*IF YOUR CHILDREN WERE TO STAY WITH OTHERS?*
*WILL THEIR HOSTS BE IMPRESSED?*
What a question. By the way, which hosts are we talking about here, and who is/are being hosted? Come with me…
There is something I discovered recently. I found out that many youngsters of today are offensively lazy and complacent.
They love the good things of life, but are too lazy to lift a finger to do anything meaningful to gain those things they desire. I have seen occasions where youngsters on vacation (or for some other reasons) who stayed briefly with family friends or relatives ended up painting their families black.
They gave their hosts the impression that they lacked home training and that their parents failed in their parenting duties.
Let me give a few illustrations here:
An 18 year old girl Julia, spending her semester break in the house of one of their family friends in another town does nothing but chat on her phone all day long. She comes out during meal time, eats her meals, dumps the plates in the kitchen sink and goes back to the room. In the morning she reluctantly joins in the family morning devotion, after which she goes back to bed till the later hours of the morning – when the owners of the house would have gone to work and the nanny would have done the whole house chores. She takes her bath, dresses up, goes to the kitchen for her breakfast and thereafter retires to her room till the next meal time. Wonderful, isn’t it?
Nath, 21 years old is waiting for his call up letter to go for the National Youth Service. In the time being, he is staying with his maternal aunt and her family. Nath would follow up with all the soap operas and football matches on the television from day to day. He stays up till long after midnight watching Zee World or chatting online. The aunt’s husband washes his car by himself every morning, while Nath sits at the balcony watching him and smiling at invincible beings on his phone. Of course, he has no business with the kitchen except to go and drop the plates he used to eat in the kitchen sink. Saying thanks to the owners of the house after eating was an honour too hard for him to give. He dominates family discussion times and gives the impression that he is well read and highly knowledgeable. Even the presence of visitors and friends of the family does not make him to be a little courteous in his contributions.
17 year old Tenny went to write her post-UTME in another town. Her parents begged one of their friends in that town to allow Tenny stay with them for the two weeks she would be there. The family readily agreed. The mother of the house works from home while the husband goes to work outside their home. The couple has 3 children ages 8, 6 and 4 years respectively. The family has no domestic servant, so the mother of the kids did all the house chores.
Tenny would stay in the living room watching television or in her room with her phone while the woman is cooking in the kitchen. After eating Tenny would wash only the plates she used to eat and leave the rest in the sink for her hostess to wash. Some mornings she would take the broom and sweep only the room where she was staying and leave the rest of the house unswept.
She never bothered to assist the woman in getting the kids ready for school in the morning, neither did she ever think of helping them to do their home work in the evenings. On two or more occasions the woman left Tenny in the house and went to market to buy food items for the family. When she came back, Tenny opened the door for her, murmured a kind of greeting and promptly returned to her room and closed the door. The woman had to go downstairs to pick the remaining shopping bags where the taxi dropped them, unpacked the items she purchased and hurried to clear the plates used in the morning and left in the kitchen. After that, she had to prepare lunch before rushing out to pick her children from the school.
All the while Tenny was with her phone in the room. Throughout her stay in that house Tenny never cleaned the bathroom or the toilet she was using, never helped the woman to wash her children’s clothes nor assisted in any domestic work.
There are several other examples, but I think these few will suffice. In all these cases, do you think that the hosts of these youngsters were impressed or happy to have them around?
Does any of these young people represent your child? That is, do you think any of your children is likely to behave like any of them if given the opportunity to stay in another person’s house? If your children have any reason to be hosted for a period of time by another family, will their host miss them and wish they stayed longer or will they heave a sigh of relief when they (your children) finally leave their house?
Ponder on these and let us put heads together to make these wonderful children of ours beauties to behold and desirable folks to stay with. Note:
1. Give your children age-appropriate domestic tasks, even if you have a thousand and one domestic servants at home. It is sheer ignorance to think that doing everything for your children is a mark of honour or a way of bequeathing royalty on them.
2. Teach them to be useful and make their impact felt positively wherever they are found – in the school, place of worship, in another person’s home, etc.
3. Encourage your children to always leave a good impression wherever they go to; teach them to be courteous, respectful, friendly, cheerful and helpful.
4. Teach them good toilet manners – they must know how to keep the toilet neat for the next user, let them know that it is unacceptable to leave the bathroom floor and/or walls messed with soap, foam or any form dirt after bathing.
5. Teach your children the importance of taking good care of their body and their environment; whether they are at home or elsewhere. Remind them that responsible people don’t leave their rooms unkempt or their bed unmade when they get up in the morning; teach them to bath very well and smell fine always. It is unbearable to have a smelly young person around you; let them take care of their armpits, teeth, hair, nail, etc.
6. Teach your children to manage their used clothes and other personal belongings very well, whether in their home or elsewhere. It can be irritating to have dirty clothes or shoes, especially those of a visitor litter every corner of the house.
7. Let them pack their toiletries before leaving home. Your children should not depend on their hosts for their basic toiletries like soap, cream, tooth paste and other essentials.
8. Teach your children to dress well all the time, especially when they are spending time with another family. You probably allow your daughters to dress in bum shots and your sons to walk about with their chest bare in your home, but they may not be safe if they do so in another place. You may not know where a predator would lie in wait for a child.
9. Teach them good table manners; not the one recited in nursery schools rhymes. Teach them to chew with their mouth covered, not to make noise with the cutlery on their teeth, not to talk with their mouth full, etc.
10. Let your children know that washing only their own plates after eating is not a noble idea.
11. Remind your children that jumping into a conversation when adults are talking is a sign of being ill-mannered. Discourage this both in your home and elsewhere.
12. Help your children not to be social birds online and anti-social bugs offline. They should relate well with people around them, much more than they do with virtual folks they meet online. Please, discourage this idea of young people locking themselves in the room hours on end without communicating with anyone in the house – all because they are on phone.
13. Empower your children to uphold your family values wherever they are. But before then, make sure that your family values are credible, empowering, socially and morally beneficial.
14. Teach your children to control their appetite and learn to turn down certain offers, even when such offers come from people they know. And at home, it is not compulsory that they must taste everything they see someone eating. This will help them to take their eyes away from certain things when they are in other people’s home.
15. Always remind your children that they are the window through which the world sees you. If your children’s behavior outside is bad, the general consensus is that they lack home training. And since children are not meant to give themselves home training, it means that you failed as a parent.
16. Finally, make sure your children know God. Salvation is not hereditary; that you are godly or highly spiritual is not a guarantee that your children are saved. You must consciously and deliberately lead them to God
My fellow parents, let us try our best to make sure these children represent us well. I am sure you will feel good if you come to your children’s school and people are pointing at you as the parent of the best behaved child in the school. Won’t you?
Make sure your hosts and the hosts of your children are always impressed to have you and/or your children around.
