She got down from her car, the latest model of the brand, dressed to kill in designer wear from top to bottom clutching a Hermès bag, her perfume announced her appearance as she walked into the school premises brandishing a letter and asking at the top of her voice who had written the letter to her. She was shown into Mr Aisi’s office as he had written the letter in his capacity as pastoral head of the elite school her daughter attended.
The letter was in form of a firm instruction that the child an eight-year-old female was not to be brought to school that day and a request to see the mother. The child who was obviously ill had been dropped by the driver two days in a row and immediately she arrived in her class on both occasions, she was admitted into the school clinic but what broke the camels back was the discovery on the third day that she had not been given a bath nor were her teeth brushed before she was dropped in school.
The mother’s angst was that the letter should not have been addressed to her but to the maid who was taking care of the child in her house. She only grew quiet and became reasonable when Mr Aisi asked for the details of the father of the child so he could send a letter to him since as she had said she wasn’t the proper person to be addressed even though the child was in her custody. She began to plead and told Mr Aisi that the father need not know of the issue and that she will ensure that things got better at home, confirming what the little girl had disclosed to Mr Aisi that she didn’t get to see her mother much and that the house helps who were changed frequently did everything for her.
The child was 16 years, a beautiful vivacious soul. All of a sudden, she changed, became sullen around the house, kept to herself and although she was still doing well in school, her parents were beginning to get concerned. Her dad was a businessman with flexible hours, her mum an entrepreneur in partnership with a friend and managing a fast growing business. It was an aunty who discovered that she was on drugs and that supervision at home was so lax that when her friends came over, some stayed in their house for weeks without the parents being aware.
The parents were in a fluster, their children were insisting that they must go for holidays abroad yet the family finances couldn’t afford that request. There were bills to be paid and school fees for the next term was looming right before their eyes. They had pleaded with the children but they were adamant as all their friends were travelling and they had planned to meet at the malls in the UK.
The stories I have recounted are all true and they show the parenting styles of some of today’s parents. It is worrisome that most parents today are complacent, indulgent and mostly unaware of what is going on with their children and for those that do know they are often either too busy or afraid to change the course of action that their children are set on.
I get very worried when parents of young children and adolescents refer to their children as their best friends. I believe that the blurring of the relationship between parents and children is largely responsible for the mess our society has found itself in. Children are not meant to be our friends when they are growing up. That’s a relationship reserved for their adulthood stage. When growing up they are our children and it is our responsibility to treat them like children.
Now before you start applauding. Treating a child like a child doesn’t mean treating them exactly how our parents treated us when we were to be seen but not heard. It means making the right choices for that child, ensuring he or she has age appropriate entertainment, restricting their childish tendencies ensuring they grow up as responsible, wholesome and well adjusted people. We often walk a thin line in our bid to to accomplish this without losing the ability to groom a friendship with our children and what has helped me do this is to always remember what I felt at every stage of my childhood. Doing this gives me the empathy to appreciate what they may be going through and the wisdom of hindsight to be able to correct or advise. I have found that the gift of empathy aids in developing a relationship where the child is free to talk to me about what is going on in their lives .
Good parenting doesn’t involve us sharing our troubles with our children, exposing them to the world we are better equipped to navigate, it doesn’t include sharing our secrets and dalliances with the child and making them share the burdens of every day living that we carry. It doesn’t involve us sharing the same entertainment channels with them, dressing them in adult clothes, throwing them parties where they are sprayed cash and all the rubbish we are inundated with on a daily basis.
A lot of us were raised rightly or wrongly by our parents and there is the tendency to want to make up for the deficiencies of our upbringing but we are missing it and it’s showing daily in every area and sphere. We are raising a generation of children who have too much thrown at them, who are being robbed of their childhood as they grow up too early, who are very fickle and who have no backbone, can’t stand the heat and tend to give up easily.
Most of us either turn the other way when confronted with our children’s behaviour in the hope that whatever they have done doesn’t come out to the open and smear us or we go into denial making excuses and attributing blame to everyone except ourselves and the child in question like the mother of that girl in the video saga who in a quest to absolve herself of blame has unwittingly made matters worse for her daughter.
I haven’t watched the video but a lot of people who have, have said that the acts carried out by those children was consensual and the mother who should have watched the video must have known that in blowing the matter open she will expose both herself and most importantly her child to attacks and vitriol. I will be the last person to attribute all the actions and choices a child makes to parental upbringing because at times the parents do the right things but the child makes wrong choices but my anger at the mother of the child in question is the fact that she has made her child who undoubtedly is a victim just like the boys in that video, a subject of ridicule and a subject for talk shows and motivational posts. Did she not know that people who didn’t know about the video which I hear had been in circulation for about a month will seek for it, hound her child and expose her, did she not know that in coming out her child will be identified and her life will be in open. Am I saying she should not have taken things up with the school on whose watch the incident occurred? Of course not, she should have as the school owed her a duty of care but her battle should have been in private mainly to protect her child. The parents of the boys in that video who are also victims have been quiet which has led to most people forgetting that it took three to tango.
I am almost certain that some form of abuse has taken place in the lives of those children and that they have been exposed to things they ought not to be exposed to at that age. As I have said severally, I could have been that girl because I was exposed to sex very early though thankfully I was never abused and what I saw I practiced with my neighbour. Was it my parents fault? Yes and No. Yes because they were responsible for me. No because no matter how strict a parent is, sin will find its way. If you doubt me sit with any student in any of the private universities especially those that are heavily regimented and you will hear stories of orgies, drugs and sexcapades.
The truth is that no matter how we look at it, the main victim of today’s brand of parenting is the child, the second victim are the parents who will in the nearer rather than later future reap the fruits of the seeds they have planted or the tares they ignored. As far as I am concerned, in this and all cases where children have made terrible choices, rather than trading the blame game, our first attention should be the child and what they must be going through to make them act out in the open, our second job is to intervene with the mind of rescuing that child and our third is rehabilitation. Many times the things they have gone through is more than enough punishment and the focus should be on helping them back to their feet and ensuring that the choices they have made do not mar them permanently.
It should never be about what the parent is going through or what impact it has on them and their parenting style or the school. It doesn’t matter what the public thinks of them or what vitriol, shame and insults they bear. It should be about the child and how to get them back on course and that’s what we all should focus on with the young people around us who have made wrong choices whether they be in the primary or secondary school, university or working adults.