PARENTING THE RIGHT WAY

      Parenting is the process of raising and educating a child from birth until adulthood. Parenting is a role played by both men and women who could either be married or unmarried but ultimately feel they are ready to have children. Despite this definition, I'd like to point out that it is not enough for a man or a woman to be of a responsible age or even be married before having children, rather, it is a decision that must be unanimously taken by both parties involved before they go ahead to have that child.
      Parenting does not only consist in providing a child good food to eat and drink, it doesn't also consist in providing the child adequate health care, education, housing and what have you. Although  it is necessary for parents to provide all the aforementioned for their children where they can afford it, not all parents however can readily afford all it takes to provide them all for their children. But there are other important factors of life that needs to be inculcated in a child by the parents which will cost little or even nothing to do so, these are often neglected.
       It is the responsibility of parents to teach their children good moral African values like respect, selflessness, good manners, good courtesy, politeness, gentleness, industriousness, good cooking skills, hard work, fear of God, sex education and not forgetting the need to teach them their mother tongue too. Some parents often think it is the job of school teachers to do so, but it isn't.
      All these are decisions that intending parents must be ready to take before going ahead to have a child because a lot of children go wayward as a result of the lack of good home training. It could be seen from the traits of children in our world today that though they may have had the best education, healthcare and other necessities of life, they still lack moral values which would have cost them nothing to gain from their parents.
      We all therefore need to brace up to right these wrongs, parents should prioritize these facets of child upbringing too as much as they prioritize others so that we can have a better society to live in, because the wise man once said in the holy book that when a child is brought up in the way that is good, when he is old he shall not depart from it.

OUR CHILDREN, OUR FUTURE

   In the cause of my job during my service year in a secondary school, i had the privilege of being in an office where parents came around for one reason or the other. Amongst all the reasons why these parents visited, one particular reason caught my attention, as a matter of fact it is the primary reason why some parents take their kids to school in the first place. It then became very pertinent that i asked this question, "Whose responsibility is it for the moral upbringing of a child"?

  While in the school, some parents approached me asking for a special surveillance watch to be placed on their wards so as to keep them in check and at the same time discipline them effectively when they err. It wasn't bad enough for me that mothers came often but it was rather unfortunate and also disappointing that a father would also carefully transport himself all the way to the school just to beg the school disciplinarian to specially discipline his stubborn kid. A father once said that he is tired,fed up and no longer strong enough to control his own biological 15 year old son. It was really appalling!

  I hereby ask you my fellow Nigerians this question, is it the primary responsibility of schools to make sure that a child is morally brought up? I personally don't think Yes is the answer.
It is said that the mind of a child comes into the world "Tabula Rasa" making the parents of the child the very first  people to write on that blank mind. So when something good is written on it, it stays, and vice versa.

  This then implies that it is the job of parents to ensure the moral, spiritual, upright and social upbringing of their children. Parents should not be too lax on their children, they should not hesitate to use the rod (after all this is still Africa) when it can still be used to correct the child, they should not over pamper their children and then begin to beg other people to handle them when they become too stubborn.

   However, it doesn't take away the place of schools in the moral upbringing of children too. Schools should also put serious measures on ground which will put children in check, not necessarily through the traditional method of flogging or other forms of punishments but through counseling (both academic and moral counseling).
Our children needs to be counseled and advised, a lot of these children don't get them at home. Some come from broken homes, others from single parenting while many are from homes where their parents are either too busy, always away or just don't see it as a necessity to always counsel and admonish their children to follow the right path. This is where schools should come in and do the needful.

  I want to sincerely urge parents and intending parents to imbibe the culture of admonishing their children into doing the right thing, charity we say begins at home. Teach your children norms, teach them your traditional values, teach them your dialects, create quality time for them and make sure you imbibe in them the good traits you wish to see them portray so that when they grow up they won't depart from them..

IT IS OKAY TO CRY

     Just like laughter, crying as a human activity is one that does not happen without a cause, different categories of human beings cry for different reasons, infants cry when they have not been breast fed, little children cry when their parents fail to give them what they want at a particular point in time, adolescents and youths also cry when they fail to achieve a particular feat, say an examination and finally, adults cry for reasons such as bereavements, heartbreaks, financial burdens etc.
      But guess what? it is absolutely OK for one to cry as much he/she desires, but what's not OK is to cry hopelessly. When you fail at something, the only logical thing to do is to try again giving it your best shot that time around, that is a better option to crying hopelessly because hopelessness will not do any good either. People try giving love a chance but instead of being loved and respected, they end up unloved and sometimes taken advantage of. That is enough reason to cry anyway but not reasonable enough to harden their hearts and end up bitter persons.
      Believe it or not, life will always give you reasons to cry. Since life is not a bed of roses it then means that sometimes it could be a bed of stones, you could be happy today and tomorrow you're sad, you could have surplus today and then tomorrow you won't even have enough to eat. One thing we should always learn to do is to make lemonades out of the lemons that life might present to us. If at first you don't succeed, go ahead and cry if you must, but when you're done crying, dust yourself off and try again, don't just sit down crying hopelessly putting blames on other people for your misfortunes. You need to get up, take responsibility of your own actions, make amends where necessary, work on yourself to improve your self worth, re-strategise and change the things that probably caused your misery.
       It is often said that winners never quit neither does quitters ever win, so if you think of yourself as a winner, why then do you have to quit loving over a heart break?, why do you have to quit trying to succeed because you failed after one or two trials? You don't have to kill yourself too over the loss of a loved one because life has to go on.
      In your most trying time and in your deepest despair, you might feel down and out and feel down cast but your strength lies in your ability to rise up and stay strong rather than feeling sorry for yourself. It is okay to cry provided you don't cry hopelessly, rise up above your fears and stand tall on your feet so as to take back your happiness once again.