Days of Yore
I remembered while growing up that my siblings and I used to
resent the way our parents caged prevented us from going out of our prison house to do gbeborun watch
the neighbourhood from our spacious balcony, having sleep-overs with some
friends, attending excursions conducted by the school or staying for a while at
some relative’s house just for the holidays.
It used to be extremely annoying because we felt we were
being deprived of the whole essence of childhood and we resented them all the
more for it for separating us from what was our dreams.
Ours was a very sheltered and protected childhood and
external trips outside the main door of our house that does not lead to the
school gate was always met with a resounding “NO”. At times we got punished for
even thinking of an excursion or sleep over talkless of suggesting going
for an excursion or having a sleepover at somewhere that was not our beds.
For my parents, most especially my dad, it was greed and
lack of contentment for nursing such hopes and those thoughts usually lead to
some military punishment.
You see, my dad never served nor
worked with any military organisation but his sense of upbringing towards his
children was quite militarial in its approach. With my dad, you should never be
seen nor heard. All those “sleep overs”, “tea parties”, “lunch with neighbours”
“excursion to badagry, Paris, beach etc, that kids do back then and even now,
my siblings and I never did that.Even thinking about it was a sin. And you may be
wondering whether they were monitoring us while in school, right?
Not at all.They were confident enough to know that we dared not.
But despite the mini-security non-surveillance of both parents, it was never an option to misbehave while in
school or consider leaving the school gates for any reason whatsoever.Suffice to say, I grew up
sheltered and extremely protected.
What made it even more annoying was that we were well aware
of our financial comfortability so we did not for the
love of God understood why we were not allowed to enjoy what kids like us were
enjoying. The first public transport I ever took was when I was in my late teen years and had resumed as a day student in a school
within Lagos. So prior to my 17 years on earth, I was
being taken to wherever I needed to go (that’s
if I am not being accompanied by my mum or an aunty or my dad or my brother or
in company of senior relatives)
And I never got to even play in the rain. Ever!
But you can't blame my folks for that though. I was brought up in that generation that believed lightning kills people.So once it starts drizzling, parents lock up their children from the unseen eyes of the wicked lightning. And also the days of cyclone that was rumoured to lift someone from Lagos to Maiduguri.
But that's another unrelated story for another day.
Have I also mentioned that apart from these excursions and
sleepover curfews, we were also not allowed to have any cash whatsoever at
hand?
Hian!
Any cash found on you would be concluded to be stolen funds and my parents would give us punishment deserving of children-theft.
However strict this upbringing was, my folks believed in
giving us all we needed to grow amidst our peers without feeling deprived and
also believed they were our guardians on this earth and contrary to what
children rights activists and other foreign bodies may have said about a
child’s right to opinion, it was never a consideration in my family for you to suggest an opinion that borders on stepping out to be somewhere outside our folks hovering eyes.
All big issues my siblings and I were given the privilege to deliberate upon was
whether we wanted to eat our food with meat or without meat, whether we would
eat after daddy had flogged us or we would go to bed hungry, whether we should
help mummy in the kitchen or assist the house help in peeling the egusi from its shell, whether to assist
my sister with her homework or simply study on my own with classwork to be
given by my dad, whether to sleep on the bed if I behaved well or on the floor
where naughty children slept, whether to take injection on my buttocks or to
take injection on my buttocks WITH those horrible tasting syrups of those days,
whether to go to school with food flask or whether to go with biscuits, and all
other big issues that we can exercise our children rights upon.
Other little issues like choosing to go for excursion,
sleeping over at a home that was not my parents, having cash at hand while
going to school, bringing friends over(abomination)
at any stage of our growing lives, stepping out of our door to stay on the
veranda, climbing down the stairs to go to the main gate of our house(a taboo that could cost you an arm and a
leg), lying to my parents(my folks
took this more serious than Moses did with the commandments), stealing
money from my mum’s bag(we didn’t even
bother stealing from our dad as the punishment would make you prefer death)
were left for our parents’ to handle and they did and guarded us with all they
had.
What’s the moral of
this story?
I grew up disciplined, self-sufficient, independent, whole,
non-abused nor assaulted in any way, because my parents, most especially my mum,
took the job of parenthood seriously and to heart, even up till now. As I still
remember that even after my wedding, my mum still kept on calling me every-day.(Omo mehn, I didn’t find it funny o and had
to tell her but yes, she still takes offence if we don’t speak in 2 days. For
my mum, no matter your status in life, you are still a baby and would be
reprimanded if you misbehave whether you have multiple degrees or not.)
Back to the
Present
I have had cause to read up on so many stories on abuses, assaults
going on in young children’s’ lives, most especially young girls, by relatives
or close acquaintances of the family or even little girls abused by neighbours
only for the folks to cry foul after finding out days, weeks, months or even
years later. Many of these assaults are usually caused by sheer neglect based
on the path the stories usually take.
There was a story that was circulating sometime last year of
2 busy couples that kept their daughter with the husband’s father and one day,
the little daughter was playing in the compound when a car’s brake failed and
swerved into the compound killing the girl. I was so furious with the parents
it almost clouded my compassion for the poor grandfather who may still be
blaming himself up till now.
There are so many cases of parents in our generation being
lax with their offspring and one is left to wonder if they got pregnant by
mistake or whether they actually planned to be a parent and read on the many
duties of a parent.
Child upbringing is more than just adorning our kids in the
same cloth North West wore to the BETS or showing our awesome genes or showing
off how financially upright we are based on the number of countries our little
children have visited even before they clocked one. And it is definitely not about
how many passports our kids can boast of having.
It is more than that, way more than that.
Children are the greatest gifts from God and we are their
custodians on earth. Many of us protect our phones and jewellery more than we
protect our children. Some of us even lock our rooms and go out with the keys
while we leave our kids with the housemaids. When you have children and engage the
services of a house help, that money you want to spend on Aso-Ebi and beads, biko, convert it into funds and get a
CCTV and install in your house. Some kids suffer a lot of trauma in the hands
of these maids and other helps we have around; the laundry man, the gate man, the gardener, the cook, the driver, that it leaves them damaged for life.
And children most times,
do not reveal what they go through as they have already being threatened by these people. Most of these children grow up with this resentment deeply etched in their memories and transfer the suppressed anger and frustration to
their parents, most especially to the mother, who would not understand why the kid is usually angry and upset
with her.
Let’s stop sending our under aged children down the
street to go and buy stuff because we seem too busy or to keep sending our
daughters to the teenage boy/girl staying at the neighbour’s house that’s still with raging hormones.
Guard your child like they are your salvation path to heaven and
your only source of happiness in this life. They are too young to protect themselves.
When you bring a soul to this earth, care for it until your dying bed. Let’s be
ready before embarking on motherhood/fatherhood so we can have quality children
rather than many walking shells that seem to be abundant these days.
Yoruba people call it "omo pon bi osan".
Child upbringing is an extremely tasking and demanding job and you don’t
stop nurturing a child even after the marriage of such child. We should nurture them until our
dying breath. Some of our children need us more than ever, even after marriage.
Some spouses are spawns of Satan and the first beneficiary of such evil
would be their spouses. Look after your child even when they think they do not
need you again.
My mum, my prison guard and mother hawk of those days that deprived me of so much "childhood dreams of sleeping over at any friend's place or going for excursions" and who I resented for some time due to this, despite my marital status still calls me almost
all the time and was even at my place over the weekend to assist with stocking
up our refrigerator with all manners of sauce, stew and food and even rearranged
my kitchen as I sat down gisting and taking pictures, while my hubby as
usual was in the living room doing what he knows best, munching on some of the delicacies she had
prepared with the TV remote possessively in his hands, watching Sound City and
with little care in the world, knowing his mum-in-law would prepare enough food
to last the Salvation Army.
A child would always be a child and the Lord has kept us,
especially mothers (lool, see me claiming
as if I have 3 already but soon sha) on earth to nurture them till our last
dying breath.
Guard your child from external forces as I am sure many of us were guarded by our parents; unnecessary
excursions, sleepovers, minor or major errands down the street, unnecessary
relatives we cannot vouch for, strange house helps, unwarranted closeness with
neighbours without any chaperone etc.
Where your child is concerned, treat every other person
apart from you like a criminal, until they prove otherwise.
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