Sunday, 3 June 2018
Parenting is the foundation of
everything good or evil in our societies by farthest extension. According to
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, it is simply defined as the process of
caring for your child or children. Parenting I… would love to explain briefly
as the parent(s) actions or inactions on their child(ren) to make them
resourceful for themselves first and then for their home and for the societies
at large.
Nobody yet has fallen from the sky
and has the exact semblance of human constructs -- internally and externally.
If that happens now, because we are at the tail end of this life, because I am
'Christ Ian', the being would be Jesus Christ at His "second coming"
or perhaps someone fell off an airplane ✈
without a parachute - death 💀 will
sequel that certainly. So, in exactness, what I am trying to say is that we all
have backgrounds, we must have been birthed by someone who was impregnated by a
particular nozzle, some male person -- we all have homes or parents at a point
[but may not have parent(s) at this point any longer literally or practically].
These facts are what make us humankind.
In furtherance, our homes are the
parents and not the buildings in which they dwell(ed). This would be evidently
correct to you when you believe that you have been mincing things up plausibly,
when you say “I, am going home.” And the conceptions you have next up your
psyche are the buildings in which your parents are living or used to live in.
When next you utter that statement, try and have deeper and better conceptions
–that it is because you have or had parent(s) is the reason you are going home 🏠 as a child(ren). Some say "home" and see the
home as the buildings done up of blocks in bricks and roofed finally -- houses
are just to give us shelter, privy from others, the sun and ☔ rainfall. There is no way you would go home 🏠 to go and greet the blocks in bricks, cemented all over
and roofed that you have arrived. You would walk into it to do that to your
parent(s): which is culturally good around here. Hence, home is not the
building, no matter how beautiful or pastoric it may look, home are your
parents -- the author of the foundation of whatever you have become yet in
life. That is the why for the Yoruba adage if Englished -- "Charity begins
at home."
Parenting is strictly the
responsibility of the parent(s) to make a good home happen by training,
dedicatedly and frequently the child(ren) all forms of positive ethics about
everything in life. The moment the foundation which should be authored properly
by the parent(s) is weak, nothing built on it will last. In other words,
parents are builders and their product(s), the child(ren) are the buildings.
Let us take experimentation into consideration at this juncture for proper
comprehension. Today, go outside and try to reach the toppest part of a tall
building or you could fancy this if you do not mind imagination. Look at the
different kinds of buildings you have around you; are they the same? Certainly,
they are NOT… Those are like the children in our societies today. They are
different buildings with different foundations. Some buildings' foundations
have failed them and they have collapsed for we can see their fallen rafters.
Some foundations are still standing but about failing completely as they are
shaking to fall as time is advancing while some foundations are (seen) so
strong 💪 as their structures are perfectly erected and their roof
tops are not rust but of diverse glowing colours as they are reflecting the
glories of the shining sun. In a non-metaphoric words, there are different
children in the societies today: we have ones who are dying smoking and
drinking hard, we have ones whose lives have been battered as sluts, we have
ones who are criminals, we have ones who are dying gradually due to drug 💊 abuse, we have ones who are at the garages' beer 🍺palours fighting and getting stabbed again, we have ones
who are running away from schools, we have ones getting impregnated
'unconsciously' again, we have ones raping again, we have ones getting rapped
again, we have ones betting all day long, we have ones witnessing their parent
being punched into stupor by the other parent all night 🌃 long, we have ones who are studying hard with ‘sakabula’
all night long, we have ones who hawk junks to keep up 👆 good dreams all day long, we have ones preparing harder
to re-sit exams, we have ones who are working in offices on merit, we have ones
who are studying hard without season to advance in horizon, we have ones taking
good care of their responsibilities as children to their parents, we have ones
planning their futures' plans already and so forth. Those who are doing the
wrongs are the failing or failed buildings so to say while the ones trying
really to be better are the hopes of better societies for all and sundry. The
point is, all these features children as buildings exemplify are sourced in the
foundations authored by the builders i.e. the parents' poor parenting or good
parenting.
As a dualist, someone who believes in
two nature of everything there is, I believe there are only two kinds of
parenting in our societies: Good Parenting and Bad Parenting. It is as simple
as they have been categorised. Something not good is definitely bad and
something bad cannot be good. This is why the Yorubas would say, “Ohun ti o da
o loruko meji: ohun ti o da o da.” My dream and hope is to encourage a healthy
society by indirectly encouraging good parenting as against bad parenting. Let
us treat them one after the other and together see what their contexts look
like.
Good Parenting: this
takes time, commitment and several recommencing of different practices by the
parents with a child. A good parenting does not actually begin from the moment
the wife puts to bed in the hospital, it begins even right from when courtship
kicks start twixt the man and the woman. If I were to write about just good
parenting alone actually, I could write a whole text detailed on the same. But
I must find a way to be succinct and to avoid to sound irksomely. So, note,
please, good parents to-be would have begun planning for their child(ren) even
before they come. The both of them should have agreed on the number of children
they should have and give good parenting to for without which lest they become
nuisance in the society and that is of no good use for anybody as far as I am
concerned based on a fact that we all are connected in the makeup of a society.
For the sake of usefulness in the child(ren) so, good parents would have
schemed several necessary factors beforehand for the child(ren) to-be –wherever
you see good parenting, there are plans, targets, aim and objectives,
disciplines, sacrifices, love, hope and ultimately God in the system.
Evil had been radiating the
atmosphere of the world from the time immemorial (though that is directly not
the case study here) but one fact remains fit for every timeline that no matter
how heinous an evil could be, it was first devised right in the head or mind of
a child who belongs to some parents. Mass killing of the innocents down to the
stealing of a piece of meat in the soup pot in the middle of the night have two
things in common. There was the thought to do so and the thought was executed
and it became a reality. These evils good parenting could help to prevent for
good and bring out the best in the child(ren) in the stead (God helping). How?
There is where sacrificing time with the child(ren) comes in. Good parenting
entertakes the parent(s) studying the child(ren) from day one of their birth
–being their good friend. Parenting is a relationship and not a ‘dictatorship’.
There is no way parent(s) would know their product(s) whose behaviours they do
not understand. One of the things good parenting has to do with is knowing your
son or daughter. Whenever something strange begins to pop up in his or her habitude,
in good parenting, the parent(s) would know and come in because they have
always been coming in. From there, because, prior, relationship of amity and
trust have been established God helping, if the child(ren) have been thinking
evil, they would be encouraged against so in the right ways. This will take
showing them the bigger picture aside the growing evil which would not help.
Good parenting is being pragmatic –showing the child(ren) instances of what the
evil growing in his or her mind would lead to and what doing the otherwise
would lead to. By encouraging this, evil would be prevented for goodness sake
in any home that sustains good parenting.
More so, good parenting treats
children differently. What worked for the son A to yield to a correction might
not work for the daughter Z. Techniques to handling the children must never be
exhausted no matter what. In good parenting, the parent(s) would know well when
it is right to chastise the child(ren) or just to sit them down and converse
with them allowing them to express themselves.
In good parenting, the parents would
never do against what they direct the child(ren) to do. Good parents would
direct their child(ren) not to fight and they would not fight at home or in the
public place. They would direct them not to lie and they would not lie too.
They would direct them to wake early to pray and they would do that to their
faces to always see. They would direct them to always read and they would read
always to their faces too. They would direct them to respect elders and they
would show the same to their faces always. They must not do hard drinks or be
in bad companies and they will not do likewise too and so forth. In good
parenting, what the parent(s) need the child(ren) to do to be relevant they
exemplify frequently. As this continues without a pause, what the child(ren)
have been seeing, they would begin to be believing and practise. Finally on
good parenting, the parents train their child(ren) themselves. A Yoruba adage
says “Oju mewa o le jo oju eni” –no one will take good care of your child(ren)
for you as you would have yourself check.
Bad 👎 Parenting:
this is just the otherwise of everything that has to do with good parenting
which I have tried to explicitly summarise prior. Bad parenting is when the
parent(s) naturally have no good plans for the child(ren) even before their
birth and after. Bad parenting bears the foundation of 90 percentage of the
menaces we have in the societies today. You would agree with me if you'd check.
The worst country ever when it comes to corruption, as quintessence, is not
that the geographical location is cursed or done into something like or worse
than that; go and check the homes in the country -- it is the foundation of the
evil in that society. If each home 🏠
could do the parenting from the beginning till the child(ren) naturally become
independent, there is no how we would not have children who mostly are
interested in healthy relationships with positivism as their philosophy. But
when the home itself is rotten. Or when the parents are not doing the right
things for the child(ren) at the right time... when the child(ren) go out into
the community, they would only give what they have been made into; they will
not be able to give what they do not have. So, this is the capital reason we
have terrorists being youths, most rapists being youths, touts being youths,
most thieves being youths, yahoo-yahoo scammers being mostly youths, lazy bones
being mostly youths, suicide bombers being youths and the likes.
Bad parenting should be war against.
Parent(s) should mount the scaffold armed to the teeth with the requisites to
give the child(ren) the best foundation before they go out. Parent(s) should be
the ones to do this and not some relatives or grannies please. No one parents
can nurture their child(ren) wholly by themselves yes... but the capital
person(s) taking up these responsibilities should be parent(s) provided they
are. Bad parenting has done the world much evil than what good one has. But...
it is never too late to be hopeful that there would be turnaround. It is never
too late for some parent(s) to recommence their parenting typology, not for the
sake of the societies alone but for the parent(s) to have peace of mind in
their old ages -- when it should be ripe for them to begin to reap the proceeds
of their good parenting on the child 👶 or
children. Not only that but also for the children to further the processes of
good parenting on their own generation. If this could keep on repeating itself
for 10 generations at most, even Africa would wear new wears of glory and the
world would bear the witness.
Using
Rarity Instead of Laxity
Asking questions makes one to know
what one has and what one lacks. It helps to be conscious as to the status quo
and to improve it for goodness sake. This simply entails the parent(s) (to-be)
to ask themselves the necessary questions and to begin to work on the questions
for answers because prevention is better than cure. One of my teachers, whom we
used to call Pastor, once said in one of his Literature-in-English classes way
back when I was in Secondary school “To succeed in life has to do with
initiating the 5 P's – Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performances.” To
succeed one has to understand each concept clearly, one has to understand what
is proper, what preparation entails, what prevention prevents, what poor means
and what/how good performances can help.
In Nigerian society, it is way too
rare to come across a good parenting and that is one of the big WHY's for the
delinquencies, vices, insurgencies which are the groomers of the nation's
internal insurrections. It is as rare as how scarce virgins among the teens or
the adult not yet married are today. My comparison is not to contemn those who
lost their virginity because they were victims of bad circumstance but either
so or not, bad parenting could be considered responsible on the matters of rape
and related ones.
The societal constructs which we
always mention and which serve as the bases from which the mentality of many
sprang are, based on each home’s parenting constructs. This is why it is
necessary in this part of the world to embrace good parenting which is very
rare as against being lax as parent(s). Laxity, sadly, in parenting will always
boomerang. It must be discouraged in action or practice by the parent(s) if
they need or dream what is good for their children, themselves and their
society at large, they should consider good parenting.
Child(ren) will one day develop to
become parents one way or the other. They cannot remain children for ever, it
is not naturally possible. This is why it is necessary for children in our
societies to always attempt to replace the rarity in their homes as to
parenting with what they know would pay their own futures. Children should not
deceive themselves pretending to be sophisticated and all that. As a child to
particular parents, I know the weaknesses in their parenting and I always try
hard to work on those areas myself. I know the strengths in their parenting too
and I promise to uphold them evermore. This is how children of today ought to
be like: to watch, to study and to evaluate the parenting style of their
parent(s), for whatever happens next in their lives would not only affect their
parents nor the society alone but mostly them by default.
© Jodekss
Gloatkenf
