Between Beating a Child and the making of a Responsible Adult -By Segun Ogunlade

Sometimes ago, I was leaving the house in the morning. I hadn’t noticed that the landlady was sitting outside and I didn’t greet her. Immediately I walked past her, she called me to her side. I was sure I hadn’t erred in anyway, so I was confident. When I got close, she accused me of being disrespectful and rude for not greeting her. I stood there in shock because I couldn’t fathom where that was coming from. I wanted to say she could have greeted me first. But I thought that could make matters worse. When you failed to greet an elderly person, it is quickly linked to you being disrespectful.

When I checked the time, it was 7:10 in the morning. I thought it unwise to challenge the landlady and let her know I wasn’t as disrespectful as she thought. Many times, I have tried greeting her whenever I was coming to the house. But each time she had looked away and just mumbled some inaudible words as if she didn’t care for my greeting. That morning when she accused me of being disrespectful, I had to apologise and walk away. Isn’t that what we were all trained to do? When an elderly person offended you or accused you of doing something you didn’t do, you are the one that is expected to apologise for making him do so or for getting angry at you. If I were my landlady’s son or I were a little younger, she wouldn’t have hesitated to beat me that morning so as to teach me sense and how to respect elders when next I see any.

You see, that is one of the problems of this society. Older people often rub the advantage of time that nature has given them on our faces and we were forced to be cool with it. Their interpretation of respect include always being the one to greet older people first, not calling anybody older than you by his name, and never interrupting them even when they are distorting facts. We were not trained to challenge anything but to accept them the way they are. All in the name of making us respectful, the elderly ones made their prejudices and bias ours to inherit. They tell us what to believe and not why we should believe them.

All the fearlessness that comes with being young was taken away and was replaced with the fear of everything and the inability to question things. When we do anything they didn’t approve of, our parents are always eager to pick up the cane and use it to correct us. For them, it was needed in order for us to turn out good. They wanted us to respect their decisions whenever they are made. They wanted us to be like them. They wanted us to hate the things they hated and liked the things they liked.

Our opinion doesn’t count for anything because we were too afraid to express them for fear of being shouted down. For example, when they say people from a particular tribe are bad, we had to agree with them. Otherwise, the next thing that comes after challenging them is a question of what you know as a younger fellow. Our parents are so egoistic that when we challenge their belief, they feel their ego had been deflated and their honour being trampled upon. They rarely admit to anything they did wrong nor apologise when they hurt our feeling. Instead of apologising, they instead buy us gifts as if it would suffice for whatever they have done.

What that caning and verbal abuse did to us was not to respect them but fear them. There is a clear distinction between someone you fear and someone you respect. Most of our parents are like slave masters who instil fear in their slave so they couldn’t run away even when they are not happy with the way they are being treated. Like the slaves of old time, many of us were caned into submission and thereby subjugation. For fear of being beaten, we were afraid to do the things we love to do. Many times, we wanted their approval even which often doesn’t come. When our admiration for them grew into fear, we no longer respect them. We do whatever we have to do because they would still cane us like they always do.

Then they said the caning was because they didn’t want us to be like the kids in America or Europe, who doesn’t respect anybody, could sue his parents for maltreatment and as a fourteen year old could call a sixty year old by his name. But while our thoughts were being subdued, those kids were trained to speak up and condemn whatever they don’t like. The effect of that is that many of those kids in America or Europe grew up to be who they wanted to be while many of us grew up to be who our parents wanted us to be. And while they grew up to be producers, we grew up to be buyers. The kids that our parents told us were disrespectful now produce most of the things we and our parents use in our everyday lives. We want to be like them but it is difficult because we have been subdued for too long.

So, beating a child in order to make him grow up as a responsible adult is not true. Instead, what the beating does is to kill his or self-confidence and his spontaneity. Because he is severely chided when he decided to act on impulse, he would not have the courage to try something new unless otherwise told to do so. If truly those beatings have anything to do with cultivating good morals, our society would have been one of the best. Very few people grew up in a Nigerian home that wasn’t beaten by an older person. Despite that, our country is one of the worst places. We wake up to the news of various crimes such as rape, murder, bombing, and stealing from public treasuries committed by many of these adults that have been beaten as a child so they could be good people.

Even though reprimanding children when they do something wrong is good sometimes, explaining to them the implications of what they have done and what they should do next time is better. From what I have observed, our parents have the time to beat us but enough time to make us see why what they beat us for was wrong. We were not taught to what it means to be a good adult that they are canning us to be. They just feel that we will learn by ourselves how to be responsible without showing us how to be.

For me, beating a child at every slightest provocation is not the best way of raising, doesn’t teach him respect in any way and does not make him grow up to be a responsible adult. Training a child involves teaching him what is expected of him and the implication of his failing to do that. That involves cultivating in him habits that make him fit for living in the society, giving him logical reasons why some things are good and why some others are bad. He or she needs to know from a young age which of his actions will hurt others and which of them will help others. Above all, parents should learn how to dialogue with their children instead of always shutting them down due to their ego. Parenting a child is delicate and it must be done by cultivating in the child cultures and habits that aids development and not subjugate the child in his mind. The way a child is raised will determine whether he would grow up to be an adult that could express his mind or let his fears rule him.

Written by Segun Ogunlade from Ibadan, Nigeria