Promise Adiele
Parents please kindly take your time and read this piece. When I use ‘parents’, I refer to adults who play the onerous role of taking care of children in a capacity that confers on them parental responsibilities. If you are in a position where you are responsible for the general wellbeing of a child or a youth, then you are a parent and I want you to pay attention to this essay. To be a parent is not easy. To practically live a sacrificial life where you only consider the interest of another person is not a mean job.
To mould, direct, monitor and influence a child positively is not an all comers affair. Failure to do any of these amounts to parental failure which is at the root of all social vices. The armed robbers, the prostitutes, the suicide bombers, the kidnappers, and the bandits all have parents. If all these people have parents, what can be attributed to their deviant behaviour and dislocated upbringing? There are also children who turn out well, products of good parenting, who grow to become good ambassadors of their families and society.
Today, the family as an institution is under siege owing to a new obsession among children, the idea of committing suicide at the slightest excuse. No doubt our society is subsumed in different anomalies, but to think that suicide has become very popular among children and youths nowadays is quite disturbing. It appears our society has a way of regenerating new demons every decade, which relocate to human habituation, manifesting tragic characteristics.
These days, these demons are here with us, inducing the idea of suicide among children. In the days gone by, parents dealt with children in any way they thought pleasing. But these days, it is inconceivable that discipline has become a crime among youths. For the flimsiest of excuses, children commit suicide, leaving a dejected family to bear the pain. How did the suicide angel gain unhindered access to the psyche of children? How did life lose its sanctity among youths? Who is the harbinger of this tragic mentality? A child is scolded by the parents, suicide. A youth fails the exam in school, suicide. A youth fails to have his way at home, suicide.
A youth fails to gain admission to a university, suicide. As I write this piece, many of our children are contemplating suicide without the knowledge of their parents. I know this for sure because I have encountered more than 300 school children between the ages of 13-18 who admitted to considering suicide for one reason or another. Within that period, sleep eluded me and I took a different look at my own children.
Given the above scenario, what should parents do? The time has come for every parent in Nigeria to take complete responsibilities for their children and for the roles they play as parents. There are parents who subtly abandon their children while pursuing the mirage of life, the vanishing illusions of materialism. These parents know nothing about their children, they only provide money, drivers, nannies, gadgets, cars, toys, and many other irrelevant items while ignoring their emotional conditions.
There are parents who outsource their primary responsibilities to boarding schools and during holidays, they enrol them in summer schools. These parents never want their children at home because they see them as a burden. Unfortunately, such children grow up imbibing negative and aberrant values. Such parents do not spend time with their children. They are always away on business trips or other engagements that tickle their fancy.
There are parents who impose certain career lines on their children without paying attention to their capabilities. When these children take up such career paths as dictated by their parents, frustration is the result and in the spirit of the present demonic influence, they commit suicide. There are parents who verbally abuse their children when they make mistakes instead of correcting them. In fact, some parents, in a feat of anger, place curses on their children. There are parents who enjoy blackmailing their children by reminding them how they spend money on their education and therefore should be rewarded with good behaviour.
The children didn’t beg anybody to come into the world, therefore it is the full responsibility of anybody who brings a child into the world to take care of that child. There are parents who summarily take out their economic frustrations on their children as if it is the fault of the children that the country’s economy is in a mindless plunge.
What then is the solution to the challenges of parenting in our country? I deal with youths, I hear them speak. In fact, some parents will be shocked to know what their children say about them. Today, every parent must take a retrospective look into his or her own life and take responsibilities for their children. Fathers, become friends with your boys, play games with them, watch football with them, teach them how to dress, invoke religious doctrines as a didactic approach to instruct and direct. Let them know you care.
Crack jokes with them, clown around the house in a comic gesture and let them laugh at you. Eat with them, teach them to wash your car/s, don’t always go to the car wash. Teach them to drive, don’t always send them to a driving school. Create that bond between you and your sons. Teach them to iron clothes, put on the generator, and how to do sundry chores in the house. Above all, teach them the inexorable dialectics of success and failure, how to navigate difficult times and how to abound in prosperity. Pay attention to their passions, it is only when you have done so that you will be able to guide, advise and instruct accordingly.
Mothers, pay very close attention to your daughters. Teach them how to dress and how to cook, teach them to be responsible and instil in them the belief that they can succeed without having to indulge in immoral acts. Can your daughter confide in you if she is being sexually harassed at home or in school? Do you have a listening ear to hear her out? Is that pretty daughter of yours your friend? Mothers should do more because the kinds of things I see our daughters get into in town and within the university campus is a damning verdict on many mothers. Presently, the girl child is facing a lot of challenges in our society and needs a true friend in the mother.
This is the time for every parent to rise to the occasion and save society the numerous incidences of suicide among our youths. It will be unfair to think that children of these days should be raised the same way parents were raised. Times have changed.
The instrumentality of discipline must be reviewed and reassessed. Nowadays, instead of slaps, whips, and physical assault, parents should do more of moral suasion, leading and teaching by examples.
Dr. Adiele writes from Lagos via [email protected]