Thou Art Inexcusable

Parents like giving excuses to their children who turn out badly by putting the blame on the child or on the other parent.

I met a lady who left home at the age of fifteen to make money in Italy as a prostitute. She said she left home after the sudden death of her father and the loss of all his properties to his relatives who stripped her mother and the children of everything. She said the constant crying and wailing of her mother every night drove her to a point where she thought she would lose her mind. So, when she heard that some people were preparing to leave Benin for Libya, she signed up and ran away from home to join them.  She never went to Europe. She got stuck in Libya for four years.

In that time, she became a sex slave and almost drowned in the Mediterranean Sea three times.

When she recounted her ordeal to me and how by some divine provision the Nigerian President at the time sent a plane to Libya to evacuate Nigerians just when she was about to commit suicide. I asked her what her greatest regret was. She said her mother was too weak as a person and she wished she was never born by that woman.

I have seen parents who ruin their children’s future by being too quiet or reluctant to engage the other parent who was ruining the life of the child or children.

A mother was raising her only son the wrong way. The father of the boy saw with his two eyes that this woman was indulging the young man and ruining his life. He kept quiet, claiming that his wife was a troublesome woman whose trouble he was determined to avoid.

A man or woman who is not ready to fight for the destiny of his or her children should not have children. It is not enough to say “I warned her, I told her what she was doing would lead to tears and sorrow in the future”

What must be done must be done. It is not enough to say “Since he is the father of the child, and he is the only wise one in his own counsel, I left him to raise our children as he liked”

No!

You have a part to play as a mother. Your constant input will help blunt or sharpen the edges of discipline as needed.

Only irresponsible parents claim that they left things be, even though they knew things were not being done the right way.

A man wanted a better life for his children, so he took his first child to Lagos to live with his uncle so that his uncle could help him train the boy through school and prepare him for a better future. The man’s wife who was illiterate saw no value in education, so she took their second son to her older brother to help her train. The man protested because his wife’s older brother was a local farmer with many wives and many children, he saw no value in such a man training his child because the man wouldn’t have the time, and he surely wouldn’t send the boy to school.

His wife said “It is not only you that has a family; I have family too and my family can also help me raise my child”

The man knew the boy would end up illiterate because the mother, even though she might mean well, does not have the foresight and ability to make the right decision as regards this child’s future. He could have put up a fight or travel down to the village where his son was taken to by his wife to retrieve the boy and take him to Lagos as he had always wanted.

Of course, his wife would be angry, and the marriage might become sore, but his eyes must be on the goal in order to achieve what was best for the children.

The children grew up. The only one without an education was the one that grew up in the village. The other three grew up with an education and made something good of themselves.

The one without an education became bitter against his parents. He wore his illiteracy like a crouch and told the story everywhere. He depended on his siblings for everything and would throw a tantrum if anyone dared refuse him.

His mother continued to fend for him even after he got married and she did so until she died.

He died soon after his mother had died, leaving behind five children for the family to raise.

The father insisted it was his mother’s fault, but it was not. The one who knew better would have taken charge of things to set the future on the right course.

Raising a child is never about the convenience of now, it is always about the future.

Train up a child in the way he or she should go, and when he or she grows up, he or she will not depart from it. Never forget this.

I met a lady recently who told me the story of her life. Her father impregnated her mother when he was in the University. Her mother had gone to the University to see a friend, even though she was not a student. Her mother was learning a trade at the time her mother had always liked her father because he came from a prominent family in their town.

So, when her father asked her mother out, she agreed and quickly slept with him as many times as she could before leaving the campus. It was after she left the campus that her father discovered that her mother was not a student as she had told him. He immediately broke up with her mother and called off the relationship.

Because he wanted to marry a graduate, and she was not on course to become one. Two months later, she reached out to him to declare that she was pregnant. Her father ignored her mother and her family. He graduated and traveled to the United States to further his education. Her mother and her family then went to her father’s family house to tender their case.

When the case was heard, her father’s family asked her mother’s family what they wanted. They demanded money and they were paid off. When her father came back from the USA and heard what had happened, he insisted that he must give him his daughter once she was born so that he could train her adequately.

They agreed and they gave him the daughter. He raised her until he got married and with the help of his step wife this young lady surmounted all the hurdles until she became a student of law at the University of Lagos. Then she made a mistake, she got a boyfriend on campus and went to a party with him.

The father heard the news and sent her packing in anger. He sent her to her mother’s house right in the middle of the ghetto at Ajegunle. He felt this was discipline. He felt she would see the difference between the good life he had given her at Surulere and the rough life her mother was living, and this would help her come to her senses. This one move ruined her life

She met some ladies in the ghetto and got introduced to prostitution.

By the time her father told the driver to go to her mother’s place and pick her up ten months later, she had become someone else entirely.

The world of prostitution, lasciviousness, orgies, and sexual madness is not one without its dark enticements in terms of money and influence. It was difficult for her to let go of that world even after she graduated and became a lawyer.

Her parents failed her. Her father threw her to the wolves. Her mother didn’t know any better and she felt she needed to sink or swim, so she swam the best way she felt she could.

The choices she made were haunting and today the trajectory of her life has become so curved that it has almost been impossible to correct the course of her life.

As parents, we must do better. With a steady hand, we must guide our children into the fulfillment of their destinies. Not only are we to prophesy over our children, we are also to set a guiding light in place with our watches as parents and guardians.

-GSW-

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