Life of ‘big boys’
The prayer of every parent is that his children become good people to be proud of, and as for Muslims, for the children to be praying for them when they die.
Well, at least that is the general assumption, which may not be the concern of some parents that go out of their way to indulge their children, making them terrors that no decent person wants to associate with.
My recent experience of how these so-called ‘big boys’ live is really disheartening and frightening. It also makes a parent fear any interaction between his children and those living the fast life full of expensive cars, drinks, drugs and women.
Just imagine living in the same compound with your grown up children and there is a parade of women of all kinds and shapes. They are awake through the night, partying and sleeping throughout the day!
And some are even married but they choose the free life and don’t care about their wives.
It is quite challenging where some may try to befriend your children, or for some children to be taken by them and hang around them, or your daughter falling in love with a ‘big boy’ with a ‘big car’ and the money to throw away.
It may be attractive to some gullible girls that such boys don’t even have to work for the money, because the boys’ parents already made the money for their children.
The girls may like such an easy life, unlike the type they live with their parents, where they work the whole day to earn salary, which may not be enough at the end of the day.
Many people are not reckoning with such bad influence when they move to cosmopolitan cities like Abuja , and live in a compound where you can’t choose your neighbours.
People are aghast that things that ordinarily your children would not be privy to, are flaunted shamelessly and seen as norm, even by those whose roots are the same as your own traditional settings, but since they are living far away from that traditional places, they assume this dare-me-if you -can- lifestyle.
A friend’s concern is that such boys should not introduce her sons to homosexuality, saying it is what she feared most.
According to her, she was always warning them not to join such boys. “I am always praying,” she said.
Well, I have a mortal fear of drug abuse, I feel that many crimes are committed under the influence of drugs, whereby the drug abusers learn to steal to buy drugs and graduate to other crimes. They become useless members of the society and a threat to it.
And another telling thing is that some of these ‘big boys’ don’t respect elders, or at least those that are old enough to be their parents, probably thinking they have more money than those people. Some are rude to the core.
They insult and threaten security guards at the house, assuming everybody must defer to them because ‘they’ are rich.
Because they don’t work and earn any money on their own, one woman wondered where they get the money they spend anyhow, and if really any parent can just work tirelessly, just for his grown up sons to collect the money and spend it.
“It is like a club if one among them has it, they use the money, then another one will get it,” somebody in the know explained.
However , with all their bragging some get caught with drugs and their parents have to go and settle with the police, while some get entangled in stealing jewellery and so on, also to be settled by their parents.
They become a source of worry to their parents, yet who supplies them the cars, the money? In some cases even simple things like taking their cars to the mechanic, the parents will volunteer to take charge of it.
So they don’t learn to take responsibilities and feel that they should also do something for the society. In fact they feel the society owes them!
If the parents are no more, what are the children going to do to survive, may be they are banking on the money to inherit. But would they live the rest of their lives as loafers without any goal or ambition?
It is indeed sobering to reflect on how people train their children, so that it will not turn into a tragic irony, that because you love them so much that you don’t want them to suffer in life, they end up as useless and a heartache for you.