This post is an update of an earlier post about the home
Introduction
Comedian
Yakov Smirnoff says that when he first visited the US from Russia he was not
prepared for the incredible instant products available in America. He says “on
my first shopping trip, I saw pondered milk—you just add water’ and you get
milk. Then I saw powdered orange juice—you just add water and you get orange
juice. And then I saw baby powder and I thought to myself, what a country!”
To build stable homes for a stable society is not
like making instant coffee, juice or milk as the story of Yakov Smirnoff
illustrates. It takes intention and effort.
I.
We
Should Strive to Build Secure and Stable Homes
You and I may not have perfect homes
but the real home is the ideal place for balanced growth. It’s the place where our
children grow up, identify their purpose in life, pursue it and prosper. The
normal home should be a wellspring of understanding, love, joy, peace and
security. Here seeds that determine the future of our children are planted. If
there is a rift at home and if it’s not mended it will tend to reflect in our
children and risks being passed on to subsequent generations. The way parents
relate with each other and their children sets the children up for success or
hard work in their lives.
To destabilize any man or woman or
child you destabilize his/her home! Yet it is here that we are spending our
least time. We are living at a time when staying home to bring up children
is looked down upon. We want to be free and bring up children on our own terms.
We send eight year olds to boarding schools so we can be free to pursue our
careers and when they come home for the holidays we send them upcountry to
visit with their grand parents. We are increasingly spending very little time
with our children. No wonder our society
is beleaguered by many anti-peace/social behaviors.
Two
years ago Ted walked into our church compound and was brought to my office. A
foul smell emanated from him. It was obvious he had not taken a bath for
several days. I thought he was a street boy. He told me he had been chased away
from home by his mother. I tried to inquire why, he said he had problems with
drugs and would steal money from the mother’s chemist shop. Later the mother told
me she had spent close to a million shillings trying to rehabilitate him but
nothing had worked and she had given up. I learned the parents were divorced
and that they had send him to a boarding school when he was in class five. He
would refuse to go to school then but they forced him anyway and its then as a
class 5 pupil he began taking marijuana.
Bringing up our children
is not the responsibility of the school but ours. There is no substitute to our
contribution in their well being.
Determine from today in spite of the
great demands and stresses of post-modern living that you would strive to give
your children quality time and build a secure and stable home for them.
We need to build stable homes for a stable society.
II.
The Parents Positive Participation
is a prerequisite to a stable home
As the saying goes, charity begins
at home.
It’s in the context of a home, where
the right moral values and character can be forged. The home provides the
atmosphere to see in action how life is lived. Ralph T. Mattson
Says, “our children couldn’t initially select us as parents in the way that a
company can select its leaders. However our leadership should be so strongly
for our children that they will emotionally select us as parents for the
reminder of our lives. That’s the most valuable leadership there’s.” Pablo Casals reiterates; “every child must
believe that he is a miracle that since the beginning of the world there hasn’t
been and until the end of the world there will not be another child like him.” Parents are the pace setters and are
the white/black board from where children learn the lessons of life. What they
see on that board stick and is hard to erase. What is written there it’s what they well take
and adopt to form their concept of truth, right and wrong. Dr. Seamands has
said “children are good imitators but poor interpreters”
Statistics indicate that one
in every three high school student in Kenya is depressed, and they see suicide
or drugs as a way out of the problem. The irony is neither their teachers nor
their parents are aware of their condition. Africa Mental Health Foundation who
conducted the research says the reason behind this high-level depression is
associated with the home.[1] Again Daudi Mwenda says,
“80 per cent of the inmates
at the Industrial Area Prison and Remand Homes are children from single parents…”
He continues to say: Children from families
with no father figure are more likely to abandon school, do drugs, engage in
illicit sex and fall pregnant. They are also more susceptible to homosexuality and
other negative vices.” Unless man wake up (and women too), mend our ways and
performs our true roles, we shall continue to subject our children to a
precarious and dangerous existence. “Little wonder that the modern day
"Sonkos" are today’s role models. Kenya could be headed towards a reckless,
‘gangster-style’ community. [2]
Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April
1889 in Austria-Hungry to Alois and Klara. Of their six children, only Hitler
and his younger sister, Paula could survive into adulthood. His father Alois, a
custom official by profession, was tremendously violent to his wife and son,
and used to beat them often. According to Hitler’s book, “he had a terrible
childhood”. The regular whipping and violence committed by his father made him
extremely sympathetic to his mother, while having an unfathomable bitterness
towards his father. In spite of his father’s constant pressure to pursue a
career like his, Hitler dropped out of high school without a diploma, as a
revolt against his father. Even after his father’s death on 3 January 1903, he
did not show any liking for studies and rather tried to be a painter. He lost
his father when he was 14 and his mother when he was 18. What he did later on
in life is known to us all.
I
don’t know how Hitler would have turned out if his parents didn’t die early in
his life and if his father was a little more loving.
As parents regardless of what happens to us we
must strive to positively influence our children through the quality of life we
live. It’s the example we set that matters.
Parent’s positive participation is a
prerequisite to a stable home. We need to build stable homes for
a stable society.
Conclusion
As parents we are the key determining
factors on how our children will turn out. We are the white/black board from
where children learn the lessons of life. What they see on that board sticks and
is difficult to erase. What they see in
you, that they will take to inform their decisions in life.
My uncle is an amazing man, he was
a pastor. I have always admired his ingenuity and commitment to motivate. When
we were growing up he called me mtaalam (an expert) and her daughter who was my
age-mate he called Isumbi (queen). Though he did not go to the regular schools
he learnt to read and write in a Missionary theological college that taught in
our mother tongue. His interaction with the missionaries taught him a few
things on how formal offices operate. At home he would make up stories about
his daughter and narrate them to us all. He would say, “When my daughter grows
up she will become an accountant. I would then visit her office and find the secretary,
who would pick up the phone and call, saying, “Accountant, your father is
here.”
With
these stories, he charted the course that her daughter would take later in
life. He built her confidence to face life. Although the daughter did not grow
up to become an accountant, today she is a high school principal and a teacher
of chemistry and mathematics.
We
need to build stable homes for a stable society.
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