On the blind side of mummy and daddy

Children, like every human being, live in their own world. They have their moments of happiness and their moments of sorrow.

They have their own experiences in life. They make choices—some of which make them happy while other experiences become permanent scars in their minds and hearts.

Indeed, sometimes they want to take responsibility for their actions and inactions, as they feel mummy and daddy wouldn’t understand them better than they do.

It’s also the desire of every parent to keep their children happy; at least, if not for anything, create a home that will see to the realisation of the joy of these children.

Consequently, parents spend the majority of their time engaging in business and any activity that will provide them with the wherewithal to fulfil their responsibilities as parents. However, these efforts come at a cost.

At this point, let me share with you some conversations among children who live in my vicinity that I chanced upon. And both narrations took place at the time they were on vacation and had gathered as friends.

I listened to this conversation on the blind side of the children at a time no parent or an elderly person was with them. So in effect, they expressed themselves freely with one another.

The first incident took place in 2014 when schools were on vacation. I was in my bedroom one afternoon when I heard children between the ages of 12 and 14, talking about boy-girl relationships.

Apparently, one of the boys among them was interested in one of the girls but couldn’t tell the girl about it and so had to pass the information through another girl. So the purpose of the meeting, behind my house, was to trash out the issue.

That is, the girl who was proposed to did not understand why the boy did not come to her directly but had to do so through a friend. When I realised that the conversation was going too far, I left my room and tip-toed to their direction.

When they realised that I was following their conversation, they ran away. The fact that they ran way showed that they didn’t want any elderly person to be part of the meeting; it was only for their peers.

Lessons

If you are a parent of any of these children, or just a parent with children to train, you should be worried. But, a curious question that lingers in my mind is: why is it that children of this age find it difficult to discuss such matters with their parents? What surprised me most was that the arbiter of the meeting was a child.

She was to judge whether the boy did well by proposing through ‘a betweener’ (mediator). Surely, there is a reason for which children do not discuss such issues with their parents and so parents should take interest in matters of this nature.

My second experience with what children say and do on the blind side of parents occurred recently. Apparently, the back of my house was a designated meeting place where children from all walks of life—the rich and the poor—come to play.

Thus, you can imagine the kind of children who play behind my house when school is on vacation.

This time it was something that affects the morale of every human being. Apparently, one of the boys and his parents live in a wooden structure.

And as the children were playing, a girl among them was asking him questions about the boy’s house. The questions were quite derogatory.

The first question was: “Are you all able to sleep in that room?” The boy didn’t respond to that. You could see that he was quite uncomfortable with the question, so he pretended that he had not heard her.

But the girl kept asking him the questions. She continued, “Do some of you sleep on chairs?” Still the boy didn’t answer. He feigned concentration on the game.

And judging from the boy’s demeanour, one could sense that the boy was hurt. Ideally, every child would want the parents to provide a place of abode of a certain kind and certainly a wooden structure would be the last any child would dream of.

The Lesson

Parents must be aware that it’s not all the experiences of their children that are reported to them. Parents therefore need to be conscious of whatever their children may be going through at any point in time.

This can be achieved by entering the world of their wards to have a feel of what they might be going through and trying to explain things to them, especially when things are not going the way they expect.

I have met friends who have told me that they left home in their tender age because they were dissatisfied with the conditions at home.

Today, we can say for sure that many children are on the street because they are dissatisfied with the conditions at home.

Conclusion

Tomorrow’s children are a product of today’s children. Truly, “The Child is the Father of the Man.” Ideally, every parent wants their wards to be kind, truthful and peaceful, and to show love and integrity.

But these are not virtues that are inculcated verbally; children learn these values from their environment and people they interact with.

If you are your children’s trusted friend, they will find it easier to share their difficulties with you, but if you continue to be just their father or mother all the time, then you would continue to lose vital information a friend may gain from them.