The damage done when parents fail to listen

Present and past meeting

I am not one to watch horror films, but I happened upon the compelling viewing of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark which against my wiser instincts I watched.

What occurred to me was the very familiar story of a child seeing things and that child having serious problems convincing their guardians of their experiences.

We have been schooled with the view that kids tell tales or tell lies for opportunity, advantage or attention, even when those things begin to affect the emotional, social and mental stability of the child.

Choosing not to believe

Sadly, the issue of child sexual abuse, nightmares and ‘seeing things’ fall into the same category of experiences that parents or guardians flimsily dismiss as trivial and fantasy, leaving the child to suffer until more damage is done.

At times, they will find some rational or logical explanation, and for their benefit, they may be right, but it should never be grounds to dismiss whatever the child has been through. At the very least, trust the child and strive to verify exactly what troubles the child. Maybe get professional help, not elders, not pastors, not rituals - PROFESSIONAL HELP - Like psychotherapy.

I had a similar experience when I was 10, during the day, my aunt and our houseboy shared stories about unexplainable events, those stories which I heard and can still recall to complete detail became seeds fuelled by the vivid and fertile imagination of a child. My nightmare was about to start; we only needed the dark and the quiet to enliven it.

That evening we had guests, my mother’s childhood friend and her husband, she was also the step-mother of Tola Awobode, the Lare of Cock Crow At Dawn (Music video).

I can’t continue

Let me digress, I will have to write this story fully another time, in fact, every time I have attempted to write this story, I have been distracted. It is possible, I do not know whether, the story will really be written, and I’m in shock.

My memory serves me well, that only yesterday, as I wondered how I remembered parts of the home address of my friend, he asked how far my vivid memory goes and I answered, back to about the age of three.

I began this blog to write about the need for parents and guardians to pay greater heed, sometimes against their better judgement if that comes into play to certain radically life changing experience of their wards, the scars of which I still bear and part of what sometimes still informs the way I interact with my parents.

The need for professional therapy

My experience was dismissed as fantasy by my father, my mother however was anxious, he left her to throw whatever she could into the situation to help me when probably professional therapy would have helped rather than visits to spiritualists of different persuasions, which with hindsight heightened my anxiety and weakened my ability to deal with the situation for decades after the event.

I read Psalms over bottles, cups, or buckets of water, seeing religious service as a fearful dreadful experience that required you pay for any comfort or peace through some laborious routine of service, recitation and ritual, it was not a lovely episode in my young life that continued into my first term in boarding school.

I guess, I have gotten the substance of my intent across without touching the detail of my personal experience.

However, in digging up this memory, I just now found out from the Internet that Tola Awobode had died just over 4 years ago. We knew her as Auntie Tola, it was a pleasure to watch her perform as Lare on Cock Crow at Dawn, I never knew what else she did – that is what I have now just read in her obituary.

England: They will not go unpunished

We will punish

Repeatedly, as my heart bled with anguish and horror at the news of little children that died at the hands of their parents, I was never fully satisfied with the justice that punished the horrors, but it was justice all the same.

Today, it was the turn of Amanda Hutton to go to jail, for the death of 4-year old Hamzah Khan, who she cruelly starved to death and then left mummified in his cot for nearly two years.

For her cruelty charged as manslaughter, child cruelty and preventing the lawful burial of a child, she will go to jail for 15 years and that can never be long enough for the harrowing, reprehensible and disgraceful circumstances that greeting the dying days of Hamzah that could have been for years.

Placing the responsibility right

There is no way to fully understand why a mother could be so evil beyond words having altogether had six children, the oldest of which is 24 years old who received a suspended sentence of 2 years for preventing the burial of his brother.

I am glad that the findings did not give her a bye on the possibility of diminished responsibility, but held her responsible fully for the heinous crimes against her son.

Rights even in death

As with Victoria Climbié, Peter Connelly (Baby P), Daniel Pelka and the 6 Philpott children who perished in a fire set by their own parents, we as a society will not stand for the abuse of children by their parents and guardians, and though we might have failed to prevent their abuse, we will not fail in punishing the perpetrators.

Each face and name is testament that these children, even if not precious and beautiful in the eyes of the people we expect to unconditionally love them, they have a right to have a voice for justice in the hope that less of this becomes the regular news of our times.

Lawful burials

We must have lessons to learn of these events for early intervention where abuse is suspected and for more intrusive official enquiry where a child appears to be in danger.

I never knew there was a crime of preventing the lawful burial of the dead – an unusual crime, in fact, I take that back; the heir to the Tetrapak fortune, Hans Kristian Rausing, was charged with that crime in 2012 for not burying his wife who had been dead for months.

May the souls of those dear children rest in peace; I do hope no other child is suffering today like these have suffered before.

Thought Picnic: The Barrier to Confiding in our Guardians

My troubles in me

As I sat on the train on my way back to North Wales this evening I began to think about things that have happened to me that probably would not have become big problems further on in my life if I had someone who could help to talk to then.

Some might wonder if my childhood was as idyllic as I have so painted it in many blogs before, what could have left me tongue-tied on more personal and emotional issues that I have now acquired the knack for writing about now.

Under their noses

Indeed, I had an enchanted childhood, we lacked for nothing materially and we had much freedom and the support of extended family and servants for the convenience of my parents and ourselves, we had it good.

However, within that somewhat safe setting, we lost our innocence and were exploited by those who were supposed to care for us and somehow we never seemed to pluck up the courage against threat and fear to approach our guardians to put a stop to the atrocities.

Unresolved emotional baggage

In the end and I think I speak for many, we have carried humongous emotional baggage into our adulthood where many are still trying to get some sort of normalcy in their lives and existence hoping the situation if we have learnt the better of our past does not become a vicious cycle of the failings that we then pass on to our wards.

It goes without saying and people of our parents’ generation probably thought children had no emotional problems, we could be seen but not be heard, we were to listen but never to engage in discussion, we ran errands but our latitude for initiative was constrained to a modal expectation of the best behaviour we were to acquire even if we had no example of such character.

Tradition gave voice and truth to the older, it gave honour and absolution to the community leader and if the child ever did have a voice that got heard, at home it was trouble and in school it was radical – in both cases curtailment came through corporal punishment, the child was moulded by stripes and pain – a cuddle or a kiss was a sign of weakness, whilst encouragement if any was never effusive for the fear that the child might become big-headed.

Fear for respect

I was however taken aback but the resonance of a tweet I sent on the train which read thus – “When our parents confused our fear of them with our respect of them, they lost the many times we could have confided in them.”

Our fear of our guardians was supposed to be a moderating influence on our behaviour, the fear of rebuke and harsh discipline apparently made us think of the consequences of our actions the inference was our fear was a sign of respect but what that also did was it raised barriers to interaction and conversation where it was necessary, we have internalised much hurt and abuse until when we have the independence to give voice to what could have festered for decades.

Break that chain

It is interesting that this issue is not just identified with cultures I am quite familiar with because even in Spain lenticular printed posters are being put up that reveal at a child’s eye-level what adults would not see at their eye-level, information about who they could call if they do need to confide in someone.

Sadly, everywhere somewhere a child cared for by someone does not necessarily have the sympathetic ear of that person on the deeper issues of life – questions, concerns, troubles and fears – we must break that chain and refuse to allow the damage we have experienced become a generational heirloom handed down to those that follow us.

Thought Picnic: House helps in the family setting

An inspiring blog

My blogging compatriot TwinsTaiye who pens the Pause to Ponder blog has apparently returned to blogging and that is a welcome situation considering the many who have deserted blogging for the sound bite laziness of Twitter though cannot concentrate their views to 140 characters with space for a reTweet or the extraversion of Facebook.

I could not ignore his latest blog that was titled When Domestic Helps are Dubious [1] which highlighted a number of points about the employment of domestic helps and the safety of children who are put in their care when the parents are absent from the home.

In some ways, I also had a seemingly enchanted childhood, we were generally well-off and always had help around the house, at one point we had a houseboy, a housegirl, a gardener, a security guard and vehicle drivers all to ease the burden of the extraneous on my parents.

My parents did much to treat these people humanely, they showed concern, offered support and I know at least two cases where the servants having left their employ were seen through school and helped with references for employment elsewhere.

Hiring a house help

That however was the rosy side of having house helps, there was a more sinister and unspoken side to this issue that until recently I have hardly dealt with because it is both difficult and culturally anathema to discuss.

In TwinsTaiye’s blog he begins with the need to obtain good references of anyone being invited to work within a family unit – in fact, I believe most of the recruits to our family labour front were once employees of people known to my parents or related to such employees that they came usually highly recommended and well vouched for.

He suggests that calls be made regularly to the home and most especially to a landline, we never had a landline, I doubt there is any market in residential landlines in Nigeria anymore, nor do I think people are acquiring much of that elsewhere.

More so, landlines can be redirected to mobile phones, though, if a landline exists it is useful advice. Good neighbourliness must not be sniffed at; they indeed may notice funny activity that the parents being away may not realise is happening; cultivating this is paramount in any case.

Witness and involvement

He suggests a relative be present and stretches the idea that siblings or parents are unlikely to harm the children; I really could not entirely agree with this notion, there are too many cases of uncles, aunties, cousins and other close relations taking advantage of the trust reposed in them to abuse the wards in their care.

The issue of parental responsibility is critical, whilst is it important to provide shelter, food, clothing, education and health to the child and many lives are driven by these needs, they do not in and of themselves constitute a full expression of parental love and care.

Too many parents have been absent too long from the company of their “God’s gifts” that they do not develop and cultivate essential relationships of trust, rather that of fear and terror masquerading as respect is what parents demand.

There are many times being able to chat to one’s parents about serious issues never presented themselves because of the dread and fear that had been schooled into the child from a very early age.

Parental terror is very unhealthy and time does not do much to heal the pain of lacking essential communication between parent and child in the developmental years when it really mattered most. The obsession with academic success of the child sometimes masks the ability for parents to recognise problem areas in the child and find effective ways to helping the child grow into a well-rounded being.

Juvenile genitalia education

“Teach your child (especially your daughter) the parts of her body that are off limits to anybody except you or a doctor.”

Never has such advise been so important to parenting than this, though the last time my parent probably made any comment about my genitals would have been at circumcision, I doubt if they considered when my balls dropped and I cannot count the number of unauthorised persons who had touched, fondled and exacted pleasure at my expense and to my terror from when I was 7.

You were completely unnerved that it was impossible to suggest anything like this was happening, in one instance, I helped someone else report the abuse they had suffered but never mentioned that which I had. I had been co-opted into pederasty a willing catamite oblivious of the wrongness of what was happening to me because it was offered as good, wholesome, secret and fun.

Boys and girls get abused by adults of both sexes, the presumption that boys are abused less or are only abused by males needs to be disabused – there is no triumph of machismo in a boy being knowledgeable about the feminine pudendum.

Your kids knowing you properly

In our patriarchal society, our parents are never known by name whilst is it more than pertinent that the child know the full names of their parents for all sorts of reasons, what they do, where they work and how they can contacted.

However, this kind of information can only be properly exchanged if parents make good quality time for their kids and devote themselves to developing friendly and open communication between themselves and their children.

From what I saw in my home, my parents were never unkind to all their servants, we were taught to treat them with utter respect and deference, they were part of our household and many looked on my parents as their mentors even when they took more spoils than their salaries in secret.

House helps and people invited into our household have had a very defining and indelible effect on my life and outlook to a lot of things and whilst one appears to have matured and learnt many lessons, there is no telling that many other children may never get to out-grow the effects of such negative influences.

Praying for your kids and being vigilant; well, if you need to be told that you need to wonder why you are at all a parent – I very well appreciate that the world out there presents challenges and problems, children can be a handful but the primary concern for your wards cannot take second place to any other responsibility you might have – it just can’t.

I fully acknowledge the inspiration gained from Twinstaiye’s blog in writing this blog.

Source

[1] Pause to Ponder: When Domestic helps are Dubious

Childhood: The ways we were punished

It brought a wry smile

Maybe the time is ripe for a biography of sorts; the many seemingly inconsequential things in the past all seem to find a way of generating paragraphs of text that could mean nothing at all.

Fear but not loathing was always present at home, though I had never seen the patriarch raise his hand to his only brother who lived with us a while, his kid sister did feel the harsh end of corporal punishment that terrified us no end.

Beaten to pulp

There was the rare occasion that we were not spared the rod, the brutal collisions with our backsides as we cried out with agony our parents oblivious of the hurt, maybe in concern like the blacksmith hammering on an anvil, we were being straightened out; it was knowledge they had that we were never privy to.

A witness I have been to punishment that was closer to brutal torture than a corrective exercise, I even vicariously offered myself in place of the child who had lied to her parents, it was just too upsetting that everyone became upset too.

The Yorubas of South-Western Nigeria have a saying that translated roughly to – If a child is disciplined with the right hand, it is comforted with the left hand – I have seen many instances of discipline but very few of the comforting, the child is supposed to be self-comforting in the knowledge that it has roof, food, school and clothing provided for – love expressed in the crudest fashion.

Deprivations and commands

How can one forget the other punishments in the arsenal of those who have the power to mete such out? Stand in the corner facing the wall – a child needs an independent unrestrained spirit even if it were just idling; our parents did not have the more sophisticated tools of docking pocket money, that is, if you ever had any; detention or grounding – those are liberal Western constructs that could hardly tame the almost “feral” African child – allow my expressive licence, I pray.

More disconcerting was – raise up your hands and close your eyes or the more cruel – kneel down, raise up your hands and close your eyes. The raise up your hands part was really stretching up your arms and hands vertically – you could be there for hours deprived of visual perception, the restraint borne from the command tires you out, arms aching or knees hurting – the child might end up crying.

I could never tell if you were released out of pity or that the sadistic nature of the torturer had been exhausted to the point of not being able to bear it anymore. Only this time, the release always seemed to come with some admonition.

You sense they never want to do it again, but the child just seems to be punishment-prone, unfortunately, there is no therapy for this situation, rather you are back to sensory deprivation in the hope that some lesson will be learnt.

He stoops to ponder

Stoop down! If you don’t know it, you have never been there – The index finger of one hand touching the ground, the other arm behind the back with one foot raised as you stoop forward, the leg you are standing on must be as straight as possible and you should maintain that balance for as long as the wicked instigator will have you stay there.

Parents, elders, teachers and seniors in college have exercised that level of control and rotten tortuous power over lesser ones – we know your names and some of you we would neither forgive nor forget.

I could never understand the emotion my mother expressed in not having arrived early enough to witness the burial of one such guardian who meted out such unspeakable punishments on her when she was a child – somewhere these people earn respect and reverence in the broad context of life, what they did was only for a while and hopefully it would never ever define what we eventually become.