It Takes A Village.

The other day, a sister in church sharply chided another for rashly speaking to her 3-year-old in the name of discipline. She had been very upset and she had said it abruptly, right there in front of the kids. She had later told me that her son was already a timid person and they, his parents, were doing all they could to try to ease him out of his shell: they didn't need some adult barking at him like a dog. 

To be honest, this sister is another one who lacks tact but hers is simply because she is not very enlightened so I, and everyone else for that matter, can easily understand and overlook it. She normally says the most inappropriate things and generally doesn't know when a thing is sensitive- e.g she's "corrected" me many times for coloring my hair, wearing dangling earrings, kissing my child on the lips, the amount of pepper in my food (she'd come for my second's son's dedication and whilst I was entertaining the guests, she began teaching me how to cook in order to reduce the quantity of pepper in my jollof- the jollof that my toddler was enjoying no end might I add). Another sister who had been there and who had TTC for a while before she was blessed with her fruit, said to ignore her and told of how she had come by her home once and after eating the lady's homecooked meal, had exclaimed, "This is why you cannot conceive now, how can you conceive when you are setting your womb/innards on fire with this thing?". Pretty tactless if you ask me- doesn't matter how close we are. 

So she tends to be really harsh on her kids. I'm all for a good spank, a firm/assertive voice and a lot of dialogue but I get genuinely shocked whenever I see the way she slaps her girls with her spread out palms and drags them across the room. No judgement sha. I just hope she doesn't get in trouble for that in the future. She's normally in charge of the children section and after having observed her rebuke another child (pastor's 5-year-old) in a manner I can't aptly explain, I decided to begin to go to the section to be with my son. Like, the boy (pastor's child) is 5 whilst a lot of the other kids are 3- new born and so he is the oldest. She had been teaching the kids and asking questions about a biblical story she had just told and when her own child (who is a very intelligent 3 year old by the way) couldn't answer a question, the pastor's son jumped in to answer the question and she goes, "Femi* shut up! Don't answer anything, you are not the only child in this room, you are not better than anybody, allow others to answer". This might not sound anyhow to you reading this but, I didn't like it. The tone, the way it was said- I didn't like it. I looked at the other sister who also worked in the children's section and though I could swear I saw her freeze slightly, she simply drew her two daughters to her side and tried to keep them in check- probably to avoid the tactless sister's sharp mouth. That was the day I resolved to always join them at the centre, esp. because I know that my son is a handful.

The next meeting we had had me sitting with the kids and it became glaring that she either had some anger issues or just did not know a better way to express herself. She would scream at the kids and, in annoyance, say something like, "You're always destroying things! Only you, you've done this, you've done that, now now now- don't you know you are older than all these children?". This in itself is not a bad thing to say maybe but, still, I honestly did not like the way and manner it was said, in front of all the other children. Maybe I am too sensitive sha. And I was going to tell her exactly what I thought when I stopped myself and observed that the pastor's wife was right there, watching and just went about doing what she was doing. Now, our pastor's wife is like a mother hen over her children so I instantly recognised that there was something she was probably trying to teach the child. And then when the child misbehaves again and the lady screams at him, the pastor, who happened to be nearby, looked at his son and promised to spank him later for being bad- no one even saw what the lady did. And maybe rightfully so too!

It made me realise that maybe this was not a bad thing then. I mean, it takes a village to raise a child, the child should be able to take correction from elders- regardless of how the said elder corrects them- the child should be able to accept the different kinds of "raising" from different "parents" as long as it was in good faith and for their good. The tone and voice shouldn't matter and should not be the reason the child obstinately resists correction- because it was not said to them nicely, in the way their own parents would have told them. This lady provided the "raw material" we needed in this overly sane and polite environment, to let our children know that, "Everything is not always as kind and polite as it is in your school o, you must also obey people that give it to you in the naija country way- brusquely and without fine-tuning". And immediately, I appreciated her presence in our lives and decided to bite my tongue no matter what I see her do (in terms of discipline) but resolved to have a two aside with her if she ever went too far- not in front of the kids.

This is already turning into an epistle but let me quickly recap why I thought this. I remember in primary school, a teacher had flogged me and a relative (I can't remember why) and I remember I had reported this to my dad who came to school to confront the teacher in front of us. He must have done it out of love but I think this was one of the reasons I always had trouble with constituted authority- sort of. I always unconsciously felt you could not do anything to me as my father would put you in your place (he was in the military at the time). I think that, if you can, it's best to not feed your child's inner wilfulness. Teach respect for authority, obedience to stipulated rules. As much you want to show them you love them and support them against the world, except the teacher has "abused" your child by meting out discipline that is clearly not commensurate with the offence, I think it is a good idea to allow your child to be taught, to learn from another whose motives and intents you trust- as long as you keep an eye out and guide this teaching to make sure they are learning what they ought to learn from it.

What do you think about this guys? Makes sense or No sense? Please let me know in the comment section....


Hope you are having a good week, Have a very productive one my friends🙋

Wishing you Love and Light🙏🙏🙏
Love Always,
Judgejudyjduy...
Xxxxxx

P.s- I'm so sorry I haven't been responding to comments guys, I literally am swamped up a lot of the time and have so many comments that I need to respond to. Please leave them regardless and, I promise, I will respond to them. Like, I would go back to do that but it's past 3.38am in the morning and I am up still writing so you see how the day can go? I'll jump into bed and get maybe 3 hours worth of sleep and it's back on the grind with the kids- no time. But I will make the time to respond- so sorry🙏