Kenyan parents, it’s okay to say NO to your children; otherwise we are raising losers!
Last week, 13 year old school eloped from her parents’ home in Nairobi to go start her own life. To date, she’s still missing. She eloped because, her parents admonished her and withdrew smart phone she was using to do inappropriate chats on whatsaap with men on line.
Yesterday, 16 year old school boy committed suicide after playing an online game that dare and instruct participants to commit suicide. In both incidences, smart phones bought by parents as gifts to their children contributed to these catastrophes.
Sadly, these two incidences are not isolated. A lot of bad stuff is happening to children out there. Due to so much freedom given to kids by parents, kids are doing all sorts of inappropriate experiments with impunity. Most children have taken advantage of their parents unconditional love to indulge in their own pleasures.
Most kids don’t take school work seriously. They love TV, food, friends, couch, movies, play station, sex, drugs, money and gifts more than they love hard work, honesty and integrity. Instead of raising responsible citizens we are raising spoilt bruts whose future is already twisted.
I attribute MOST of these misfortunes to bad parenting. Why would a parent buy a smart phone for a13 year old girl or boy for that matter with unlimited and unrestricted internet access?
What’s even shocking is that most parents in our generation handle their “fragile” children with so much care as if they will drop and break like a glass. Most parents give their children everything and anything they ask for. Parents are so timid and intimidated to say NO. They even go to an extend of taking a loan to satisfy their children’s demands without teaching them how to work hard to attain what they need and want life.
Most children no longer are in sync with reality of life, which is, sometime you win and other time you lose. Sometime you lack and other time you get. Kids are living unrealistic life that will break them when they face realistic life. Don’t you know kids who get everything they want turn out to be egocentric, greedy and un-appreciative? Let’s teach kids how to work hard and earn whatever they want. Don’t get me wrong. It’s our responsibility to love, protect and provide for our children.
However, instead of providing holistic care which includes discipline, we are giving them stuff without monitoring their holistic growth. Parents work so hard to ruin their children with gifts. Yet they aren’t available to spent time with kids and supervise their behaviours. TV’s have become modern day parents. Perhaps to compensate their guilt for missing in children’s day to day life, parents are literally spoiling their children by giving in to children’s demands without questioning.
Ours are spoilt kids who no longer want to work. They can’t even cut grass around the house. Instead of encouraging them to cut grass, we hire someone to do it as they enjoy play station. Kids no longer want to clean the house and dishes. Instead, we employ “house girl” to clean after our grown children.
We don’t even encourage our kids to wash their own clothes. Instead, we hire someone to do it for them as they move around the village and town. Our kids can’t even put together a meal for themselves because they don’t know how to cook. Some even can’t wash their own underwear. What the hell is going on?? Don’t you know we are raising losers??? Come on daddy. Come on mommy. It’s okay to say NO to your kids. Have are rejuvenating Friday.
wambuijm2003 