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By Francis Ewherido
Many young people preparing to go into the matrimonial institution are only preparing for their wedding not their marriage. For the few who might not know the difference, wedding means marriage ceremony (that brief ceremony, traditionally, at the registry, or in the church/mosque, that joins you as husband and wife) while marriage is that life-long institution you step into after your wedding.
Marriage is primarily for companionship and many new entrants also do not know this; that is why tension builds up after a few years, if children or the “almighty” male child does not come. And when the children do come, we have a responsibility to bring them up properly to be useful to themselves, the family and the larger society. This is called parenting, a task many of these new entrants are also not well equipped to do.
In honing your parenting skills, the first point of reference should be your own upbringing; what, in your opinion, are the pros and cons? The problem here is that you have only one upbringing and so you view parenting from the “prison” of your upbringing. What you do here as a smart young parent is benchmarking.
First, the young couple should look at their individual upbringings dispassionately and pick the best aspects of both to form the foundation of their children’s upbringing. Then, they can look without. They should look at how their cousins, other relatives and neighbours were moulded. There surely are a few tricks to pick from them. Add these to knowledge from books and other sources. Finally, throw in the ultimate book on parenting, the Bible (at least for us Christians) and you are ready to hit the road.
Parenting, like driving, is applied social science. It is learnt, not taught. No matter the number of books you read or the knowledge you acquire, you cannot do parenting in the air.
You apply it to children you beget or under your custody and that is where the next challenge comes. Social science is firm and uniform that every human being is a combination of nature and nurture. How much influence each wields in the ultimate character of a person is still a matter of individual conjecture, but we can continue to live with that. What is important here is that you give birth to children whose nature (physical and innate) you have no control over.
You have no control over the height of your children, their complexion, the size of their limbs, the size of their sex organs, etc.; the only major power God gave us, in this regard, is to naturally pre-select the sex of our babies. Also, some children are innately stubborn and no amount of beating and intimidation can change the stubborn disposition. Some are extrovert or introvert and remain so all their lives. No amount of nurture changes that.
So as a parent, you must realize that you are limited, ab initio. But the good news is that within the limitations, you have enough elbow room to mould your children to enable them flourish and realize their full potentials and fulfill the purpose for which God created them, which might be different from your wishes and expectations. Our children are clay in our hands. Ours is to become great potters to mould them rightly into shape.
But unlike clay that is inanimate, our children are human beings. Unlike clay that you mould into what you want, you are expected to mould them into beings that can fulfill their destinies. Many parents have realized this, which is why parents do not force their children to study law, engineering, medicine, etc., these days. You can only encourage them, you cannot force them. Some children who were railroaded into studying these traditional courses are now fashion designers, actors, musicians and experts in other endeavours where their innate abilities lie. Not that the knowledge they gained from what they studied is wasted; every knowledge comes handy at some point.
Like clay, we have a limited time to mould our children, which must be well utilised. Unlike clay, you cannot soften human beings to be remolded. That is why the wise one, King Solomon, wrote that there is time for everything (Ecclesiastics 3:1). Those of us from the Niger Delta know, as part of our upbringing, that you can bend a fish only when it is fresh. Once it is dry, you cannot bend it, you can only break it and the outcome is unpredictable. Only God has the power to break a dry fish with 100 per cent accuracy. This should guide parents who need to “break” their teenage or adult children who have grievously derailed.
But what does this tell the young parents? You have a limited time to bend your fresh fish; to mould your clay. Remember, bend you must because if you do not start drying the fish early, it will go bad. Mould you must your clay, because if you do not, it will cake. Children are most pliable and amenable in the first 10 years of their lives; that is also when parents can exert the most influence: straightening the crooked parts and smoothening the rough edges. It is the time to lay the proper foundation that the building (child’s life) will rest on.
If properly laid, defects in the superstructure (later parts of the child’s life) can easily be corrected. But a human life is not like a building with a defective foundation that you can just pull down and rebuild afresh. With us, once time is gone, it is gone. That is why we must get it right from cradle to 10 years. Let me grudgingly raise it to 12 years and even gamble and add age 13. Beyond that it is an uphill climb trying to correct a child’s defective foundation. You need a huge dose of divine intervention.
Parenting includes providing food, shelter, clothing, education and other necessities of life that require money. This poses a major challenge for young parents. These days, especially with the economic situation in the country, both parents need to work to make ends meet.
Meanwhile, they also need to devote time to their young children. Parenting, especially in the early stages, cannot be outsourced. Both parents therefore need to come up with arrangements that enable them to earn a living as well as have quality time for their children. After the first 10 years, it does not mean parenting challenges are over. Even the Bible acknowledges that children do stupid things. But the bible also admonishes to train a child in the way he should go and when he grows up, he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6). Parenting is a lifelong assignment, but a firm foundation at the early stages, makes the task easier in later stages.