LET’S GET BACK TO THE BASICS!!!
By Fola Funke Oyinloye
( Guest Columnist )
I have recently read several posts on what hope, or do I say, hopelessness there is, in the future generation – talking about children raised by my generation, as well as the generations that came few years before and after mine.
We wonder and ponder at the values, rather; lack of it that they uphold!
I work with young persons and so, I can relate with this.
Our well raised generation has failed to raise good kids. We have failed to perpuate the values and virtues we were raised by.
We have messed up our priorities for worthless and selfish gains.
Beyond whatever we tell our children, we unconsciously show them daily through our actions that “evil is cool”; & “emphasizing correctness is excessive”.
“It doesn’t matter how, just get it done anyhow”.
We enrol our children in “Special Centres” for their examinations, as if they have some kind of physical or mental deficiency (only such persons wrote examinations in Special Centres in our days).
We take them back to their schools and fight their teachers & trainers (and this, in the presence of our children), because they dared to reprimand our “very sensitive” children.
Our children act/ speak rudely to an adult In our presence (or we got to know about it ) and we are “cool” at being the parent of a “confident, bold, & very expressive child”.
Gone are the days when raising children was by communal efforts. You dared not report your teachers/trainers to your parents, for genuinely reprimanding you. You will only get the more reprimanded both at home and in school. You can be sure of being taken back to that same teacher/trainer for more doses of the cane. But all of that has changed. ☹☹☹
We give a University undergraduate who has never earned a kobo, #120,000.00 as pocket money for a month, because he must not suffer.
Oh no! He musn’t go through what we went through, forgetting that those things we went through made us.
What our own parents won’t ever tolerate, we look the other way when our children do same, because we don’t want them “psychologically” affected by reprimanding them. What rubbish! As if those of us so raised did not end up the better for it.
Who then is surprised at the way this young persons have turned out?
When people sow the wind, they are bound to reap the whirlwind.
It is sad, so sad what we have turned our world into.
But I believe we can retrace our steps by going back to the roots.
So simple. Let’s begin to raise children based on worthy values and not vanities. Just the way we were raised!
It won’t kill them. No it won’t. It will only make them better persons.
Yeah. Better persons!
Let’s get back to the basics. Let’s start raising our children correctly and we will no longer be afraid of our future.
We will see hope instead of hopelessness and despondency.
We will no longer be scared of the future, for it will be well secured; being placed in the hands of well groomed, well nurtured and well raised children.
The future is bright if we will do what is right!!!
It is well in Jesus Name Amen.
Fola Funke Oyinloye
Isaiah 60:15
Oyinloye. A. Fola
Isaiah 60:15
Isaiah 60:15
