Skip to main content

Take Your Child to (Tele)Work Day

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

In April, I took part in NIH’s Take Your Child to (Tele)Work Day, a virtual version of the popular annual workplace event. This year’s event allowed students, grades 1 through 12, to spend the day working from home with a parent while learning more about a career path in science and public service. The day also offers plenty of fun and games to relieve some of the COVID stress, and I took part in performing an improv skit chosen by the kids to demonstrate what’s called Laughter Yoga. Afterwards, as shown here with the kids looking on at the top of the screen, our Laughter Yoga coach Alexa Drubray (bottom left) took a minute to explain more about the practice and how it combines laughter exercises with yoga breathing in pursuit of better health and wellbeing. Sharon Milgram (top left) also joined the conversation with two thumbs up. Sharon is the director of NIH’s Office of Intramural Training and a co-organizer of this “Meet the Director” event for the kids. Susie Needham (bottom right), our ASL interpreter, signs for the kids.

2 Comments

  • Sugath R says:

    Dear Dr. Collins, What kind of Yoga is that? Is it unique only to USA? More than these useless things which have not got children to develop loving-kindness, compassion, equanimity and altruistic joy, qualities that are hardly evident in children and adults in USA is to get them to do at least 10 minutes a day of Mindfulness Meditation, and lead them on the path to mental purification.
    As I note, there is no benevolence in USA, and even the people who were talking of it and doing it in the eyes of the world, did not do that in real value. You only see on media about who is the richest person, as if that person when he or she goes for good will take it all to other life, when the truth is that we do not even take this garbage bag of 32 faecal matters but leave it here, be they kings, queens, presidents, billionaires.

    At best we might live for 90 or so years, may be one out of a million, Remember, this bag of 32 faecal matters we call body does not belong to us, but this illustrated consciousness will always be and at the last moment, depending on how righteously we lived, be born in heaven or animal world, peta world, but to get another human life will be like the sea turtle with just one eye after hundreds of years coming up and going down without seeing the sun. Do not waste this human life, as no guarantee of another human life.

  • Stephen says:

    I work for a pretty large company too in a corporate environment. The kids could be “school aged” but they didn’t include a specific age. I would say 90% were 4-7 years old, and the rest were a little older. I didn’t see many high school aged children at all. Our company had a lot of activities for the kids but it was more like a family fun day in my eyes. My toddler is only 15 months so he was much too young to participate. I did see one lady carry an infant around with her, which I thought was a bit much.

Leave a Comment