A kid needs encouragement as a flower needs water
Jun 12, 2007
Early on Saturday morning, Benayo Olak, 6, accompanied his older brother Akim and his mother, went to the Metro Toronto Zoo. At the zoo, they met other parents with their children waiting at the gate.
OPIYO OLOYA
PERSPECTIVE OF A UGANDAN IN CANADA
Early on Saturday morning, Benayo Olak, 6, accompanied his older brother Akim and his mother, went to the Metro Toronto Zoo. At the zoo, they met other parents with their children waiting at the gate.
This was not a trip to see the African pigmy hippo, the slender-necked giraffe, Simba the Lion or any of the zoo’s more than 5,000 animals representing over 460 species.
In fact, Benayo and his peers were at the zoo to plant trees and shrubs as part of Earth Day tree-planting celebration. The event was organised by the Acholi Diaspora Association (ADA) of the Greater Toronto Area in collaboration with the Metro Toronto Zoo and the Ontario Ministry for Children and Youth Services.
In its ninth year of existence, the ADA has sought to bring together the Acholi community and provide opportunity for integration into the Canadian social fabric. Its role has expanded in order to respond to the growth of the Acholi community in Toronto. “The involvement of our children in development and conservation means that they are not left out looking in—they need to learn to contribute to community building in order be a part of the Canadian fabric,†said Association president Sam Okema who was on hand to open the meeting.
But while the children worked under the already simmering morning sun, parents retired to the air-conditioned Atrium to attend a workshop on good parenting, and how to make ADA a bigger and more effective organisation. Parenting-educator Janet Cowan wasted little time laying out the basics of successful parenting. “In Canada, there is a tendency to pamper children—but this is not doing them a service at all. Self-sufficiency is what children need in order to grow up able to take care of themselves in a competitive world.
A child needs encouragement like a flower needs rain,†she said. Indeed, like many immigrants with children born in Canada, members of ADA are constantly looking for opportunity to make their children self-sufficient. To a person, members believe that the key to successful parenting is working with the children to the point when they become independent young adults.
This new attitude is born of necessity to understand the society that their children are growing in, and more important, how their children respond to the society. Are the children’s needs being met by this alien system? How are the children dealing with systemic discrimination often experienced by visible minorities in school institution? “I realised that I needed to learn as much as I could from my teenage daughter,†admitted Aya Kiden, a resident of Toronto.
The adults at the parenting workshops spoke candidly about the challenges of parenting in the Canadian society. All agreed that parenting was very different from back home where children are expected to defer completely to adults. Back home, the mere threat of the oddo (the stick) got the child back in line, but in the Canadian context such a threat could bring the intervention of the Child and Youth services responsible for protecting children from abuse. There were many questions to consider. How does one discipline a child who does not care and has no respect for parental authority? Do the parents resort to the practice of “time-outâ€, where the child is isolated for a period of time from the rest of the family? Could that not further alienate the already marginalised child from everyone else? Should one use a reward system, sometimes known as “bribes†for good behaviour? Yet, as one of the participant pointed out, why should a child be rewarded for good behaviour? Then there was also issue of speaking to adolescents about the facts of life.
Participants noted that parents generally have difficulty speaking to their adolescent children about issues such as sexuality and pre-marital sex. At the same time, children left to their own devices quickly learn from watching television or, worse, from peers in the washrooms of public schools. “We cannot hide anything from our children who must learn how to live in this society so that they are not strangers in the community,†said Mrs. Santa Oloya, who has teenage children.
Those in attendance agreed that the growing Acholi community in Toronto needed to establish parenting network to support one another with bringing children within the community. There was also agreement that the organisation needed to grow bigger to pull financial support from corporations and individuals for projects in Toronto and back home in northern Uganda.
As zoo animals left the cool shades to look for late afternoon snacks, the tree-planters gathered their hand tools, cleaned up the area, and joined parents for the after-event barbeque organised at the home of Ben Amanyangole, the current Chair of ADA board.
For Benayo it was a great day to meet with friends, have fun and do something by “planting trees to make the place look niceâ€â€” and save the world in the process.
Opiyo.Oloya@sympatico.ca
PERSPECTIVE OF A UGANDAN IN CANADA
Early on Saturday morning, Benayo Olak, 6, accompanied his older brother Akim and his mother, went to the Metro Toronto Zoo. At the zoo, they met other parents with their children waiting at the gate.
This was not a trip to see the African pigmy hippo, the slender-necked giraffe, Simba the Lion or any of the zoo’s more than 5,000 animals representing over 460 species.
In fact, Benayo and his peers were at the zoo to plant trees and shrubs as part of Earth Day tree-planting celebration. The event was organised by the Acholi Diaspora Association (ADA) of the Greater Toronto Area in collaboration with the Metro Toronto Zoo and the Ontario Ministry for Children and Youth Services.
In its ninth year of existence, the ADA has sought to bring together the Acholi community and provide opportunity for integration into the Canadian social fabric. Its role has expanded in order to respond to the growth of the Acholi community in Toronto. “The involvement of our children in development and conservation means that they are not left out looking in—they need to learn to contribute to community building in order be a part of the Canadian fabric,†said Association president Sam Okema who was on hand to open the meeting.
But while the children worked under the already simmering morning sun, parents retired to the air-conditioned Atrium to attend a workshop on good parenting, and how to make ADA a bigger and more effective organisation. Parenting-educator Janet Cowan wasted little time laying out the basics of successful parenting. “In Canada, there is a tendency to pamper children—but this is not doing them a service at all. Self-sufficiency is what children need in order to grow up able to take care of themselves in a competitive world.
A child needs encouragement like a flower needs rain,†she said. Indeed, like many immigrants with children born in Canada, members of ADA are constantly looking for opportunity to make their children self-sufficient. To a person, members believe that the key to successful parenting is working with the children to the point when they become independent young adults.
This new attitude is born of necessity to understand the society that their children are growing in, and more important, how their children respond to the society. Are the children’s needs being met by this alien system? How are the children dealing with systemic discrimination often experienced by visible minorities in school institution? “I realised that I needed to learn as much as I could from my teenage daughter,†admitted Aya Kiden, a resident of Toronto.
The adults at the parenting workshops spoke candidly about the challenges of parenting in the Canadian society. All agreed that parenting was very different from back home where children are expected to defer completely to adults. Back home, the mere threat of the oddo (the stick) got the child back in line, but in the Canadian context such a threat could bring the intervention of the Child and Youth services responsible for protecting children from abuse. There were many questions to consider. How does one discipline a child who does not care and has no respect for parental authority? Do the parents resort to the practice of “time-outâ€, where the child is isolated for a period of time from the rest of the family? Could that not further alienate the already marginalised child from everyone else? Should one use a reward system, sometimes known as “bribes†for good behaviour? Yet, as one of the participant pointed out, why should a child be rewarded for good behaviour? Then there was also issue of speaking to adolescents about the facts of life.
Participants noted that parents generally have difficulty speaking to their adolescent children about issues such as sexuality and pre-marital sex. At the same time, children left to their own devices quickly learn from watching television or, worse, from peers in the washrooms of public schools. “We cannot hide anything from our children who must learn how to live in this society so that they are not strangers in the community,†said Mrs. Santa Oloya, who has teenage children.
Those in attendance agreed that the growing Acholi community in Toronto needed to establish parenting network to support one another with bringing children within the community. There was also agreement that the organisation needed to grow bigger to pull financial support from corporations and individuals for projects in Toronto and back home in northern Uganda.
As zoo animals left the cool shades to look for late afternoon snacks, the tree-planters gathered their hand tools, cleaned up the area, and joined parents for the after-event barbeque organised at the home of Ben Amanyangole, the current Chair of ADA board.
For Benayo it was a great day to meet with friends, have fun and do something by “planting trees to make the place look niceâ€â€” and save the world in the process.
Opiyo.Oloya@sympatico.ca