Parenting: The Role of The Family, School and The Workplace – By Tokunbo Akintola
409 viewsWhile en route a function with a few church members — an elderly couple and a school teacher — we discussed children, marriage and education.
Of course, I didn’t just talk, I listened with rapt attention to the elderly couple and this school teacher who happened to work in one of the top schools in Lekki. We discussed the Dowen College tragedy as well, and the role parents ought to play in ensuring they are their children’s primary mentors so they can get the best out of their academics, be well-behaved where it matters, and make the teacher’s job easier.
I was really keen on what the elderly couple had to say about raising children. They shared a particularly striking instance of a set of siblings whose parents did all they could to send them to the best schools in the country right up to the university, showered them with love at home, nonetheless, these children became adults who had little regard and respect for their parents and treated them like the plague.
They were also having it rough in marriage.
So, I asked, “Why did the children end up this way, regardless of the parents’ effort?”
The male senior answered, ” The children never saw their parents agree on anything in their formative years”. His elderly wife agreed to it.
The family, school and the workplace are the three primary points of influence for any human. However, many parents don’t realize that the school is where they get objective feedback of what their children are like to outsiders.
Then he continued, “No matter what, a husband and wife must be united in the children’s presence. Their parents weren’t, so they never got to understand authority and learn how to work with other people.”
Man! This one struck me hard and then I decided that, no matter what, my wife and I would act as one before the children and would only discuss whatever differences we had concerning them behind closed doors.
I knew I had been guilty of flouting this rule and was cautioned several times by my wife but, as a choleric oversabi husband I didn’t take her cautioning seriously.
The teacher as well shared her experience in trying to deal with children of rich parents and how many of them were irreverent and disrespectful, with others quite respectful and well-behaved despite being children of rich and influential parents.
So, I asked, “What’s the differentiating factor?”
Kids will only do what they hear their parents say and do, she hinted. If a parent comes to school or is at home and gives the impression that the teacher is not important and only exists because they pay them, with the school acquiescing to such behaviour, of course, the child will pick it up. The teacher, likewise, not wanting to lose their job will relent and just patch things up.
There’s no doubt in my mind that God arranged that we’d all be in the same vehicle that day, and I was thoroughly rebuked in my spirit through the elderly couple’s startling story.
Think about it: a concerned parent who had asked God for wisdom, now in the same car with an elderly couple and a conscious school teacher. I mean, what are the odds of such an encounter? It’s got to be a divine arrangement.
The family, school and the workplace are the three primary points of influence for any human. However, many parents don’t realize that the school is where they get objective feedback of what their children are like to outsiders, since parents are often, subconsciously, manipulated by their children.
It’s only through the school you will know how your child behaves to outsiders. For an adult, it’s the workplace.
The family, school and the workplace: There’s a reason the FBI and police, in profiling a suspect, would always trace the person’s history and draw interrogations from these three places.
Parents; be united in front of your children. Work with their teachers as well and don’t ever think, for once, that they are a dispensable aspect of your child’s upbringing.