How safe is your child while on holiday visits?
Dec 04, 2005
IT is holiday time once again! You must be wondering how you will keep your child for two solid months.
IT is holiday time once again! You must be wondering how you will keep your child for two solid months.
Is there anything worth doing at home, apart from exploring the TV from one channel to another? How about endless sibling wrangles ranging from teasing to real fights?
If you do not have a perimeter wall fenced compound, then hell might break loose in the neighbourhood, uh! As the holiday heartache looms, the temptation of having the children spend their holiday with a close relative emerges.
Spending long holidays with relatives is a culture that has been with us for decades. It aims at making children relax in a distant land away from home.
It also helps to strengthen kinship as your children relate and understand other members of your family.
Good as it appears, this change of environment comes with its own challenges. Did you know that your child is a reflection of your home as well as your parenting style?
Every home has a unique culture that is produced by domestic routines, communication style and family interactions. This culture moulds your child’s personality and makes them what they are.
When children visit another home, a ‘shock of change’ confronts them. A new form of communication, routines, value system and interaction confuses them.
Your home has groomed your child in a way that makes them bear the ‘trademark’ of your parenting style.
That ‘trademark’ accords your children a sense of identity that sets them apart, hence making them different from children in the neighbourhood. A relative’s home has a different value system and ‘culture’.
A child is like a sponge and is bound to absorb the values in a relative’s home, especially when s/he is exposed to them long enough. Not all values acquired elsewhere are desirable. Indeed, some of the habits might ruin the child for life.
Have you thought about your child’s safety in a relative’s home? Not all relatives are serious with keeping a keen eye on children.
A mother recently narrated to me how a one-week visit to an aunt dealt a lifetime blow on her five-year-old daughter.
The aunt had gone for duty and the housemaid left the grounds man in charge as she went shopping.
The story has it that the housemaid returned after three hours and found the little girl bleeding profusely. The girl had been defiled.
The man was convicted but the girl has remained with an emotional wound that will haunt her for life.
Children, especially girls, are very vulnerable. Anything can happen to them and we shouldn’t leave them at the mercy of their environment. To a great extent you have control over your home environment but it might not be possible for you to control your relative’s home.
The ‘curriculum’ for parenting is quite wide and there is a lot you must teach your child, yet the time is quite limited. We are in a society that is cruising towards moral decadence and children are exposed to high levels of moral filth.
The effects of these can only be countered using an intimate parent-child relationship. Your child needs an opportunity to know you and relate with you better.
I guess you wouldn’t love to have a child who relates more intimately with your sister than with you.
There is no place better than home and if your child looks for an excuse to stay out of home, something is wrong. Before you ‘push’ your child to stay with relatives this holiday, think twice.
Ends
Is there anything worth doing at home, apart from exploring the TV from one channel to another? How about endless sibling wrangles ranging from teasing to real fights?
If you do not have a perimeter wall fenced compound, then hell might break loose in the neighbourhood, uh! As the holiday heartache looms, the temptation of having the children spend their holiday with a close relative emerges.
Spending long holidays with relatives is a culture that has been with us for decades. It aims at making children relax in a distant land away from home.
It also helps to strengthen kinship as your children relate and understand other members of your family.
Good as it appears, this change of environment comes with its own challenges. Did you know that your child is a reflection of your home as well as your parenting style?
Every home has a unique culture that is produced by domestic routines, communication style and family interactions. This culture moulds your child’s personality and makes them what they are.
When children visit another home, a ‘shock of change’ confronts them. A new form of communication, routines, value system and interaction confuses them.
Your home has groomed your child in a way that makes them bear the ‘trademark’ of your parenting style.
That ‘trademark’ accords your children a sense of identity that sets them apart, hence making them different from children in the neighbourhood. A relative’s home has a different value system and ‘culture’.
A child is like a sponge and is bound to absorb the values in a relative’s home, especially when s/he is exposed to them long enough. Not all values acquired elsewhere are desirable. Indeed, some of the habits might ruin the child for life.
Have you thought about your child’s safety in a relative’s home? Not all relatives are serious with keeping a keen eye on children.
A mother recently narrated to me how a one-week visit to an aunt dealt a lifetime blow on her five-year-old daughter.
The aunt had gone for duty and the housemaid left the grounds man in charge as she went shopping.
The story has it that the housemaid returned after three hours and found the little girl bleeding profusely. The girl had been defiled.
The man was convicted but the girl has remained with an emotional wound that will haunt her for life.
Children, especially girls, are very vulnerable. Anything can happen to them and we shouldn’t leave them at the mercy of their environment. To a great extent you have control over your home environment but it might not be possible for you to control your relative’s home.
The ‘curriculum’ for parenting is quite wide and there is a lot you must teach your child, yet the time is quite limited. We are in a society that is cruising towards moral decadence and children are exposed to high levels of moral filth.
The effects of these can only be countered using an intimate parent-child relationship. Your child needs an opportunity to know you and relate with you better.
I guess you wouldn’t love to have a child who relates more intimately with your sister than with you.
There is no place better than home and if your child looks for an excuse to stay out of home, something is wrong. Before you ‘push’ your child to stay with relatives this holiday, think twice.
Ends