Sociology taught me that family is a primary socialisation of a child, that is true as those are the people a child spent time with on arrival and throughout the developmental stages. They teach a child the norms, standards as well as the beliefs of the family as a guide to face life.

Well, this is not an obvious case for different reasons. Take it from me, there is nothing painful like not remembering being taught about life at home ground except going to church. There is a lot of pain one carries when learning things from assumptions or as they happen. The negative incidents that happens during one’s developmental stages stuck in one’s mind as if they were glued to be there forever. One get used to living with the pain until it is not felt anymore but, that does not mean that the incidents are erased. That is why they say one can forgive but never forgets. Every encounter of the same incident triggers the previous ones being it negative or positive, attitudes are developed in the process and that contribute to one’s journey of life influencing one’s relationship with the external environment.

We are all born innocent and learn behaviors as we grow up. That reminds me of the song by the late Whitney Houston “The Greatest Love of all”. I love this paragraph the most “Children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them the beauty they possess inside. Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be”. We were all children at some stage therefore one turn to be the parent that his/her parents were or more, pending on how the message was received and what one learnt from that. With that being said, let us be careful on the seed we plant to our kids as parents as that is what is going to determine the type of adult the child will be e.g. How do I become a caring person if I was never exposed to a caring environment, this may lead a child to being a monster who was actually never meant to be? Or because I was never exposed to the caring environment, I can turn out to be the most caring person because I know the pain of not being cared for which may later lead to people exploiting my caring behavior.

I learned to depend on myself at an early age and never to walk in anyone’s shadow to avoid disappointments. Lived and accepted my failures as they are. Hope kept me going, I trusted my journey without understanding where was it going.

Today’s children

How fortunate are today’s children? Yes, they are fortunate because there are programmes that are meant to look after them at schools like nutrition, they are supplied with stationery amongst other benefits, receives uniform in a form of donations, receives SASSA grants etc.

As a parent

As parents, it is important to be present in our children’s developmental journey. The fact that you are physically there does not make you present, for you to be present you need to be accessible. The child needs to feel your presence, the warm and coldness for him/her know the type of parent they have so that they can act appropriately and build their own future parental skills. You need to be available so that you can identify the child’s moods, in that case you can notice when the child is in a good or bad mood then it will help you to act appropriately. Be approachable, this allows a platform to communicate about the negatives or the positives things the child is experiencing, giving them the liberty to open up freely while on the other hand, it gives the parent an opportunity to guide, mentor, support and advice the child appropriately. Follow up on identified or reported things being it negative or positive so that you can monitor the progress that will lead to both of you closing the chapter or seeking second opinion amongst other things, accept that some children might take advantage of the situation. Be accountable, acknowledge that the unpleasant behaviour demonstrated by your child might be due to your actions sometimes. Dig deeper to your child’s challenge to find out the trigger, in case you are that trigger, work on finding possible, realistic solutions. That shows that as a parent you take responsibility and teaches a child that parents do make mistakes as we are all human being and what is important is when one takes responsibility, apologize with explanation and remedial actions that you will both work on. Remember to set clear, open minded and building boundaries that might not be accepted by the child but standing your grounds is essential even if it is sour. They will grow up and reflect on the memories, realise later that you wanted what was best for them. Allow them to make mistakes and encourage learning from them even if it can be the hard way sometimes.