Spare the rod

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Photo by Ante Hamersmit

One thing African parents fail to understand is that the only thing fear does to a child is to push the child away from their parents. Many of them think that putting fear in a child will make them obedient and yes that may be true for a short period of time but then what that also does is that its makes your child keep things to themselves, even things that you should know about.

My dad used to be a disciplinarian, a very strict one. He was that kind of person who tolerated no rubbish from anyone of us while my mom on the other hand rarely hit us whenever we did something wrong but whenever she did, it was as if I was in a WWE wrestling match because she rarely uses the cane, one minute you're standing on the feet and the next your floating in the air.

But like I said, mum rarely hit us so we got very close to mum and very scared of dad. It got so bad that even on days where we wanted to go speak to our father about some casual things, we would go to mum instead and tell her to help us tell dad. I remember one time I was asked to remind my dad about the payment of my school fees and instead of me to go meet my dad, I had gone straight to my mom to tell her and that was when my dad noticed the damage he was causing between himself and his kids.

He had later called for a family meeting and had gently told us not to be scared to talk to him anymore. He is our father and we as his kids should be able to talk freely to him the same way we talk freely to our mother.

Of course it took sometime to get used to it but after about six months of him not flogging any of us (he substituted that for punishments instead), we began to loosen up a bit and that was how he was able to repair the relationship between us his kids and himself.

The point of the whole thing that I'm trying to say is that sometimes, sparing the rod isn't really spoiling the child. Not everything requires some form of punishments, sometimes a heart to heart talk with that child can go a long way.



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