SKB: Any Act of Parenting After 18 Years is Damage Control

Your three year old son throws a stone from the balcony of your two-storey building. The stone hit a neighbor on the head and injures him. You come out and apologize to the neighbor on behalf of your three years old son. You even tell your son to say sorry to “uncle”. He does that and “uncle” is okay. He ignores your son’s action. “Uncle” is fine now.

 The wounded neighbor understands that it was just a child acting and that he didn’t

know what he was doing. Twelve years later, your son is now fifteen, and has a

very good knowledge of what is right and wrong. Again, he throws an object down

from your two-storey building which injures a neighbor’s child. The neighbor

comes out and this time insists you have to take their child for treatment. You

have to take responsibility for your child’s action. You take your neighbor’s child

for treatment and afterwards, you come back home to reprimand your child for

acting foolishly. Three years down the line, your son is now a first year student in

the university. Your son throws an object into a crowd, and it falls on someone’s

head. The victim faints and is rushed to the hospital. Your son is apprehended and

handed over to the police. He is charged to court, and the prosecutor pleads

malicious intent, and prays the court to sentence your son to prison.

In the first instance, your son is only a child. He cannot be held legally responsible

for his actions. You are still responsible, legally, for his actions. But your neighbor

ignores his actions because he understands that your son is only a child. At fifteen

years old, your neighbor understands that your son is still a child, but that this

time he has a better understanding and know the difference between right and

wrong. So he demands that you take full responsibility for the treatment of his

injured child, knowing that you could’ve taught your son better. He expects that

you should’ve taught your son how not to behave. He also expects that you

should’ve taught your son that actions have consequences, and that society will

hold him to account for his actions. Fast forward three years later, and your son is

facing the prospect of a time in jail. Why? The society is now holding him

accountable for his actions. The society now see your son as an adult who is fully

aware of the consequences of his actions; an adult who is his own person and has

his own mind.

The weight of expectation on you (as a parent) from the society stems from the

fact that you are a parent. It is your responsibility to train your child. A parent is

a person who has the responsibility of care for a young person or child. Parents

can be natural (in which case your gametes resulted in a child), or unnatural. A

child, as defined by The Child Rights Legislation in Nigeria is a person below the

age of eighteen years. Put differently, the law says that as long as your child is

eighteen and above, he is no longer a child. Safe to say that the law expects your

child to be able to answer for himself. At this point, the law expects your son to

have been fully prepared for society. The constitution now grants him some rights

and privileges which hitherto were not available to him. The law is now beginning

to treat your child like an adult! Now the law says that at eighteen years old, your

son can smoke, drink a beer; your son can drive a car, enter into a legally binding

agreement, own a company; but most importantly, your son can go to jail if he

deviates from the law.

Considering that the law expects all these from your child at eighteen, it implies

that by eighteen your child should’ve known the basic things he needs to face

society. You should’ve taught him. And if by eighteen your child is not ready to

face society and the world outside your home, I can aver that you failed in your

duties to that child as his/her parent. If at eighteen you drop your daughter off at

her college campus, and you’re afraid for her safety, not confident that you have

raised a fine woman who is ready to face the world; you failed to prepare her for

society and what comes therefrom, you failed in your parenting.

I will tell you why.

Parenting happens from age 0 – 18 years. You are a mother/father for life, but a

parent for only eighteen years. It is in the first eighteen years of a child’s life that

you have all the time in the world to install every software your child will run on

in their adulthood; including an anti-virus software. Whatever software you fail to

install in your child, society will install when they get out there. Your anti-virus

(rebukes, warnings, teachings, corrections, disciplines, admonitions, reprimands,

etc.) will help shield them from malicious programming from society.

In the bid to parent a child, some go to the extreme. This is the point where it gets

difficult to tell if you’re parenting or overparenting. Much as not giving enough

parenting can have catastrophic effects on a child’s overall progression and

disposition, overparenting can do moreso.

Overparenting happens when a parent exerts excessive parental control deep into

their child’s adult life. It happens more often than not, as a result of a parent not

being overly certain about their child’s readiness to face society, even in

adulthood. It can also be as a result of a parent being so protective, and not

wanting their adult-child to make bad choices. Truth remains, that if a parent

confidently raised their child to take on life, the parent will not be afraid to let

their child make choices, make mistakes, fail, and learn from failures. These are

the things that help form the total adult child.

For some reason, your child will leave home someday; meaning that you will have

to suddenly “give up” your choking influence on the child. You will no longer be

able to continue your influence on a daily basis. It doesn’t take a genius to

surmise that it might have a tremendous negative impact on your child. The child

might then feel like they’ve been left in an apathetic vacuum; frustrated, and not

knowing how to proceed or what to think or feel. They simply haven’t been taught

the basic life skill of risk estimation, making choices, and navigating possibilities.

Elsewhere, another overparented child, might be thrilled with their new found

freedom and might simply not be able to resist the natural temptation to act out

and try various risk related activities. Now, having not learnt that behavior has

consequences, they may find themselves in bad situations that they are not

equipped to handle.

Suddenly the child who has been “spoon-fed” or controlled all their life is thrown

into a situation where they are expected to behave as adults and take

responsibility for their own decisions and actions. Preparation is much more

effective than over protection. It teaches your child to function in the real world.

The only way a child will learn to become themselves, and show their true self, is

when they are allowed to be themselves. Pure logic.

Train up a child in the way he/she should go, and when he is old he/she will not

depart from it (Prov. 22:6); but when you fail to train up your child, and he ends

up a dysfunctional adult; any act to parent him in adulthood, becomes damage

control. It shows you have failed in your responsibility to that child as their

parent.