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Dr Masimba Mavaza
Zimbabweans in the Diaspora must learn to give their children confidence and self-awareness.
The reality of the matter is that children who grew up in the Diaspora lack self-confidence and many of them do not identify with their country.
Children from immigrant families are likely to see themselves as less popular, less happy and more anxious than children from indigenous families.
Because of the way they are brought up they tend to be more self-critical of their academic abilities and their body image than children from Indigenous families.
Studies from around the world indicate that children left behind by migrating caretakers face education, health and psychosocial problems, including deteriorating academic performance and lower school attendance, greater risk of drug abuse, early pregnancy, involvement in criminal activities and social dysfunction. It becomes difficult the when the children are shipped to diaspora to join their families.
In contrast, the Economic and Social Research Institute study says middle-class children are more confident about their behaviour, feel somewhat happier and are less anxious than their peers from working-class or non-employed households.
Children with a special educational need, especially emotional-behavioural or learning difficulties, are significantly more negative about themselves than their peers. So parents must move in to build the self-esteem of their children.
Self-esteem is lowest among young adults but it increases throughout adulthood. The childhood of the children in diaspora is seriously affected by social back ground which these children have to endure as children of the migrants.
Children and young people with low self-esteem often, find it hard to make and keep friendships, and may feel victimised by others. They may also feel lonely and isolated, tend to avoid new things and find change hard, and can’t deal well with failure.
Being a child in Diaspora is not a joke, there is a lot of loneliness as parents are busy at work.
Thousands of left-behind children in Zimbabwe grow up experiencing prolonged separation from their migrant worker parents. The behaviour of many of these children shows how children are affected by parental migration. When they join their parents in diaspora they have to deal with shock of the cultural change.
This change which from the perspectives of children, parents, and grandparents, focusing on the experiences of prolonged parent-child separation and relationship dynamics in the extended family becomes a source of stress and mental health.
Despite the original purpose of benefiting children, parental migration resulted in challenges in child psychosocial well-being, due to the emotional impacts from prolonged parent-child separation. Parental absence also leads to inadequate care and support for left-behind children and fir those who are with their parents in the UK.
The negative effects of parental migration may be exacerbated by other vulnerabilities such as parents’ divorce, poverty and grandparent caregivers’ frailty. Concerns about child well-being made some migrants decide to return home permanently, because of the altered trade-offs of migration. But we have people abroad who think that they are in a better place than home.
It is indeed a challenge because parents do miss their children and children miss their parents. They both need the attention of each other.
Prolonged separation following migration often disrupts parent-child relationships and results in psychosocial difficulties in children, especially among those who live with multiple adversities in the family.
Many children who are left behind are better than those who are with their parents in diaspora. Those left home there is always a community-based interventions which is not available in migrant.
Mativenga Mangi, a researcher in England, said; “A research on schools found higher levels of anxiety among diaspora students.
It also found that children in larger schools of 100 to 200-plus pupils tend to have a more positive sense of self image, apart from anxiety. The foreign students are even made aware of their nationalities and their colour by the indigenous students and teachers.”
Mativenga Mangi said the teachers and school staff always make foreign children, especially boy , feel less confident about their physical appearance and popularity; teachers unconsciously do keep a closer watch on black pupils and tend to be more critical of their behaviour. On the other hand larger schools are usually in urban areas where child self-image is more positive anyway.
The children who survive the first year of harassment tends to be a positive experience for most children, with them reporting more positive behaviour while also seeing themselves as more popular. However, the ability to cope with school-work becomes a priority and they direct their anger to school work.
Black children have to work five times more than their white classmates. When they become focused and far ahead than their while mates it becomes difficult for teachers to fail them but where they get 89 percent a white person will get 99 percent.”
Mativenga said “the gap in self-image for immigrant young people stops being evident by age 13 but remains for those with special educational needs”.
Our children need the support of their parents in order to be self confident and be proud of whom they are.
Good relations with parents and having the support of the parents makes a significant difference for children. Those who receive frequent praise and positive feedback have better self images while frequently reprimanded children have poorer evaluations of themselves.”
Parents must balance their work and children. The importance of supporting children through initial education and encouraging them to use methods that engage different types of discrimination.
Children who have parental support fosters a positive self-image. However this poses challenges where time is very important and parents should give part of this time to their children.
National Council for Curriculum and Assessment deputy chief executive Sarah Fitzpatrick said well-being – personal development, health, relationships – is going to be at the heart of the junior cycle.
She said the report will inform the next phase of the primary curriculum. “This study takes us beyond academic achievement to a more profound understanding of the role of education and the responsibilities of teachers in nurturing children’s well-being even those from foreign back ground.
“Findings affirm the direction of curriculum developments at primary, ie greater emphasis on life skills and on children’s social and emotional development.”
Many children in Diaspora have to learn to alone as their parents will be busy at work.
Without anyone to turn to, the children will find comfort in gangs and drugs.
Because of their race, the foreign children are natural targets for accusations. While they stand out because of their colour they must do more to divert this curse.
The curse of being accused. Parents must teach their children that they are black and will never change. If the black children realise that they are disadvantaged by their colour they should turn the disadvantage to an academic excellence.
Many parents lose their children because they want to make more money. Parents should realise that they have a part to play in building their children’s behaviour.
The children in diaspora are fighting a war they do not know. If parents teach and support them at an early age, they would have succeeded in making a cultural and a hero in the foreign land.
The most disgusting thing is that those who smile at you are the ones who are leading children in the oath of self destruction.
Money will not give our children company. Parents need to help their children to have the confidence and self-esteem they deserve. Parents must Watch them realise their true potential where it matters most, while at the same time simply feeling happier inside. Being abroad can be a wonderful blessing if parents offer enough support to the children.
With the much needed help from parents you will notice that confident children achieve more, develop better relationships and simply make the most of their talents and opportunities in life. Do you wish your own children could believe in themselves, step into situations with confidence and not let fear and self-doubt hold them back.
Would you like to see your child at ease in their own skin, and interacting confidently with both children and adults alike? You must just give them your time. The Diaspora must have parents who naturally wants the best for their children, what will follow could be one of the most important things parents do. Why? Because low confidence, anxiety and poor self-esteem so frequently lead to under-performance, unpopularity, and greatly reduced happiness and satisfaction with life. And as you already know, patterns established in childhood can often last a lifetime.
The good news is that confidence and self-esteem in children are NOT about luck or the genes they were born with. And they aren’t even about how much praise and encouragement your children got when they were younger. Rather, feelings of confidence and self-esteem or the lack of them are the result of specific thought processes by parents.
This means it is perfectly possible — and with the right parental help often quite easy – for your child to quickly take on new ways of being which mean they naturally feel better about themselves and their abilities every single day.
And because these strategies and techniques work at the unconscious level, they don’t have to “try” to feel good, or “remember” to believe in themselves — they simply find themselves feeling these things easily and automatically. — [email protected]
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