- Email: [email protected]
Thoughts about the millennium: The importance of children and parenting
and Parenting f don’t know about you, but I can hardly wait until the beginning of the new millennium-not because I’m excited about what it will bring, but because I’m tired of hearing about it! For the past year, no matter where you turned, you encountered messages about the millennium.. . from “must take” cruises, to warnings about Y2K, to outrageous prices being charged for celebrations, to warnings about the collapse of the economy and the end of the world. I certainly cannot foretell the future, and I am probably too optimistic, but I just cannot get too worried about all that. Granted, I have done the preparation that has been generally recommended-checking my computer, for example-but I have not taken courses about how to become totally independent by growing all my food at home, nor have I stockpiled weeks of water and supplies (beyond the supplies the typical Californian has on hand for earthquakes preparedness!). I just want to get on with it, let the millennium arrive, and see what happens! What I have found interesting about the approaching millennium has been the opportunity to think about what the future will bring, as well as what the past has been. For me, thinking back much beyond the past few decades is difficult, let alone the past century or millennium. I cannot imagine what it was like 1000 years ago, as the persons living then thought ahead toward the next millennium (this one). Viewing his-
November/December
1999
tory this way can be overwhelming, but it certainly gets you thinking! Recently we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the nurse practitioner movement and of NAPNAP, yet these 25 years are not even a blip in the history of the past 1000
thus plan for the future?
years. Not that the accomplishments aren’t important, but the time frame for these accomplishments has been so short. Thinking of time in this way has made me consider the changes to come in the future. How can we even imagine what life will be like in 100 or 1000 years when everything is changing so incredibly quickly? This inability to predict what life will be like far into the future
J Pediatr Health Care. (1999). Copyright
13,265-266.
0 1999 by the National
0891.5245/99/$8.00
+ 0
has made me think about the past. What has been consistent or stable across large spans of time that might help us predict and thus plan for the future? I found this question interesting. Think about it yourself.. .what do you believe has been consistent across the last millennium, or at least a large part of it? For me, after much thought, the answer was parents and children. I suppose this answer is not surprising, coming from one who has been teaching growth and development all her professional life, as well as providing health care for children and their families. However, if you think about it, parents and children are one major consistent component of life across the centuries. I do not mean that children and parents today face the same issues and have the same concerns as children and parents who lived hundreds of years ago. Indeed, throughout the years, different types of family structure, different roles for parents and extended family members regarding the upbringing and caring of children, and different views on what the role of parents and children should be have existed. However, the parent-child relationship has been a consistent one. To me, then, this means that we can have a big impact on the future as we go into this new millennium
Association
of Pediatric
Nurse Associates
& Practitioners.
25/8/101460
265
EDITORIAL
Nelms
because we can positively affect the parent-child relationship. We do many things in our daily work with children and their parents that can positively affect the future. We spend a great deal of time teaching parents how to parent, giving anticipatory advice, and helping parents promote their child’s to tal growth and development-what better way to have an impact on the future? We know that the way in which children are raised will affect their lives in many ways, including how they parent their own children. Thus, although we might not be able to give specific advice or guid-
ance that will be relevant hundreds of years in the future, we can have a positive effect on the lives of persons in the future through the generational link of parents and children. We also can have a potential link to the future by affecting the health care of children. Healthy children have a much better chance of becoming healthy adults, which then will affect their future children (and so on)! Thus, while we may find the thoughts about what the next 1000 years will bring overwhelming, to me it is comforting to think that, in our professional role at least, we can affect the future in positive ways.
This prospect makes facing this new millennium an exciting and challengingprocess rather than one filled with apprehension, fear, and dread. I hope the transition to the new millennium is a positive one for you. Just think-1000 years from now, people will be wondering what we were thinking about as this change happened! I hope that they too will be able to think of the positive things they can do to affect then next millennium. Have a good one! -Bobbie Crew Nelms, PhD, RhJ, CPhU’
NAPNAP’s 21 st Annual Conference on Pediatric Primary Care Atlanta, Georgia March 29-April I, 2000 Roundtable Discussions-Friday,
March 31,200O
‘lease consider serving as a discussion leader at the breakfast roundable session. You do not need to be an expert in the topic to particibate; you need only have an interest in learning and sharing informaIon with your colleagues. If interested, please send a note indicating our choice of topic and a brief (l- to 2-page maximum) resume to JAPNAP’s National Office (Attention: Kathy Watson). 000 Topics include: Meeting the Challenges of the Breast-feeding Family Tobacco Use in Children and Teens Research in the Clinical Setting Immunizations--Are We Becoming Complacent? Asthma-Is the Incidence On the Rise? Integrative Medicine--What is it? Marketing and Contracting as a PNP Legislative Issues and Strategies Effective Discipline: Does It Exist? PNPs in Specialty Practice A. Cardiology B. Oncology NAI’NAP National Office 1101 Kings Highway, North, Suite 206 Cherry Hill, NJ 08034 Phone: (856) 667-1773 Fax: (856) 667-7187 Submission
2 66
Volume
13 Number
6 Part 1
deadline:
January
15,2000
JOURNAL
OF PEDIATRIC
HEALTH
CARE
November/December
1999
tory this way can be overwhelming, but it certainly gets you thinking! Recently we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the nurse practitioner movement and of NAPNAP, yet these 25 years are not even a blip in the history of the past 1000
thus plan for the future?
years. Not that the accomplishments aren’t important, but the time frame for these accomplishments has been so short. Thinking of time in this way has made me consider the changes to come in the future. How can we even imagine what life will be like in 100 or 1000 years when everything is changing so incredibly quickly? This inability to predict what life will be like far into the future
J Pediatr Health Care. (1999). Copyright
13,265-266.
0 1999 by the National
0891.5245/99/$8.00
+ 0
has made me think about the past. What has been consistent or stable across large spans of time that might help us predict and thus plan for the future? I found this question interesting. Think about it yourself.. .what do you believe has been consistent across the last millennium, or at least a large part of it? For me, after much thought, the answer was parents and children. I suppose this answer is not surprising, coming from one who has been teaching growth and development all her professional life, as well as providing health care for children and their families. However, if you think about it, parents and children are one major consistent component of life across the centuries. I do not mean that children and parents today face the same issues and have the same concerns as children and parents who lived hundreds of years ago. Indeed, throughout the years, different types of family structure, different roles for parents and extended family members regarding the upbringing and caring of children, and different views on what the role of parents and children should be have existed. However, the parent-child relationship has been a consistent one. To me, then, this means that we can have a big impact on the future as we go into this new millennium
Association
of Pediatric
Nurse Associates
& Practitioners.
25/8/101460
265
EDITORIAL
Nelms
because we can positively affect the parent-child relationship. We do many things in our daily work with children and their parents that can positively affect the future. We spend a great deal of time teaching parents how to parent, giving anticipatory advice, and helping parents promote their child’s to tal growth and development-what better way to have an impact on the future? We know that the way in which children are raised will affect their lives in many ways, including how they parent their own children. Thus, although we might not be able to give specific advice or guid-
ance that will be relevant hundreds of years in the future, we can have a positive effect on the lives of persons in the future through the generational link of parents and children. We also can have a potential link to the future by affecting the health care of children. Healthy children have a much better chance of becoming healthy adults, which then will affect their future children (and so on)! Thus, while we may find the thoughts about what the next 1000 years will bring overwhelming, to me it is comforting to think that, in our professional role at least, we can affect the future in positive ways.
This prospect makes facing this new millennium an exciting and challengingprocess rather than one filled with apprehension, fear, and dread. I hope the transition to the new millennium is a positive one for you. Just think-1000 years from now, people will be wondering what we were thinking about as this change happened! I hope that they too will be able to think of the positive things they can do to affect then next millennium. Have a good one! -Bobbie Crew Nelms, PhD, RhJ, CPhU’
NAPNAP’s 21 st Annual Conference on Pediatric Primary Care Atlanta, Georgia March 29-April I, 2000 Roundtable Discussions-Friday,
March 31,200O
‘lease consider serving as a discussion leader at the breakfast roundable session. You do not need to be an expert in the topic to particibate; you need only have an interest in learning and sharing informaIon with your colleagues. If interested, please send a note indicating our choice of topic and a brief (l- to 2-page maximum) resume to JAPNAP’s National Office (Attention: Kathy Watson). 000 Topics include: Meeting the Challenges of the Breast-feeding Family Tobacco Use in Children and Teens Research in the Clinical Setting Immunizations--Are We Becoming Complacent? Asthma-Is the Incidence On the Rise? Integrative Medicine--What is it? Marketing and Contracting as a PNP Legislative Issues and Strategies Effective Discipline: Does It Exist? PNPs in Specialty Practice A. Cardiology B. Oncology NAI’NAP National Office 1101 Kings Highway, North, Suite 206 Cherry Hill, NJ 08034 Phone: (856) 667-1773 Fax: (856) 667-7187 Submission
2 66
Volume
13 Number
6 Part 1
deadline:
January
15,2000
JOURNAL
OF PEDIATRIC
HEALTH
CARE