LUDHIANA: Do kids copy what they see on TV or do television programmes copy them?
Most in this locality of Guru Nanak Pura believe that 13-year-old Abhishek Mehta, who breathed his last in a local hospital on Saturday, was trying to copy a character from a show on one of the TV channels.
Abhishek and his sister, younger to him by a few years, were home alone on Friday when they slung a dupatta around his neck and tied the other end to a ceiling fan.
As the young girl switched on the fan, she watched in horror as Abhishek got entangled and nearly strangulated. Panic-stricken, she rushed to the neighbour for help who rushed the victim to Dayanand Medical College.
The 13-year-old boy was admitted in the ICU around noon. A day later, he succumbed to the injuries, leaving the family in a state of shock. At the time of the incident, his father, working at the SP Headquarters, was away at work. His mother too was out for some work. "We are simply clueless as to why were the children playing such a game and as to how the idea took root in the first place. It is a big loss. His mother is in a complete shock," said Raju, the deceased child's uncle.
With such incidents happening more frequently among children, experts claim that parents need to enforce better discipline and regulate TV watching among kids. "Simply put, it is something like this. If we feed a chicken to a six-month-old, it would cause indigestion. On the same lines, exposure to things that children don't understand can lead to accidents such as this," said Dr Rajiv Gupta, a consultant psychiatrist.
"I recently had a case, where a child had attacked the other with a knife. Later, he tried to do the same thing what he had seen on TV. We have to bear in mind that a child cannot differentiate between the real and unreal. Thus, the need for vigilance," he added.
Source: TOI
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