—‹†‡ǡ †‘ǯ– •’‘‹Ž ‹†•
Sir,
It’s strange that parents expect children to grow up and become responsible citizens and yet they rarely lift a finger to guide them properly. Disciplining a child is never pleasant but it must be done.
Parenting is a huge responsibility and without it, children will run amok, like headless chickens or kites without strings. It is unfair to find parents doing gardening and other household chores while these born-frees are gallivanting like sheep without a shepherd. Their heads are always buried in their gadgets or they are smoking ganja and other intoxicating stuff that turns them into pulp. This new generation is in a league of their own making.
Despite facing socio-economic challenges, such as teen pregnancy, drug and substance abuse and alcoholism, they know too much. Funny though, they know what they shouldn’t and what they should know they don’t know.
They are too mischievous, lazy, naughty, rude, stubborn and they’re disrespectful of elders. In every conversation they have ‘ready-made answers’. Sometimes I think parents are to blame for their children’s ineptitude, fundamental waywardness and erratic behaviour. Mind you, kids didn’t volunteer to be born. We can’t expect them to know how to do things if we don’t teach them. You find mothers cooking, working and washing for them, etc. After finishing eating, their mother washes their plates for them.
There is a difference between tough love and spoiling them. The above-mentioned may sound trivial and unnecessary, but the way we treat children has its after-effects in the long-run. It’s these kind of kids who grow up and can’t even make their own eggs, and who expect their wives to do the chores all the time. It’s how domestic abuse starts.
I grew up surrounded by girl siblings and nieces. We were only two boys in the household but we all did house chores equally. There were no boy or girl duties. Charity indeed begins at home, an ‘iron is shaped while the ore is in liquid form’.
McDivett Khumbulani Tshehla