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Fredrick Qaphelani Mabikwa Successful Solutions
Dear readers allow me to share a short personal story this week to make a few points on the referred topic. Recently our eight-year-old daughter participated at the official unveiling of our veteran political icon Joshua Mqabhuko Nkomo’s statue. She was a drum majorette from one of the local primary schools. At the occasion they were well-fed and at the end of the occasion they were given $2 each by their teachers, I guess for bus fare.
On picking our daughter, as soon as she came into the car, she told us they had enjoyed themselves, been well fed and given money. She was of course very excited. When we got home and we were getting out of the car she handed me the $2 and said, “Daddy thatha nansi imali yesinkwa” (Daddy take this money and buy bread). The mother who was in the usual front passenger seat immediately jumped in and said “Ah saGugu akutshiyane lemali yomntwana (don’t be greedy leave the child’s money).
May I honestly say I pretended as if l didn’t hear her and took the money and thanked our daughter and told her I will surely buy bread with this money for the following morning’s breakfast. My daughter was on cloud nine, I could see her big smile and I guess she was saying to herself; “Finally I am also going to buy bread for the family.”
The following day I declared at the breakfast table that the bread we were eating was bought by Nicole and we should all thank her for her generosity and understanding. She was very excited and I have never seen her so happy. She declared that she was going to buy the family more bread.
By the way, when they are showing responsible behaviour praise them to motivate them. Now readers, allow me to praise my daughter. Remember “the lizard who fell from the high iroko tree claimed he had jumped and said he would praise himself if no one else did” (Achebe).
This is an eight-year-old who already knows that she has to assist her dad buying food (not ice cream) for the family. This is a child who is not starved of bread by the way and I want to draw our attention to the small signs of responsibility at that tender age. By the way the $2 was replaced in form of pocket money to allay the fears from the other parent.
How many of us parents are staying with our adult children who are now working who can’t bring a loaf of bread home after work, who can’t even bring isitshebo (relish) home? How many of us have employed adult children who have their siblings still in school but they cannot even buy a uniform for their brother or sister…uniform I have gone too far, they can’t buy a ruler for their sibling?
How many of us parents have children in the diaspora, even just across in South Africa who have never sent a dollar home for the parents?
I do not want to blame some of these children; I think a good number are behaving this way because we the parents never taught them to be responsible. They had things done for them throughout their lives and even as employed adults they still think parents must still look after them buying them food.
Some of these children can’t even move out of home to be independent. They have over-stayed their welcome at home but they can’t leave because they are afraid of responsibility. They are afraid of setting themselves up and paying rent. I want to repeat that most of these irresponsible children are of our making.
We didn’t teach them that when they get money they can also share it with the family in a small way. We have bred selfish children. Their money is for the latest on the fashion market and booze with friends for the boys. Their money is theirs alone. Now this is irresponsible and unAfrican.
Recently, a very close cousin of mine told me something which I thought was really shocking. He told me his wife was not feeling well and they had released the maid for the festive season. He has just discovered that his 17-year-old daughter cannot cook and he is cooking for his wife.
Now this is a tragedy. Because we can afford maids, we let the maid do everything for our children. The maid does their laundry, does the ironing, the maid cooks and does the dishes. All our children do is eat and leave the plates where they were eating for the maid to pick.
We are so rich our older children cannot even wash their underwear; the maid does it for them. These children are “dead”. A certain woman found her girls assisting the maid to do laundry and she shouted at the maid saying she was abusing her children, when she gets her money she won’t share with the children.
This is a learned mother “sentencing her children to death”. This is digging our children’s graves. When tomorrow the maid is not at home and the children can’t do their laundry, we start crying. When the children can’t cook, can’t clean the house even their bedrooms we cry but it’s us who have “killed them in the name of love.”
My wife and I once visited her friend who has been blessed with boys only. We found the boys busy helping their mother with the household chores. One was doing the floors, one laundry and the other one was preparing breakfast. I was speechless. By the way two of these boys are in university, doing marvellous science courses and the youngest is doing “A” Level.
I immediately asked her how she had done it and she said, she started with them from the time they were young. As young boys they were already doing household chores and since they have never had a sister, they have never had the splitting of chores on gender lines. I asked her if they were not going to be made to do laundry, clean the house and cook by their wives and she immediately said there was nothing wrong with them assisting their wives with chores. I immediately shut my big mouth.
Some of our sons cannot water a small vegetable garden. If you tell them to weed and water the garden you see their faces change, they are angry, they think it’s child labour and we the parents let them water the garden in two minutes and they go back to Facebook and WhatsApp.
The following morning the garden is very dry. When you ask them to water again they remind you they watered it “yesterday” and if you tell them to do it again they tell you they are tired. When you push them, the other parent says, “You are abusing the children, we can always buy vegetables…” The other parent is the “magistrate” who is sentencing the children to “death”.
Now our daughters, who can’t do basic household chores, who can’t cook who will marry such? A good number of new marriages today don’t survive the first three years because the man suddenly realises he has not married a wife but has married “WhatsApp and Face book.”
I am not really an expert in this area but the honest truth is that let us not let the maids do everything for our children. As much as possible make sure that children share the chores with the maid or the gardener (some of us are privileged to have gardeners), so that they acquire the basic skills of survival and can survive even if these people are away.
When our children are older let us remind them that they are now adults and should contribute in a very small way in the home in terms of food, among other things. Tell them home is not boarding school. Tell them it’s important that they also assist their siblings who might still be in school.
Just be honest with them. You are not demanding things from them but teaching them to be responsible. I am not saying they must take over the household. Children who have been properly schooled don’t have to be told, they assist without being asked.
When children are young adults, at some stage they must leave home. When they can afford to stay alone encourage them to leave home to start their lives. Make them understand that you are not chasing them away from home but just trying to get them started with life.
This you must do especially to the boys. The girls might want to leave home through marriage. I have seen some parents who let their boys over-stay at home and such boys would usually become mama’s boys even when they are married. These are the boys who will become “useless husbands” who will always run to report to their mother when they have a small fight with their wife.
These are the boys who when they would want to buy household property they will leave the wife and go and ask their mother what colour of sofas they must buy.
As parents, let us not kill our children in the name of love. I know a young man who was pampered as a boy by his mother and couldn’t do anything for himself. When the other family members were telling the mother to get the boy to proceed to tertiary education and get to do things for himself, the mother said the other family members hated her son and they must leave her son alone.
Now this young man got married and because he couldn’t even keep a job because of laziness, he has since dumped his family (wife and children) at his mother’s house and gone to stay with another woman. The new woman is literally looking after him…this, is the life he is used to . . . “kindergarten . . . eating and sleeping.”
I am in no way saying let us teach our eight year olds that when they get money they must give us parents to buy bread. All I am saying is that children at the tender age of eight are old enough to know responsibility. Even the theorists say so, read Jean Piaget theory of cognitive development.
Catch them young, if you don’t teach them to be responsible at a tender age you will lament tomorrow in old age when they dump their family at your doorstep and disappear into thin air.
Let’s not kill them in the name of love . . . teach children to be responsible at a tender age.
Online Reporter