FROM THE HEART OF A YOUNG NIGERIAN MOTHER - Whose Life is it Anyway?

The other day, my daughter was playing with her father’s stethoscope. I was thinking how cute it was, you know, how she wants to be a doctor just like her daddy. My husband, on the other hand, was looking on with horror.

I have heard him often bemoan that the medical profession in Nigeria is not what it used to be. Nowadays, getting a well paying job in clinical medicine as a young doctor is next to impossible. He says the only young doctors doing well are those who have left pure medicine for a career in paramedical fields like public health or work with NGOs. Those prospering in clinical medicine are the consultants, his ‘senior colleagues’ in the medical profession; and even they are barely earning what an entry level salary earner in oil companies get. Consequently, he would not encourage any child of his to study medicine. He wanted her to make ‘real’ money while she was young enough to enjoy it!

But is it really his decision?

My heart goes out to parents. Being one myself, I know the many decisions we need to make to ensure that our children have the best chance at success in life and how easily, even with the best of intentions, those decisions can backfire on us. Which schools should they go to? Who can we allow them to associate with? What further skills can we encourage them to acquire?

It’s so easy to judge parents when their children are struggling with one thing or the other as a result of some decision that the parents made. However, there is a fine line between making decisions that we think are best for our children and making decisions that are best for them.

Now, I know that my husband would be the last person to stand in the way of our child, if she really wanted to study medicine and had worked hard for the opportunity, but how many parents, in a bid to promote their children’s success, have forced their children into doing what they want?

When I was younger, it was the ‘in’ thing to study Medicine, Law or Engineering. Anything else was simply out of the question. You were pushed to the Science class because that was where the ‘smart’ kids went and if per chance, you were more Arts inclined, Law was the only acceptable alternative. This meant that the universities were inundated with candidates for these three major courses and those who were not admitted for them, did their level best to change after their first year.

Most people who were unable to change found a way to be happy with what they had. Others retook JAMB, willingly or forced by their parents to reapply for the coveted course. I have a friend who was admitted for Mass Communication but was forced to leave in her third year when her father threatened to withdraw financial support unless she read Law. She was eventually admitted for Law but lost three years and struggled all the way through school.

Another friend of mine who, by popular vote, was brilliant in the Sciences, was categorically told by his father that he had to read Law because he wanted all the children to be lawyers like both the parents were. This had already been achieved with the two older siblings. My friend defied his father, who refused to pay for his university education, graduated with a first class in Engineering and presently runs a successful software development company.

I could tell you of two brilliant young men, who had nothing in common but parents with the same idea of wanting their children to be doctors. One nearly committed suicide after being chucked out of Med School because he failed the same medical exam twice. He eventually changed to another course where he thrived. The other, an exceptional artist with a flair for graphics, stuck it out in Medicine though he repeated exams several times before graduating.

There are hundreds of such stories, just as there are also stories of children who allowed themselves to be guided by their parents and attribute their success to listening to them.

But how far is too far?

I agree that it is the responsibility of a parent to do all they can for their children but we must examine our motives. In my day, many a parent enjoyed the prospect of being able to be known as the parent of a budding doctor, or lawyer or engineer; others saw their children as their ticket out of a life of continuous lack and hardship; still more thought they were doing their child a disservice if they didn’t push them to ‘be the best’.

But what is the best?

The best is when your child finds what they are good at and succeeds in it. The world calls people like 2Face and D-Banj who are not doctors or lawyers successful because they have money; but I tell you that Mother Theresa who was also not a doctor or lawyer, was a roaring success because her work has outlived her.

There is enough room in the sky for every star, no matter how little they shine. If every star shone as brightly as the North Star, then sailors would lack direction. After all, it is the combination of all the stars that make the sky as beautiful as it is.

The injunction is to train up the child in the way that he should go so that when he is old, he does not depart from it. Let your children find their own way, just like you did. Your job is to guide them aright, be their cheering section when they do well and their voice of encouragement when they struggle.

That way, both your dreams will be fulfilled – a successful child and a proud parent.

TEENSPEAKS - Affairs of the Teenage Heart

Every parent can testify that from the minute they look into the precious little face of their new baby daughter, they begin to entertain fears for her virtue. It doesn’t matter that she has just been born and no one but God can really say how she is going to turn out; it doesn’t matter that her mother was once a little girl herself and turned out alright in the end (if she does say so herself!) or that her father is a member of the dreaded sex that he believes exists for the sole purpose of seeing to the ruination of his girl-child.

She must be protected, barred from the world of men, set in the highest tower of the farthest castle in the deepest ocean in the farthest corner of the earth until she dies either from age or sheer boredom- at least, she would have died safe!

Okay, I exaggerate. You will agree with me, though, that some parents of teenage girls kind of go ballistic when they discover that boys have started to find their daughters attractive. They get hernias whenever they see their daughters speaking with a guy; hyperventilate when their young lady is talking with some guy on the phone and has the effrontery to look happy while doing it; and go into cardiac arrest when they discover that their sixteen-year old has a (saints preserve us!!!) boyfriend!

I am privileged to work with teenagers on a regular basis and it hurts me to observe how fears about relationships not only fuel rebellion, but alienate the teens from their parents. Girls have been called promiscuous or worse, been physically assaulted or humiliated in front of their siblings and relatives, given irrational curfews and accused of all sorts of things just to scare them into submission. This may put the parent’s heart at uneasy rest, but it forces the teen to seek alternative outlets for their emotions like pornography, masturbation and premature sex.

Listen, I agree that this is not America. This is Nigeria, where social relations between teenagers of the opposite sex, is not viewed with as much license. It is not that American teenage rituals are necessarily harmful; it’s not just in our culture to indulge practices such as ‘going on dates’ and ‘prom night’. People, we need to understand that though we may disapprove of the manner in which those teens express their attraction for each other, we cannot ignore the fact that our teens have those feelings too and they need to be dealt with.

The kind of exposure teens of nowadays have doesn’t make things any easier. They watch TV, go on the internet and hear what other teens’ parents allow. Everything they see is encouraging them to break out, take control, and make their own decisions. But more than these, they can’t deny that their heats beat just that little bit faster when they see that special boy (or girl, for the boys), or that when they are with them, everything seems better and they don’t want the time to end.

Because teenagers are teenagers, their feelings per time are erratic so a parent cannot entirely be blamed for discountenancing some of their more passionate affirmations of ‘forever after’ feelings for so and so. A wise parent, however, would get close to their teenager and help her channel those feelings positively and productively. A paranoid parent would rather have their child deny the existence of those feelings and command her to face her studies, asserting that if she had been doing the latter in the first place, they would not have committed valuable time to thinking about boys (or girls, in the case of the boys).

We need to stop burying our heads in the sand, hoping that if we close our eyes, the teenage years, and their attendant complexities would go away. Every teenager is different and needs to be treated thusly. We need to take time to acquaint ourselves with their ways and their world (after all, how can we fight an enemy that we do not know or understand?), and more importantly, acquaint ourselves with our teens.

There is a lot of information out there in books and over the internet that can equip us with the skills we need to chart the choppy waters of the teen years. But having done all to stand, we need to arm ourselves with the Word of God and with prayer.

We need all the help we can get!