It is very good to be a career mum, no disputing that fact as we are aware of the present state of Nigeria economy. It might be difficult for just one person to shoulder all that responsibilities. Just yesterday on my way to church, I saw three boys on uniform obviously they were on their way to school. In their hand was a mobile stereo speaker playing music out loud while walking down a busy road with unbuttoned uniform, sagged trousers and a comb on their hair. What??? Are these Nigeria future leaders? Garbage-In-Garbage-Out. Proverbs 22:6 Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it. The result of various actions of our parents towards their children ultimately become the product of the society we live in. For us to save our society, parents/guardians need to take their responsibility which in this case is parenting VERY serious.
Parenting children demands ongoing efforts to protect, teach, encourage and set behavioural limits. Parenting can be very challenging and even frustrating. Some parents give in to the frustration and resort to abusive parenting tactic. I was telling someone the other day that we all as parents really need wisdom to direct our kids the right way as we are not perfect either. You cant imagine the suffering some people go through everyday just to feed. You see an old woman who is supposed to be reaping the fruit of her labour hawking on the street selling peanuts just to put food in her stomach. Will you blame it on the country? Not really. How can you give birth to 10 children when you hardly have enough to feed on? How will you survive?
The truth is, Nigeria is like a baby in a bad hand. Nigeria is a good country simply in bad hands. And this majorly is as a result of bad parenting. I met a shoe repairer the other day who bragged about having 8 kids and still planning to make them 12. I asked him "oga, how you go train them?" Can you guess his response...? He said, he gives them out to people who need but dont have. I was so disappointed. I went to primary school in this country at a time when If your parent ever told you your teacher complained about you, you would feel like running away. These days, the teachers ask for bribe and the Nigerian parents go to schools and beat up teachers. Something has gone awfully wrong. Quality education is now a matter of money and position. In fact, it now seems like if you dont have a lot of money, your children cannot make it in life.
What am I trying to say? We should bring up our kids the right way because they are the future of this great country. We all need to work together to make Nigeria work again by teaching our children to be responsible. If there are no jobs teach them to create one. you dont need to blame the country for your misfortune. some parents are even too busy to interact with their children and supervise their activities; they rarely intervene or become involved in a child's life, failing to provide guidance. This brings me to the 4 styles of parenting: Authoritarian, Authoritative, Permissive, not involved. All these will be discussed in my book soon.
In summary, lets aim to control our children's behaviour through continuous direction. But as parents let us also maintain high behavioural expectations. Let us be sensitive to our child's point of view and temperament, lets have that patient to explain why certain rules are important rather than citing our authority as the reason why children should obey. By giving in-depth explanation, we will typically produce independent, confident children who are well-adjusted, creative and cooperative. And this we really need to take our country away from bad hands.
Adanne Chukwudi Udejiofor
www.adannechukwudi.blogspot.com
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