While sitting and chatting with some fellow mums, the discussion turned to how badly behaved, with little or no morals, our children have become regardless of all the hard work put in to give them the best and to make sure they get “what we did not get or suffer what we suffered”.
Today parents keep multiple jobs to provide all that their children need and even what they don’t need. Everything is a hustle. We hustle to build a big house that the children will have a room each to themselves and enough yard to run around; hustle to give an expensive education even if the quality isn’t good enough but parents make do because their kids will mingle with the kids of the rich and mighty and that guarantees a good start in life, as by association or eventually by marriage they too become famous. Great networking and lobbying has officially started at such tender age, the children already knows who they want as friends and life partners.
We hustle so that summer is spent abroad, even if we falsely create an impression that it does not leave a big hole in our pockets that even the next expensive school fees is a recipe for eventual high blood pressure.
Don’t our children see the stress and strain that we have to put up with all these hustles and falsehoods? The thank you we get and rightful too is the bad behaviour we are greeted with today in our society. Do we think our children are blind to all the falsehoods we put up, and so it’s okay and normal to grow with the notion that it is okay to be just like us.
The decadence is so bad that a child sees you and says “Hi mum”. What happened to the days of bowing your head in respect for the parents who would go above and beyond to give you the best even when they lie to themselves to cover up the falsehood the world knows just too well?
Our culture, a self-teaching tool is kept away from our kids because we are too modern to abide by our culture that groomed us to become responsible adults and earn the right to be called parents. What a pity…
Sometimes I believe heaven is in agony watching how falsely we are teaching our children.
Danger flag’s been up since when we approved that our children must attend certain schools and dress in certain ways when in reality we can’t afford to pay the bills, just so that they can belong.
Belong indeed! Destroyed indeed!
How can we rescue our children from the doom land that we are leading them into?
How can we right the wrongs that we have ignorantly led the young generation into?
Till I write again, I love you for reading.
Adaobi Alex-Oni is an Honorary Ambassador and a recipient of the Nelson Mandela Leadership Award by the African Youth Parliament. A broadcaster and writer, she is the convener of the ROWEAD conference. A social and women’s rights activist, she is a promoter of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. For more information, visit her website www.rowead.org