Parenting, simply put, is the process of raising and educating a child from birth until adulthood. Raising a child is one of the most taxing yet fulfilling, frustrating and rewarding tasks any human can attempt. Children really need love. What human organization requires most for its development is a nutriment of love, the source of virtually all health is in the experience of love. Children suffer serious crippling effects when exposed to an inadequate diet of love. Living in loveless, selfish world, therefore, strains family bonds and eventually bounces back on the children who are usually at the receiving end of such relationship.
Children are a bit like some flowers, just as these plants turn towards the sun to receive light and warmth, children look to their parents for love and for assurance that they are valued members of the family. Children fare better with clear rules and firm consequences. Without structure, rules and regulations, children become self-absorbed, selfish and unhappy and they make everyone around them miserable too. Defining reasonable limits for children’s behaviour and enforcing those limits take time, effort and perseverance and children seem to have a natural urge to test any such boundaries.
Children brought up by loving but authoritative parents, those who are supportive of their children yet maintain firm limits, excel academically, develop better social skills, feel good about themselves and are happier overall than children whose parents are either too lenient or excessively harsh. Children want and need the most important people in their life, that is, their parents, to know how they feel. If parents habitually contradict their children when such feelings are expressed, the children will be less likely to open up to them and may even start to doubt their ability to feel and think for themselves. Children are prone to express their thoughts and emotions in extreme terms.
Children are far more likely to accept counsel if they feel that the one offering it truly understand them and the difficulties they face. Actions teach better than words while words often impart only information. Copying parents is one of the most powerful ways that children learn. Children most often, try their parents’ patient to the limit and make them lose their temper easily.
Having gone through the general perspective of parenting we can now make specific analysis of how parenting was done and how it is being done now. The holy book says, teach your children the way they will go so that when they grow old they will not depart from such way. It is a general belief that a building with a solid foundation will stand firm and not be shaken by the most violent storm. The above were the guiding principles of the type of parenting my generation grew up to know and went through and they made a lot of positive impact on our life. Definitely what one planted is what he or she will reap.
There was a very strong synergy between the home and the school then such that children had no hiding place to perpetrate evils, big or small. The level of discipline in schools then was very high and second to none probably because almost all the schools were established by the missionaries. Infact teachers were feared then the way death is feared now to the extent that for any little misdemeanour, the threat to report the offending child to his or her teacher would create morbid fear in him or her which would make him or her to beg persistently until the offence was forgiven. There was a high degree of morals and values then with very little distractions, all of which made discipline easy to enforce.
The reverse is the case these days and it is very unfortunate. Generally every human being, particularly the children, tend to be disobedient, heady and recalcitrant. Again, the scripture says that madness resides in the heart of a child and it is cane that will drive it out. Furthermore, if one spares the rod, it automatically follows that, such person will spoil the child. It is therefore the duty of parents to train their children in such way that they will turn out to be good and obedient children in future who will be useful to themselves, their parents and the society in general.
Parents these days find it difficult to correct their children when they err, reprimand and chastise them appropriately. There are so many reasons for this laxity on the part of parents, among which are the fact that many parents are very weak, extremely tolerant, unimaginably permissive and excessively indulging. Consequently children of such parents turn out to become vagabonds and never-do-wells.
As earlier pointed out, children by their nature, want to be absolutely free to do whatsoever they like and perpetrate any evil they wish. Their case is like that of the wheel steering of a vehicle that is always ready to go astray once the vehicle is in motion but for firm handling, proper control and direction by the driver. Children of these days are bogged down by a lot of distractions like telephone, football games, television, peer group influence, lack of proper and adequate care and supervision by their parents, laziness, broken home syndrome, pride, envy, get-rich-quick syndrome, disobedience to constituted authority, negative societal values, lack of respect for elders, self-opinion, etc.
With the above negative factors and attitudes shaping the life of most children of nowadays, one is not surprised about what has become their lot, all of which found their root in bad parenting of this new era.
BIYI ODUYALE
adebiyioduyale@gmail.com (An educationist and a former school administrator)
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