a University level of education, she doesn’t need expensive toys. But using these very simple activities, she can learn to understand her child and respond to her child’s needs. And when she does that the relationship between, mostly we are working with mothers, but the family and the child get stronger, the attachment process starts to develop more strongly; and this is really important because we are working in communities whether are so many challenges, there is poverty, there is twenty-five percent to thirty percent maternal depression or risk of maternal depression, there is malnutrition. And so within all of that you are giving the mother a way of being able to say that despite these challenges she can still give her child so much. So, that’s the basis of the intervention. 

The effects I have seen on mothers is that they are more knowledgeable now and they pay attention towards the development of children. We give them the skills and tools that allow them to observe the milestones according to the children’s age. Therefore, if a child is not developing at a rate that we suggest is normal for a child of that age, the mothers begin to ask questions and wonder what is going on. The other thing is, the children are affected in a way that makes them much more intelligent and active. The mothers enjoy a period of social time during these meetings. The mothers told us in a survey we conducted that they enjoy coming to meetings and perceive it as a healthy activity in which they are allowed to socialize with each other. These meetings allow for positive change and acceptance within the community, as well provide a healthy outlet for competition and social development among the mothers.  

And I would say after a year of roll-out what we have learned is, it’s feasible to train a lady health worker of an education level of tenth grade perhaps, to deliver and implement an intervention which is complex, but effective supervision. Yes you are able to implement and see some changes in the child, in the mother and community to some extent in one year; and you can, when you see these mothers, you see these children really and their mothers reporting, “Oh my child id so different and I feel so happy now”. 

One of the mothers had a very beautiful quote: “I like this new way of caregiving”. So their emotions linked to this caregiving are changing which is really wonderful. I think for a mother who used to be stressed or burdened with so many children and now she sees a new way of bringing up her child, she has new hopes then she thinks in a different way now, she has a different attitude for caregiving and for being a mother.