WRONG PARENTING

Being a child is not easy, being a parent is even harder, Sometimes I do not blame a lot of parents for failing to understand their kids, I used to blame my parents for not understanding me as a child, I used to blame them for getting a lot of things wrong with me as a child, but then again, now that I am an adult, I now understand what they were going through. Handling yourself as an adult and handling another human being at the same time can be a lot, sometimes you are down, but need to show up for that child, sometimes you don’t feel up to it, but they must be taken care of and at the end of the day, emotions get in the way and you might not even know when you overdo things because at the end of the day, you are only human and it is not as though there is a template for a good parent you can learn from. Even the best of parents still have their flaws at the end of the day.

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Discipling a child is one of the many ways parents get it wrong. Some overdo it, some underdo it, some do not do it at all, and each and every one of these actions play a very significant role in the life of a child. I would say for me, my mum over did it at a point, and underdid it at a point. My dad did not even do it in the major part of my life and when he tried to, he more than overdid it. This put a very big dent in our relationship even to date. In my opinion, there is a time and season for raising a child, training a child, and being friends with your child. It’s not just a matter of age, it is knowing when your child has moved from one point to another. A lot of parents try to be friends with their children at a very early age, and these parents end up not knowing how to train their children at the end of the day because you can’t train your friends, they won’t listen to you.

A lot of parents result in flogging their children not because they deserve flogging, but because they do not know the best way to discipline that child. At the end of the day, they end up training a child who is used to flogging, not a child who takes correction. I believe discipling a child is unique to every child. Children are different, and discipline is not meant to be out of hate, but out of love and thus flogging should not always be the first outcome of every disciplinary action. Discipline should push the child further to the path where the parent wants the child to go than away from it. This is to say before you discipline your child as a parent, you need to have a clear vision of what you want out of your child and discipline them in that way. One way my mum did this was forcing me to read psalms and say it off hand because she wanted a child rooted in God's word and to be honest, even though I hated it then, it helped me a lot.

THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE LEARNER'S
PROMPT FOR WEEK 219 EPISODE 1