The Life of Li Zhuohao

Laishui County is located in the Hebei province, south-west of Beijing, China, and boasts a picturesque landscape of varied topographies. Loucun Town is one of 15 towns in Laishui County, and is home to around 29,000 people living in 22 villages. 14-month-old Li Zhuohao was born in one of those villages. His mother works for the family-planning office of Loucun Township Government, while his father works for the electricity distribution department of the county government. Zhuohoa has an older sister who just started preschool.

Zhuohao’s mother suffered from minor anemia during pregnancy, and due to her heavy workload, has been adding baby cereal and formula supplements to breast milk since Zhuohoa was a newborn. Even though Zhuohao has grown into a beautiful little baby boy, he was hospitalized from jaundice soon after birth and still lacks appetite during meals.

“Zhuohao would have been much healthier if I had paid more attention to my own health during pregnancy,” said Zhuohao’s mother. “Now I’m dying to know a scientific way to feed him to make him stronger.” 

Zhuohao is a vivacious baby, curious about everything around him and eager to communicate with people. He’s also passionate about music, and likes dancing to strong beats.

When it comes to parenting, his mother said, “We don’t have (an) early childhood development center around here, or books, for that matter. I know it’s essential to communicate with him, so I often read picture books to him and play with him. I think what we, as parents, need is to learn how to develop his potential, for example, his sensitivity toward music, with accessible tools and exercisable methods.”

According to Zhuohao’s mother, most parents in their village still follow the obsolete feeding methods. Basic knowledge about nutrition is quite vague for most of them. It is not uncommon for infants to be completely cut out from breastfeeding, and eat excessively processed food – since formula or processed food can be a luxury in some poverty-stricken households.

As for parenting approaches, it is most parents’ belief that children under three do not understand adult language. Hence, talking to babies and toddlers is often considered unnecessary, except for yelling at them when they do not follow orders. In the most extreme cases, children are left with toys while parents or grandparents are occupied with household errands or farm works.

Save the Children launched a holistic ECCD project in January 2015, and it has been operating in Laishui since June. This year, 22 village-level family planning staff undertook frontline ECCD training on nutrition, health and parenting. They were also equipped with a home visit toolkit including: toys, curriculum, nutrition and health recommendations, as well as monitoring tools such as weight scale, and ruler. Through bi-weekly home visits, those frontline ECCD workers provide a combination of the following: recommended complementary feeding menu for children by age bracket, advice on feeding techniques, vaccination information, and recording children’s height and weight – to keep parents informed about whether their children are growing along a correct path of physical development.

Zhuohao’s parents are thrilled about the project that will be rolling full steam in their village in 2016.

“It’s a very exciting project,” said Zhuohao’s mother. “Parents don’t realize the significance of pregnancy and the first three years in children’s lives in enhancing children’s health, developing their intelligence and shaping their personality to make them healthy, independent and wholesome adults with great potential to contribute to the society. The ECCD project will definitely change that.”