I can only shake head when I see school uniforms on a child of 18months, 2, and 3 years old.
I can only shake head when a parent is telling a 3 to 5 year old to face his studies and read hard.
I can only shake head when a child under 4 who has not done diagnostic test to determine his or her learning style is being punished for being a slow learner.
I can only shake head when a child that is supposed to be on holiday is being forced to study all through the holiday season.
I can only shake head when parents emotionally torture their children by comparing their brains with neighbours’ children results or even their own cousins.
I can only shake head when parents whose income is barely enough would insist on sending their kids to private schools that they cannot afford - parents are under pressure to pay bills, children are under pressure to be at the top of their classes, finance is under pressure as bills are mounting, health is under pressure as stress is setting in....!
I can only cry when a child under 2, that should still be enjoying his or her mother is thrown into the hands of other people to look after so mum could go to work. (I won’t go near the abuses perpetrated in crèches or the so called Nurseries at the moment).
Yes I know, parents can be career-minded people, but this should not be to the detriment of these innocent children. It scars them for life.
I read the sad story of a professor who came out about 2 years ago in Nigeria to lament how she and her husband stupidly damaged the lives of their 2 children by focusing too much on their careers and leaving them in the hands of maids, cooks, drivers and housekeepers.
Imagine these Monday to Friday real life scenarios:
- Your children wake up in the hands of minders,
- Given breakfast by minders,
- Prepared for school and taken to school by minders,
- Collected from school by minders,
- Taken to After School Extra lessons by minders,
- Served their dinners by minders,
- Tucked in their beds by minders.
Parents only come to kiss their children’s heads and feel their body temperatures at 9-10pm when they come back from work.
Should 4 or 5 year old Junior or Princess wake up to say ‘I miss you mummy/daddy’,
‘sssshhhh’ they would reply.
‘I know Junior/Princess, we miss you too. Daddy and mummy are very busy at the moment. We are working hard to make life good for you so you could have the best toys and dress and shoes. You should sleep now. Tomorrow is still school day and you need to face your studies. Love you and sleep tight.’
- And on Saturdays, they are attended to by minders who try to fix them and get them to catch up.
- Sunday - only time with parents but spent in church, parents do meetings upon meetings, children bored out, manage to get home to have a family dinner, and dispatched straight to their rooms to play with their PS4 or whatever so that daddy and mummy can rest.
Truth is, they will collect your bribes of toys but will spend their formative years developing in the mindset of their closest minders. Woe betide you if the minders show them the way of this world just like the ones that helped destroy the lives of the children of the career professor who came out lamenting.
To those that will be getting married today, congratulations to you.
If you did not put the cost of child raising into perspective before today, please do as soon as you can after honeymoon.
One question you should ask is if you want to be accountable to the creator over your children or you want them to be added to the statistics of the good children turned bad.
Childbearing is easier (sincere apologies to mothers - it is the perspective I am writing from that demands that). So don’t think you have crossed the threshold of success by just popping children out alone. Your title at childbearing is more of a daddy and mummy. The bigger test awaits!
Child raising is a real parenting job that requires personal sacrifices. This is where we know a real father and a real mother....not never-there-parents.
Truth is, children will know if you were there for them or not when their time comes to put you in your place.
A friend during my MSc told us she was defiled when she was 7 by their gardener. She was sent to after school lesson to learn and she heard the word sex which sounded like Number 6 due to the accent of the teacher.
Mum could not help explain sex as she was too young. She was a nurse. Face your study and you will understand later she was told. She asked her big cousin living with them - a male, he advised her to grow up and she will find out. Nobody told her the difference and she decided to grow up.
She asked the wrong person who told her she had to remove all her clothes. Till the time she told us friends, her parents still didn’t know that their daughter was regularly violated between ages 7-10 by their trusted gardener until she went to girls boarding school as a pro and her level changed from gardener to something more.
She went wild until she met Christ in her 3rd year of University. But till she dies, she said her parents need not to know what happened to her from age 7 to 23 as she was not ready to cause them heartaches leading to their early graves. They were old and in their 80s at the time. If not for Christ, she would not have probably made it through. Many children never make it through.
One question we have not successfully answered till date is that apart from peer pressure, why is it that some children find it so easy to flip to the dark sides once they have a taste of their first freedom in life?
The answer is not far fetched. Go and look up at the routine behind their upbringing. Check out their formative years.
Whatever informs a child’s formative years is what he/she will solidify into his late adolescent years. Once the threshold of adulthood is crossed, that is it.
2012, I walked into the crèche/Nursery facilities that offered staff at our Stratford Campus a huge discount to make enquiries on their facilities for our daughters. One was a toddler and the other was just months old.
For the toddler, £876 a month, and the baby, £1,186 a month. And these were special discounts. Price will only reduce the older the children grow and they can start to look after themselves in a little way. Both of them were still in pampers and none of them could speak yet! So it was a premium bill for us. I looked at some of the children, the facilities, and the carers. The mental pictures that I took are still with me till date. I believed we could do better than that.
I got home, briefed my wife, and we looked at ourselves, finances, London for that matter...and we made hard decisions. It was for us and not for anybody!
We cannot in anyway be giving out over £2000 a month for other minders to look after our children in their own ways rather than in our way!
My wife sent in her resignation letter. She had to let go of her Accounting career. I continued with mine. She started looking for flexible jobs that would allow her to do night jobs only.
She cared for them during the day. I took over their caring for nights.
We moved away from a 4 bedroom house to a 2 bedroom flat maisonette closer to my in-laws. We needed all the help we could get to reduce the cost and save us from mounting debt pressures. It was tough but we eventually made it through.
Rather than spend £2000 monthly, we only ensured we made our house a child friendly amusement park for the children. Every toy was a means to learning for them. No toy was an ordinary toy. Mum was there and I was there.
So when my daughters can’t stop kissing and hugging me, I know I am trying with my job. And I know my job is not fully done yet because there are still phases of life for them to cross.
But if this piece should help any family today, especially those just getting married today, I want you to know that the biggest work comes when you start bringing in new lives to this world, and you gotta be prepared for that.
If you can’t afford private schools, you can still use public schools and make up with your time and valuable learning aids to help your children at home.
It is an emotional scar on a child when such is sent home from school and stopped from writing exams. Only if your eyes can be opened to see the thoughts in their hearts.
Raise them well, let them have fun with you. Let them grow at their own pace, don’t let them be competing out of jealousy. Don’t make life a do or die affair for them. Or else, they will grow cold and will be crushing everything in their paths to achieve the kind of success you unconsciously planted in their minds just to get your approval.
Don’t let them grow and end up wicked like most of the politicians and leaders in that country.
My prayer is that you know what’s best for you. God can send you good minders, we had one that even lived us and became family friends thereafter. The most important is being there to know the heartbeat of the children.
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