Step up, shape up

Apr 09, 2012

There was a time in life when our parents would spank the hell out of us for doing what the deemed inappropriate. Now it is different: it is very common to see a kid running through the stores screaming attracting all the attention.

It’s the dawn of a new parenting era, write Maureen Nakatudde and Joyce Nyakato

The new dawn of a parenting era
There was a time in life when our parents would spank the hell out of us for doing what the deemed inappropriate. Now it is different: it is very common to see a kid running through the stores screaming attracting all the attention. Honestly, what is more amusing is when a parent tries to “reason” with the three-year-old to not raise tantrums in the store. These are parents trying to skate the line of harsh discipline and kindness. 
 
No other generation of record matches the children now. This “millennial generation” – is the educated group of children we’ve ever produced, and the most protected by law. Unusually they are smart and assertive; these youngsters are as creative and intuitive as they are computer literate.
 
This new crop of infants are coming in more aware, eyes focused and alert with  a knowing-ness quite  surprising. They ask questions, too big for their age, we assume. Half a century age, they were considered to be simply naïve in every aspects of life. They knew as much what their parents wanted them to know. Questions were never asked.
 
Fortunately or unfortunately, we are Realising an era, where friends, School, Internet, TV or radio are co-parents. These are all avenues which act as sources of info to children. As a parent, what can you do about this?
 
There are few of parents who will seize this ‘opportunity’ and avail their children phones and laptops by the age of ten to indulge them. After all we live in a developed world and change is inevitable. When Gordon Ntimba, a father of a sixteen, fourteen and twelve year old started an uncommon practice of giving his children allowances every week, he was reproached by relatives and friends.
 
Five years later, the benefits are clear: his children learnt how to become economical because they had been handling money at a younger age. “By the time, they were older and were given money, they knew that they had to save some of it,” he explains.
 
Parents like Ntimba who raise children by indulging them are likely to rub the other ‘traditional parents’ the wrong way. They are seen as ‘spoiling’ the children. 
 
However, Rose Mary Bwire, a family counsellor rebuts that today’s parents need to wake up to the realization that we can’t raise children the same way we were raised. She asserts that the faster they realize that they are raising children in a different generation, the less the fuss they will make about it. “Not everything new is bad,” she says.
 
We live in a world that is diverse and new, the sooner the parents wake up to this realisation the better. “Understanding that this is a new era in parenting is the beginning. These changes are real,” she says. We live in a world where children have say, in most things that concern them.
 
Parents need to loosen up a bit because raising children in a caged manner has far reaching consequences. When they grow up, they are very curious about what they have been missing and are more likely to explore everything including the very things you have been guarding them against.
 
So: do we let children ride with the tide? Not exactly! Parents ought to exercise a degree of censorship when raising their children. Just because Internet is available doesn’t mean children should consume everything on the Internet. Pick out what benefits the children and leave out what doesn’t. When there is censorship in a home, children understand the rules and will break them at their own peril.
 
We live in a world where children are mightily protected by the law. Some are more prone to indiscipline because they know they are likely to go unpunished. As the traditional disciplinary method of caning fades into oblivion, it leaves us with fewer alternatives. The best possible one is ‘talking’ for which many a working parent lacks time.
 
Bwire advises that parents need to make children realize that rights come along with responsibilities. When children are taught how to be responsible they will understand that wrong doings always come with consequences. She figures that deprivation is a modern day disciplinary method that teaches children how to understand responsibility.
 
Of course the new media age, should rightly be a cause of concern to many a parent. Children own phones, are on the Internet, and sometimes as a parent you can’t control what information they draw in since you are not with them all the time. Rather than prompting cries of crisis, Anthony Nsereko, a parent and a teacher at St Mary’s primary school Nabbingo explains these time necessitate a change in parenting. Parents need to open communication lines with parents to understand their problems.
 
Close communication with children helps you identify the company your child keeps an understanding their lifestyle. “Honest discussions invite openness from the children on how to deal with present day challenges,” advises bwire
Generally, it is more about training to children on how to make the right choices.
 
This is the time that parents need to understand behavioural patterns of their children and teach them how to be make the right choices in life.
 

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