A lot of things make up childhood. To be honest, parenting isn’t an easy job. Why we feel it may be easy is because most times, it’s done by adults, who willingly decide to bring up a child but we can’t also take away the fact that willingly or not, this is their first time experiencing parenting and they didn’t go to school to learn. So they are left to try different things before I know which works out best for their children.
Growing up for me was a beautiful one, filled with a lot of blissful memories. Till date, I consider myself lucky to have my type of family and how United we are. My early life was filled with a lot of attention from my parents because I was the first and afterwards, sharing the love and attention with my siblings makes me realise what life is really all about. Love is sharing.
I grew up in an average family whereby the first motive to money and finances is to cut your coat according to our sizes. My dad won’t normally care but my mom acts as the minister for economics in my family. Nothing passes through her without her trying to cut the cost or find a lesser expensive alternative.
Overtime, she was able to get my dad to see things from her own financial perspective and I won’t blame him, every man loves a woman who can manage money.
One of the many ways my mom cut the cost of the family was to buy our clothes from Lagos instead of Ekiti where we reside. As a kid, it was normal to get your wardrobe fixed by your parents, but as I grew older, it became an uncomfortable idea.
The idea of my parents getting me clothing became uncomfortable for me. Whenever I want to join my friends in wearing the fashion trend at that time, I always have to wait till my mom travels down to Lagos on her business trip to get whatever I want.
It wasn’t really a problem, only that sometimes my mom doesn't buy what I really wanted since she doesn’t know the trend and on other times, she only buys them when the trend is gone, so I don’t really enjoy wearing them then.
After a while, I became tired of asking her to buy stuff and conditioned myself to whatever she bought.
This wasn’t clear at that point but it taught me contentment. After a while I became content with whatever I had and I don’t mind looking different.
One thing I don’t like about my upbringing is about not giving grounds to ask the why question when parents hold us to certain responsibilities and commitments.
This I think is a cultural thing and it’s something I hope to change when I bring up my own children.
They need to know the reason behind why I ask them to do certain things like greet older persons, face their studies, attend churches and pray to God. Give the needies and other things. It's an extensively great thing to tell kids the reason behind such motives.
When you do this, you don’t need to give your children the aeroplane treatment as you are sure they don’t take care of themselves without close marking. When they defile your instructions, it’s easy to checkmate them and find a common ground.