For Healing and Forgetting

Abandonment and Healing

I suppose everybody hurts in different ways, and the path to healing may never be a prescription like a pill to deal with a simple headache. Over the past year, as I have lived in the expectation of turning 60, I have also relived memories and events from my early childhood that exude all kinds of pain.

On several occasions, I have shared my experience of secondary boarding school and how the lasting impact meant I have no enduring relationships from that time, neither with friends nor teachers. Whilst there are occasional messages from old schoolmates, I received only one congratulatory message representative of my time in secondary school.

The Trauma of Boarding School

Whilst I was aware of the broader decision-making process my parents engaged in when putting me in boarding school far away from home, it was only recently that I began to appreciate some of the trauma associated with that phase of my life. The privilege of going to boarding school should not mask the lifelong consequences of that experience.

It was meant to toughen me up and give me a sense of independence, but it also destroyed my trust and willingness to confide in them about other aspects of exploitation and abuse that I had suffered before, during, and after the boarding school period. I internalised so much when I should have been screaming for help.

Even when I took therapy, it was limited to addressing the catastrophic loss of status, means, and livelihood after my first encounter with cancer. I still had to fight for that service because I presented none of the indicators of ideation that people typically display with depression or even suicide. Yet I was hurting and suffering, coping mostly through what I learnt in my religious beliefs.

Understanding Boarding School Syndrome

The psychologist Joy Schaverien, who died in 2025, described the hidden trauma from early boarding school experiences using four key elements: Abandonment (separation from parents), Bereavement (grief from loss of family), Captivity (powerless feeling in an institutional setting), and Dissociation (detaching from feelings to cope).

She termed this the ABCD of Boarding School Syndrome, though it should not be limited to the boarding school experience in England alone. I was in boarding school in Nigeria, and it extends beyond those institutional settings to family and life in general.

Abandonment came in many forms: the early months of incubation, being left with foster parents (a norm in the 1960s that acquired the term "farming"), even one 'caring' family starving me, the mental torture of being threatened with reliving a dreadful experience to buy my silence, the lack of curiosity when abuse was reported, and obviously the boarding school experience itself.

This was compounded by the refusal to bring me back after realising my coping mechanisms were highly stressed. [The Guardian: ‘Farmed’: why were so many Black children fostered by white families in the UK?]

Given time, I could develop the other elements of 'BCD', but there is enough in Abandonment to see how it can be the root of additional trauma. None of this has found any means of discussion between the affected parties, except in the catharsis of my writing over the last two decades.

Love and Protection

This is not to say that I am unloved. I am deeply loved, but trauma can set you up for feeling both unloved and unlovable. Love cannot be passive; it needs expression and the conveyance of tangibility and feeling.

Much as we do need a hedge of protection around us in all the issues of life, that hedge can easily look like prison walls, giving you the earnest desire to escape because you are caught in a claustrophobic enclosure that suffocates every facility of self-expression. Their protection becomes your prison, an overcompensation that does no one any favours.

Faith and Letting Go

In three situations, this aspect of hurt has been challenged: from preaching tapes I have listened to, in a sermon at the crossover service I attended on New Year's Eve, and from Brian. "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past." [Bible Hub: Isaiah 43:18]. You wonder, how do you let go of the past when it still has that much of a hold on you?

It involves taking your eyes off that and looking to see something else that God is trying to catch my attention with. "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." [Bible Hub: Isaiah 43:19]. This would suggest I do not need therapy, but belief, trust, and faith. A bit of empathetic counselling could help build that trust too.

Finally, much as it is difficult to explain, there is healing in reconciliation: just reconnecting and carrying on rather than raking over the coals of angst and trauma. Let God handle the broken wings, as we get beyond the narrative to become more than just Boarding School Survivors of childhood and adolescent trauma. The eagle will fly and soar again.

References

The Guardian: ‘Breaking our spirits was the plan’: the lifelong impact of having gone to boarding school

Bloomfield Health: Boarding school syndrome

LinkedIn: Boarding School Syndrome: Understanding the Hidden Trauma Behind Privileged Education

Hope Therapy and Counselling Services: Did Boarding School Shape Who You Are?

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Childhood: How fostering or adoption shaped us

Children assuaging parenting yearning

It is the dichotomy of perception between privilege and deprivation that at this end of viewing things almost allows for the manifest evil of the past to be excused as a function of those times.

What is rarely considered is how singularly or even more certain experiences have shaped character, shifted identity, and quite possibly left one fortunate, there are positives and negatives, both of which need to be explored.

At the onset, after reading about adoptions instigated from the Netherlands for presumed orphans from Bangladesh against whom paperwork suggested tragedy or adversity, the apparently falsified documentation has been exposed as such.

The adoptees are now finding out they have or had parents, siblings, and relationships from which they were extricated for the market satisfaction (it had to have money involved, a kind of transaction that everyone deigns to forget) of the craving for parenting in the West. [The Guardian: The stranger across from me was my sister: how one adoptee uncovered a tragic past]

Every kind of living away from kin

It is in a spectrum, some situations not as bad as others in adoptions, fostering with the extreme case of farming, childminding, care homes, or orphanages, if I were to limit the scope of the options available for caring for children over a generation ago. [The Guardian: ‘Farmed’: why were so many Black children fostered by white families in the UK?]

The enthusiasm with which I started to write soon was overwhelmed by the gravity of the matter, it cannot be captured in a single story, rather, it is the bringing together of many experiences that can begin to create a picture of what really went on. I decided to press on if only to start a conversation.

The privilege over deprivation construct

I remember a friend on a walk around the shores of the lagoon bordering the University of Lagos saying to me that those of us born abroad just seem to have a daring and boldness that others do not naturally exhibit.

In myself, when I was in Nigeria, I suppose there were exhibitions of precociousness, questioning, challenge, and fearlessness that might have set me apart, at times advantageous, especially in expressing oneself but could be disadvantageous in not understanding norms, values, traditions, or the culture.

“As an adoptee you often hear, ‘You’re lucky, now you have a good life.’ But you cannot really compare the two,” says Kana. “In one sense I feel lucky that I have the best of both worlds. But nothing makes up for the loss you had to endure. Because I lost my family and my real identity.” Kana Verheul in the article.

My father would say, “You have always thought like a westerner.”, my brother did say in passing, “You are not one of us.” The fact is I belonged without actually belonging. The sanguineous ties are pulled asunder by other influences that in the experience of life can make us such radically different people.

The boy was starved

My parents as students in England had me quite early in many ways, I arrived 10 weeks prematurely, which meant for survival I was in incubation in another city for over 2 months.

Then primarily, my father was here for his accountancy qualifications and my mother had to work and, in the process, get an education too, not necessarily encouraged by him, at least, that is the story I am told.

My mother travelled around England into Wales seeking the appropriate kind of family to care for me whilst they were busy trying to better themselves. I cannot remember any of the people I supposedly stayed with, we called them nannies, but all the times I had with my parents in that childhood along with their friends and the siblings of their friends who were babysitters, I seem to recall.

One narrative I heard from my mum was on a visit back home from my foster parents, I was sneaking out to the refrigerator to steal food. She caught me a few times and could not understand why I would be stealing food until she found out that my wonderful foster parents were starving me. And these were people paid for the service, it was not a charity mission.

Radical consequences of childhood experiences

The consequences of the fear of hunger registered and were impactful long after we returned to Nigeria, and I was living with my parents along with having house helps to manage things when they were away. I do remember snatching food out of lunch boxes of fellow students, in fact, there were a few of us that did that.

Indeed, on balance, my whole life has been a wonderful experience marked by interesting events and circumstances. There are very many character traits and inflexions I could almost definitely trace to something that happened in my childhood, some of which I have written about in my blogs. I do need to get a move on with my story.

However, what is evident from many of the stories people are sharing is the illegality and criminality that thrived in the trading of children for different levels of convenience in the view that the children were being given a better life to the exclusion of an environment that would give them an identity or present them with a serious identity crisis.

Finding our way regardless

We almost always faced some sort of discrimination because of differences, however, minute and I recall the time a slow development of my motor skills left me not as agile as one would expect someone of my age it annoyed my dad and he coined a phrase for it that suggested a kind of impairment, someone at school somewhat deduced I was prematurely born and decided to make fun of me, he never did again, after I was finished.

Concerning the topic in discussion, it was my accent that set me apart as probably those of a mixed-race provenance would have been, then talk of brown babies or children in largely white neighbourhoods and schools. At home or abroad and there was no clear definition of either, you tried to fit in, you could not account for the cards you were dealt, you played the game you were in.

Closure for many would simply be coming to terms with who they are, and possibly finding out about relationships they never knew they had. It is unlikely that any of the people who were involved in the abuse of the children would ever see justice, even if they are still alive.

References

British Council: Farming (film)

Related Blogs

Blog - Childhood: The pupils of Corona School, Shamrock House, Bukuru, Jos

Blog - Childhood: The pupils of Corona School, Shamrock House, Bukuru, Jos - II

Blog - Childhood: The pupils of Corona School, Shamrock House, Bukuru, Jos - III

Blog - Childhood: Standing up to the powerful

Blog - Nigeria: Gone is the Jos I knew

Blog - Childhood: My aunts saw red

Blog - Childhood: The fruits of a chicken napping dog

Blog - Childhood: Driving the languages of sacrifice

Blog - The masterpieces of memory

Blog - Even more memories of a child

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Blog - Rayfield, Jos - Memories of a child

Thought Picnic: In a moment of filial indiscretion

In the telling

My father who is 83 today is an interesting man of numerous talents, great generosity, and impactful mentoring ability, along with considerable human failings as we all are for any story that might get told of us.

However, this is not the time to dwell on those matters for in a lifetime a scion is as much equipped with the knowledge to write both hagiography and excoriation with an equal consequence if presented with the glee of indiscretion.

Of associative relationships

I guess there are ways in which I probably do not appreciate my parents as much as I can even as they are in this year octogenarians both. It is funny that I recently found the words to understand some of what that relationship affects.

At nativity, a time for bonding was lost to the need to give a prematurely born child the opportunity to thrive. The first description of what I looked like depending on who was relating the story varied from lizard to hamster, though it was agreed that I only fit in the palm of my father’s hand before I was shipped off to the city of Birmingham to be incubated for two months.

Our familial relationship is more associative than anything, they stuck to me, reared me, took responsibilities on my behalf and gave me both a start in life and the makings of a world outlook that defines beliefs, expressions, actions, and much else.

A preview loosed

For that, I can only be grateful and thankful, I love them if I understood what love is, yet at various times, I have cultivated these relationships on my own terms, when I want to communicate, how I choose my viewpoints, the audacity of opinion respectful and truthful, for a child, I could well be an aberration given unusual liberties.

I cannot even remember why I started this blog for its course was not essentially to post a birthday greeting, I was thinking of what might end up in a book I am trying to write. The broader narrative will be found there, this is just a synopsis.

My boarding school story still affects me

Parents in the know

I have been watching with rapt and engaged attention the developments on the Nigerian Twittersphere about boarding school life and bullying, that began following the unfortunate death of Sylvester Oromoni, a 12-year-old pupil of Dowen College in Lagos as a result of an apparently coerced initiation into a cult. [BBC News: Sylvester Oromoni: Nigerians demand justice over Dowen College death]

My boarding school experience which started over 45 years ago was a decision by my parent to give me a grounding in our culture and traditions, as we lived in the north of Nigeria and they were from the southwest, I was born abroad with a good few things well-formed, language and speech, mannerisms and attitude, I was somewhat a stranger not integrating enough into what should be a Nigerian.

Back home to black out

On the other hand, they also wanted to toughen me up as I began to relive the separation anxiety that I experienced in England. For I was preterm by 10 weeks and that was spent mostly in an incubator in Birmingham whilst my parents worked and studied in Walsall. I also had a bit of fostering and being moved around foster carers as they progressively could not find suitable ones, one even starved me that I took to stealing food out of the refrigerator when I was back with my parents. Odd behaviour, my mother thought until she found out what was happening.

Just after my 10^th birthday, the common entrance examination season for secondary school admission started, my parents were not looking for any schools near home, I was in taking exams in the old Western State and Lagos to the extent that I was away from home for over 4 months living with relations mostly met for the first time when they came to pick me up from the airport. For a while, I was with my cousins when the February 1976 coup happened.

Blog - Childhood: Shocked into adolescence

On my return home in late May, I already had another baby sister, amongst other things too distressing to talk about here and then as a listener with wild tales about paranormal activity between my aunt and our new house servant, I began seeing things, apparitions of otherworldly figures that my father dismissed as fantasy. My parents weren’t listening to me.

Blog - Thought Picnic: The reality beyond the augmented

A misfit adrift

I prepared for boarding school with much of what I needed to fit in wrong, my shorts should have been light green, they were grey, I could not tell if that was a typographic error on the part of the school or something my mother misread. I had a hefty machete to cut the grass when what I needed was the equivalent of a scimitar. This introduction to boarding school life was brutal and harsh, so I left essential personal health things undone and resumed bedwetting that rarely ever happened in the past year or so.

Soon, I was seeing things in the night, ghosts, I thought, and recited Psalm 23 all through the night until I was completely tired out. Amongst my classmates, I was in the younger cohort by an average of 2 years and were it not for my early development, I would have been picked on more, just as I was the butt of jokes and extreme ridicule.

That first term was torture and when news of my situation reached my parents, I know that my mother’s best friend tried to prevail on them to bring me back to the north, which they refused to do, confident in their reasoning that the boarding school experience was essential to my education and tough education it was I found ways to adapt and survive whilst keeping counsel of my own situation. My parents weren’t listening.

New terms of engagement

The Christmas holiday was spent in the village with my grandparents and my father came to visit for a week. In that time, we visited grottos and medicine men, had incisions in all sorts of places, drank concoctions, some too vile to describe. All to the goal of curing me of my apparent ailment or psychological illness, but never once did I see a professional, a specialist or a paediatrician in psychology or psychiatry, which with hindsight might have done me a world of good.

The first half of the second term, I spent as a day student living with my aunt because the boarding house could not endure another half-term of nightly disruptions from an apparently unstable child.

I returned to the boarding house in the second half of the second term and appeared to settle down to school. To my parents, their planning was working, I was becoming more independent and may be responsible. Responsible for some things they probably would not have liked me to be responsible for.

You get by even with the injustice

There was bullying and abuse, much that I try to forget, and I made friends with similar backgrounds, though I was more privileged in that when they were returning home for holidays, they got on trains to the north. I was picked up and taken to the airport to fly home, there are things where my parents really did lay out the red carpet for their son. Even when we moved from Kaduna to Lagos, at half-term and the end of term, the driver arrived in time to take me back home. No fuss.

In the last year at school, we returned for summer school which was going well for a few weeks when some amongst us looking for fun in their riotous youthful exuberance raided the girl’s hostel causing damage to property and harming some of the girls. Many of us were oblivious of what had happened, but rather than investigate, the Parents Teachers Association imposed collective punishment on all the boys, and we were expelled from the boarding school for the fifth year.

The vice-principal came to the hostels to see us pack up to leave, and she said to my hearing as she looked at a few of us that she knew we were not involved in that melee. I spent my fifth year as a day student, and it is a huge upheaval to my early education. For that unjust act, I have not forgiven Remo Secondary School (RSS) for that injustice from 40 years ago. I believe I would have had a better leaving school result had I stayed in boarding school.

My education was searing

The result of my boarding school experience is more far-reaching than I sometimes realise. For whilst, I am in contact with some of my school and classmates through social media, I have no enduring friendships. That time represents when I seemed to fall into clinical depression from which I did not recover or find any bearings for 5 years. It also took completely leaving my parents’ and home too. The boarding school experience had schooled me into preferring to be away.

I have not participated in any RSS old student association activities or offered any support for first the reason I gave earlier and out of the fact that part of the leadership has some of the people who bullied me in charge. It is strange that a couple of years ago, one of them attended an event I was at, I would not have recognised him and if I did, I most definitely would not have approached him.

Not another chance to do that again

The most consequential part of this boarding school experience and I was speaking to Brian about it is Nigeria. When I left Nigeria, I left for good. I have family and relations in Nigeria, my father, an octogenarian and my mother a septuagenarian, I have felt a bit shamefaced about not seeing them in a very long time, but the truth is we broke those strong affinity bonds much earlier in life when they were being strong parents.

I can forgive them the boarding school experience, but the result is the result, I am not inclined to get on the plane to see anyone, much as I love them and would probably miss them when they are gone. I do the necessary in supporting them as much as I can and that is where we are at. Boarding school shapes you, marks you, scars you, if you have a child in boarding school, be prepared for the unintended consequences. Yes, I am well into my fifties, and it is a wound that never healed, I just learnt to tend it and live with it.

Blog - Childhood: Ghosts and ghouls of my past

Blog - Thought Picnic: A child has memories that last a lifetime  

Lil Nas X - MONTERO - The Pied Piper is here

Setting it up

There is something about Montero Lamar Hill, also known as Lil Nas X that is enthralling, engaging, and arresting. Now, I am not a fan of rap music or any music where the apparent absence of enunciation leaves you having to attune your ear to patterns, rhythms, cadences, and much else to understand what is being said. I guess I will always need subtitles.

A story in antiquity tells of the town of Hamelin in Germany where an infestation of rats might well have introduced a plaque. Then came a stranger who promised to rid the town of the rats for a payment, he did do so playing his pipe and attracting the rats out of the town into the River Weser where the rats drowned.

On returning to the town to collect payment, he was refused. The Pied Piper then returned one day, playing a magical tune, had all the children follow him out of town into oblivion as certain legends have it, never to be seen again. The evil of not keeping promises and treating a person with courtesy, respect, and dignity was visited back on the town of Hamelin by the loss of their children. [Wikipedia: Pied Piper of Hamelin]

The piper in his element

I just watched the video of Lil Nas X’s new release, Montero (Call Me by Your Name), it is filled with a lot of mystical symbolism, and the lyrics have much hedonistic context for suggestion, eroticism, homosexual sex, drugs, and drink. Whilst a lot of this is Computer-generated Imagery (CGI), he descends the longest pole into the belly of the earth where he apparently lap dances the devil before strangling him and wearing his crown, thereby sprouting wings like the angelic being that Lucifer once was.

You can imagine the outrage, hot flushes, disgust, recriminations, and agitation from people who think they are good parents, the conservatives and the religious at all this with their confected rage about protecting children and all that. Let’s hear what Lil Nas X has to say.

Your responsibility, not mine

To the parents: “I am an adult. I am not gonna spend my entire career trying to cater to your children. that is your job.” [Tweet] In another tweet, he writes, “I literally sing about lean & adultery in Old Town Road. U decided to let your child listen. Blame yourself.”

About the depictions in the video with a mind on the ultra-religious that have preached about homosexuals going to hell, he says, “I spent my entire teenage years hating myself because of the shit y’all preached would happen to me because I was gay. So, I hope u are mad, stay mad, feel the same anger you teach us to have towards ourselves.” [Tweet]

So, there you have it, you tell someone that he is going to hell because of who he is, he uses his creative talent to give you a vision of your words and you are angry about him, about it, fearful for your kids and much else?

Love your rats or pay up

Therein is the advent of a modern-day Pied Piper, the parents who loved the music but failed to listen to the lyrics and gave their children full rein to enjoy the song and the video that won even a Grammy are like the people of Hamelin who were happy to see the rats piped out of town.

Now, as Lil Nas X has continued to showcase his talent with a full expression of his sexuality and giving life to the stereotypes thrown at many of us who just happen to be gay, everyone is pulling their children away, but they are hooked and joyfully following the Pied Piper.

The morale in every case is, pay up, pay your dues, pay what you agreed, be nice, reckon that difference does not make others less human, if you cannot show love, it is unnecessary to express vitriol and hate.

An appeal to our better selves

Be careful what you wish for, whatever nasty thing you say to another might well become a picture of your worst reality, at which point, you have nothing left to fight with, the battle for hearts, minds, and souls, was lost when you dehumanised a fellow human being because of their sexuality amongst other things.

Like always, from time immemorial, just because you pick a fight with someone does not mean they will fight you back if there is someone or something else that pertains to you where they can get an advantage. Love heals all things, hate destroys many things, including our faith in humanity.

Lil Nas X, thank you for being your true self, for that alone, you might well be in front of the queue to heaven leaving your earthly detractors in the other place.

References

Montero (Call me by your name) – Lyrics from Genius

Old Town Road (Remix) – Lyrics from Genius

The video; not for the faint-hearted, watch with caution and prepare to be shocked. (Parent & Grandparent advisory.)

The three ages of the elders

The age of control

In a conversation with my uncle and mentor, he succinctly defined stages of parenthood that he broadly the called The Three Ages which for me was quite instructive that I feel the need to commit the thinking to a blog.

The first age is when parenthood begins, the children through to a certain age receive instruction and correction as part of their development process, there usually is little room for negotiation, but that is down to style and form of parenting along with the societal allowance and strictures that might govern discipline, guidance, and education.

The age of negotiation

The second age includes a transition of the child into maturity and where the parent has to change the tools of interaction to discussion, reasoning, consideration, consultation, and negotiation. The parental respect of the child should be present and growing.

The child recognising their individuality attains autonomy and responsibility for life-changing decisions and the parents reluctantly find themselves in at best, an advisory role which can be useful if deployed with a modicum of wisdom and urging rather than instruction.

The third age, by the grace of maturity of the parents into retirement or number of years and the children quite fully independent working through a late first age or well into their second age changes the dynamic of the child to the parent and it is probably the most difficult transition for the elder parent who would now be a grandparent or even great-grandparent.

The age of instruction

In this age the parent should naturally realise they now take instructions from their children, the liens of control are radically reduced. They can obviously expect to be honoured and respected, but they cannot order their kids around like in their youthful years.

There is no doubt that parents who by terms have become matriarchs and patriarchs would expect to rule over their brood, but even if capacity is not diminished, roles and authority is to the extent that if they refuse to engage, it would lead to damaging ostracism between generations and this often occurs.

The transition of relationships

The times of transition, if the elder generation is not perceptive, would be forced upon them through disagreement and conflict, hopefully with redeemable consequences. A child after a certain age needs to be able to break from parental authority and control to chart the course of their own lives in every sphere of their endeavour, seeking counsel mainly on their own terms.

In all this is a cautionary note still, a saying of unknown provenance, “If you raise your children, you spoil your grandkids. If you spoil your children, you raise your grandkids.”

 

Thought Picnic: When to bin the traditional hand-me-down rags of parental control

I was quite distressed

A few days ago, a video clip of a boy negotiating with his mother went viral. To many, it was pure entertainment, I, however, was very distressed by it that I do not intend to share it to propagate the scenario.

We have no backstory to the episode, but from what I could glean, the boy had done something wrong, probably seriously wrong for which there was to be some severe retribution. The boy crying with terror showing on his face, and in his terror was pleading with his mother to calm down, take a rest, or have a break before she unleashed her anger on him.

Some commentary suggested the boy was smart and trying to run rings around his mother. That is possible, especially when you know the kind of parents you have, you adopt strategies to escape their ire. The conversation mostly controlled by the boy was instructive and reflective, his mother is no doubt prone to irrational anger venting her frustration with severe punishments, else she would not have been advised to calm down.

Awareness lost to expediency

Towards the end, he asked to be given the last chance, the last chance in the world. That scared me like the boy could consider doing himself harm than face the wrath of his mother. None of this got through to his mother, she was insistent on beating him because somehow the boy had probably handled and broken something he was not supposed to touch. At the same time, he asked if his mother was videoing him.

This boy is aware, very much aware of himself and his failings, I am not sure his mother who decided to make a global show of his distress is half as much. In my view, a boy so mentally alert even at the imminent threat of harsh retribution needs to be dealt with in another way. The times when corporal punishment was the only tool parents, guardians or teachers had to command and demand the unflinching ultimate respect and fear of their wards is fast becoming useless.

Find better discipline tools

Corporal punishment is for mules and whatever your religious leanings, I would suggest it be the last resort having exhausted everything else and there is much to do, much more to learn to do to adapt to looking for more useful means of instruction than inflicting pain and nursing bleeding welts on the buttocks. The deprivation of freedoms or privileges with the prerogative of mercy is novel and yet effective.

I have watched some parents brutalise their wards in the quest for discipline and correction, sadly, the children now approaching middle-age are estranged, they do not have a wholesome relationship with their parents and that is sad. No, children do not outlive the cruelty meted out to them by their presumed protectors. Those who appear to do so are simply being pragmatic and able to compartmentalise usually for their own peace of mind in spite of and despite what they have suffered.

The future is a harsh judge

If you want a useful voice in the lives of your children, not so much to command or instruct them, but to have the honour of being approached from guidance when they are at crucial junctures of their walk of life, you need to review the hand-me-down rags of bad parenting and break that vicious generational cycle of visiting trauma instead of counsel.

Watch the child grow and begin to use reason and conversation, offer autonomy with good guidance on how to use the responsibility they have been offered, make mercy and forgiveness with consideration visible in times of disappointment or conflict. Find the expression of love beyond the provision of shelter, protection, sustenance and education, by being a bit emotional, because it shows you’re human and approachable. You can even give a hug and said the occasional “I love you, child.”, from deep in your heart.

You cannot tell how much that would mean to a child and how that would redound to their development in adulthood. These are the kinds of circumstances that make for good parent-child friendship and takes away the need for the child to scheme with cunning when they know they can trust you with anything going on in their lives.

Consider new possibilities

I am a man in my fifties, I have looked at many things about my relationship with my parents and other guardians. One uncle stands out as the one who gave me both the time and nurturing, we have one of the tightest relationships that even my parents would envy.

I would not be ambitious as to suggest how anyone should raise their children, but if you are going to make a public spectacle of them, ensure you are not making a worse spectacle of yourself in the process. Whilst many might agree with what she was about to do, I have no praise, commendation or encouragement, my disappointment cannot be more palpable for those who cannot learn from history, especially their own personal history are destined to repeat the failings of the past more worse than the precedent.

We can agree to disagree, but do not completely dismiss this perspective, I think it matters along with everything else in the toolbox of child-rearing. Thank you.

Some reference blogs

Blog - Childhood: My aunts saw red

Blog - Child sexual abuse requires greater parental indignation

Blog - Thought Picnic: House helps in the family setting

Blog - Thought Picnic: Don't mistake a troubled child for a bad one

Thought Picnic: Don't mistake a troubled child for a bad one

Not a conversation

By happenstance, I was recently privy to a conversation and that is in the broadest terms between an uncle (Julius) and his nephew (Fabier) on the nephew’s birthday. There was probably a case of me eavesdropping, but it provided the opportunity for some reflection.

The first part of the conversation which we agreed in the end, was not a conversation covered the general issues of the vociferous against the tongue-tied. Julius in what looked like a conversation asked seemingly leading questions and Fabier in cantankerous mode answered in striking monosyllables in either the negative or affirmative.

A stifled freedom to talk

Now, I have experienced that with my niece times before where my labour of attempting to get her to string a 5-word sentence together at the minimum was literally ineffective. The fact is, these nieces and nephews are neither that shy or tongue-tied, we just have not developed the setting for a free-flowing interaction and communication that comes with the freedom of our younger relations to express themselves without fear or inhibition.

I find the need to work on this relationship building activity the more because there are critical elements of the childhood development experience that we might miss which could have lasting consequences on the life and outlook of the child.

I say this because, the questions veered into areas of Fabier’s school, how he was enjoying classes if he was making friends and whether he was settling in fine, all which Fabier suggested in his monosyllabic answers was alright.

Fabier is a bad boy

Fabier passed his phone back to his mother (Mary), and there Mary regaled to Julius her brother how Fabier was really not fitting in at school, his personal hygiene levels had declined to the point of concern and excoriation, the report gave Julius the leverage to demand a change in attitude from Fabier or else Fabier would lose the promised presents and possibly some goodwill of his uncle.

The long and short of the second exchange where Fabier literally said nothing and Julius said everything was Fabier had been, a really bad boy.

The telling off of Fabier would have been pleasing to Mary, but I do not think in my heart of hearts that it helped Fabier one bit.

I was Fabier again

That second conversation between Julius and Fabier was a replay of a similar conversation I had with many elderly relations of mine 40 years ago when I was sent to a secondary boarding school half a country away from my parents in the hope of my parents that I would be toughened up and will learn more of our culture, language, and traditions.

My first term was hellish, I was consistently bed-wetting, I took no baths seeing that we had to fetch water from a forbidden grotto in the forest just before dawn, my night was disturbed by apparitions and ghosts that had me reciting Psalm 23 hundreds of times in the night. My life was a nightmare and it was a nightmare to my fellow schoolmates.

I know that of all the real help I needed, I got nothing, there were mental, psychological and emotional issues at play that received no professional help, I was supposed to be like others, stoic, responsible, able and applied to the duty to which I was called, to excel at school.

Not one solution worked

The solutions proffered included animist rituals, spiritualist entreaties, amulets, and shamanist cuts into which concoctions of varying potency were applied, none of which addressed a fundamental issue.

A child who had suffered emotional trauma some months before who had already for the first time spend 5 months away from the structured environment of home where again the matter of child sexual abuse by the servants never got addressed, was now flung to the winds for fend for himself and you expect him to perform to expectation?

A child does not bed wet just as an act of rebellious vandalism, there are fundamental psychological issues at play, using shame, disgrace, deprivation of comforts or corporal punishment, as weapons of dissuasion might appear to work in the immediate term, but it also internalises unresolved issues.

Can we try something else?

In most cases, what a child needs is understanding leading to encouragement to express themselves freely of their fears and their hopes, not the full weight of adult imposition exacting punishment and price to force them to do our bidding.

Children are in and of themselves free and independent moral agents, they are no mules. They are can be positively moulded with affirmation and approbation over criticism, comparison and condemnation.

Whilst in the face of the labours of parenthood, parents might not seem to have time to attend to the emotional needs of a child, those are probably the most critical needs of a child above anything else and it rarely gets addressed.

In the quest to make our children fear and respect us, we have lots an essential channel of communication that sometime in the adulthood of that child would be an unrelenting indictment of the kind of parenthood they endured.

Some parents wonder why their children are estranged and a lot of it points to the things they considered insignificant, in mistaking a troubled child for a bad one.

Are you the playful adult?

It goes without saying that a child needs at least one playful adult in their relationships, one whom they can trust, in whom they can confide, with whom they can find the freedom to be themselves and know that they are not only being listened to, they are being understood, encouraged, given advice and helped along in the most difficult times.

40 years ago, I was not a bad boy, I was a troubled child who needed more help than anyone was able or ready to appreciate or understand, and today too, Fabier is NOT a bad boy, yet, he has been cast as a recalcitrant and irresponsible boy, we as uncles, aunts, parents and guardians repeating the mistakes of generations past where the child was only to be seen but never heard.

Stop the generational abuse

I cried rivers of tears for Fabier as that ‘conversation’ developed, he was not going to get the present promised him if he did not change and his mother was going to report the progress on his conduct for further action to be taken.

Let’s stop the generational abuse pretending to child rearing and upbringing already and humble ourselves to stoop to the eye level of the child, offer a hug, offer comfort, offer assurance, offer to understand, and offer a listening ear, the time for standing over and talking down to the 'miscreant' is over.

We had tough parents, it does not excuse us being tougher obdurate parents, guardians, uncles, aunts or older relations too.

Give the child the chance to glow and blossom, this will only come with giving them full personhood and respect for their individuality, views, and circumstances.

Postscript: I asked the permission of Julius to write this blog, we had a discussion on this matter and he agreed that there were valid issues to discuss.

Opinion: The Challenge of Rearing Nigerian Children Abroad

An embarrassment of heritage

I was rather discomfited by the news of the conviction of 8 teenagers yesterday for the killing of another teenager in 2010.

There are issues with gang warfare and disputes in London but the brazenness with which these youngsters carried out their assault on another in plain public view leaves one wondering what our society has become.

One teenager stood in the middle of the road wielding a samurai sword and they ended up chasing the victim into a busy London Underground Station where they as many as 15 in number attacked, stabbed, kicked and punched the poor 15-year old Sofyen Belamouadden to death.

That is bad enough, but when I read the names of the perpetrators involved, I feel a sense of eerie familiarity as Junior Bayode, Obi Nwokeh, Christopher Omoregie, Samsom  Odegbune, Femi Oderinwale and Victoria Osoteku all appear to have Nigerian surnames.

They have some Nigerian connection

That is not to say that these people are Nigerian, but one can safely assume they have some connection with Nigeria by reason of parentage and possibly heritage.

The other two might well have Nigerian connections but that is not evident from their names. What bothers me is what the parents and guardians of these kids might have been up to that their wards have ended up on the extreme side of the law having congregated with impunity in the mob act of killing someone else in plain view.

I appreciate that these kids might never have visited Nigeria or experienced what many might call a traditional Nigerian upbringing that gives the parent licence to brutalise their wards in what we broadly call discipline but discipline in and of itself cannot just be corporal punishment – we need to adapt the tools of affirmation and chastisement to the societies we find ourselves in.

Adapting parenting influence

Whereas in Nigeria it is probably enough to dispatch parental responsibility by just being a provider of shelter, food, education and basic welfare, the differences in societal values and expectations mean that parents have to be more involved in attending to the emotional needs of their wards and this is something many might not have found examples of in their own upbringing.

I dare say, where ethnic minorities fail to integrate congregating in conurbations of ghettoised indifference, they shirk in the fundamental responsibility of understanding the pressures their wards face and the society in which they wards are growing – religion and social events amongst ourselves are not enough, we cannot recreate our local villages abroad and hope that it will suffice – it does not.

Just because we cannot bring our kids up the “Nigerian” way does not absolve us of our responsibility in society to bring our kids to respect the rule of law, the dignity of labour and the earning of respect through purposeful activity rather than menace – gangs are fundamentally antithetical to this thinking and one can say it arises because parents are absent from what they are supposed to be doing.

Misguided parental goals

Over the last few years, I have found too many instances where kids of Nigerian heritage have been victims or perpetrators of violent crime, if we must have children in foreign societies it behoves us to exert ourselves to bring them up in environments where they are first not under threat and then not influenced by negative role models.

The preoccupation with keeping up appearances and status in our marooned Diaspora communities when the greater task of separation and integration is of essence for the sake of our children is atrocious – children are better inspired and encouraged by aspirational guardians who provide positive role models that their wards can emulate.

A parenting challenge

It is all too easy to suggest children have become wayward and are the black sheep of the family but if their formative years were spent under a responsible adult’s care and hopefully guidance, then that is probably where things also went wrong – what children end up becoming does not occur in a vacuum.

Looking at those 6 Nigerian names, should be a warning shot across the bows of ethnic parenthood in foreign lands that your involvement is pertinent, that the game plan for child rearing cannot follow the script we once had or experienced back at home and that we cannot spend all hours in the pursuit of filthy lucre if we want the peace of children who will in future go on to live successful, independent lives away from unsavoury encounters with the law and the shame that it brings.

Thought Picnic: The many umbilical cords to cut

Cutting the cord means survival

The first umbilical cord by nature and for the preservation of life needs to be cut at birth; it is the time when the newly born baby has to begin a life of reflexive independence to breathe on its own and to take in food usually in form of milk to thrive.

However, that umbilical cord is the easiest to cut, there are many more that bind us to our parents or guardians, our communities, our societies, our beliefs and much else which should when the fullness of time is come be cut or the birthed will suffer a form of death – a death of freedom, a death of expression, a death of happiness, a death of ambition, a death of hope – too many deaths whilst still alive and it might breed resentment, despair, rebellion or depression – it mimics the cycle of life.

The point in time

At the point when a baby stops being a foetus, that umbilical cord is cut; just as when a child stops being a baby, when an adolescent stops being a child or when an adult stops being an adolescent – that is would be the ideal path of growing up but it is rarely the case.

The responsibility relationship between guardian and ward is dynamic, between them the cutting of the umbilical cord is a function of age, individuality, expression, responsibility and sometimes success which could determine the leeway one will give the other to be better at what they are on the way to becoming.

The last cut

The most difficult umbilical cord to cut is that where the guardian has to accept that their ward has come of age, where the parent appreciates their child has become an adult and should be given the opportunity to learn their own lessons, live their own lives and chart their own courses.

Obviously, guidance and advice is useful but instruction and diktat is unhelpful; the atmosphere in which the child has been schooled in the home will however become the foundation of the confidence, the self-esteem, the determination and the drive that child has like it did when it ventured its first breath at birth and performed the first suckling reflex to take in food.

Taking places

At a point in time, the parent or guardian will have to be put in their place, not so much to be put down but to be respectfully made to understand that certain decisions are now out of their hands and their influence is at best advisory and nothing more.

Along the line, between agreement and conflict whilst growing up we also encounter the more difficult elements of gaining our individuality. Expectations are high, criticisms are rife and praise is rare, punishment is severe sometimes to the point of brutalisation and power is wielded with deathly omnipotence that it feels easier to walk through prison walls than extricate oneself from parental overreach.

Parents do overreach and in the process attempt to blackmail their children thinking their parental responsibility required of them by society to provide the basics of protection, food, shelter, clothing, education and good example is the fullest expression of love without accounting for the deeper emotional needs of the child which will never be met with things.

Tough love facts

We did not ask to be born, but we have been born and there should be more times in our lives that we are grateful to have been born, to have the parents we have had and to have had the care and affection that they have showered on us from when we were hopefully bundles of joy at birth through when they patiently tolerated with exasperation their inability to control the child who is still under their roofs.

However, we return to the matter of umbilical cords or in other parlance apron strings. Children are not clones they are unique personalities moulded by the environments in which they grow, interact, find safety, experience abuse, feel love, witness hate, find acceptance and know rejection – we are moulds of situation and circumstance that are subject to the casts provided by those whose responsibilities we were in our formative years.

The path to acceptance

The healthiest relationships between parent and child will only find fulfilment when they all channel the Kübler-Ross model, which first studied the five stages of grief.

Denial comes with the guardian not believing that the child has come of age, there is anger that the child is not conforming to expected norms, there is bargaining as to how to regain the best control and influence over the child, then depression coming with unfulfilled promise or sadness that a situation might have become a lost cause and then finally, acceptance – accepting who the child has become; an adult with their lives, their goals, their purpose and their own decisions.

The point of acceptance is when the parent begins to respect that child and honour that child with guidance and advice rather than instruction, coercion and blackmail – the healthiest relationships will bring better communication, deeper interaction, more happiness and a glad heart for that parent as they approach their waning years.

It’s you or them

If the parent will not wise up to that necessity, then the child will at a certain point in time have to be respectfully forthright, frank, direct, honest and true – they will eventually have to find words to say, “I want to be able to live my live as a person, unique, independent, fulfilled and appreciative of you out of recognition of who you have been in my life.”

Acceptance or frank expression on the side of the either the guardian or the ward is that umbilical cord cut for the relationship to thrive. If you have not cut it yet, consider how better things can be if that realisation first dawns on you and then you make them see the light.

Tough Parenting Truths Living in the UK

Nigerians in contrast

I attended a church function on Saturday where they were celebrating their fifth year anniversary and they had laid out a three-day event to commemorate the occasion. Having lived in the Netherlands for 12 years and now in the UK with the fact that I attended a very international church where the communication was bilingual, this setting was a bit unfamiliar to me.

I sometimes find myself in amazingly contrasting worlds and none could have been as stark as the Buddhist funeral I attended on Friday and this Pentecostal Christian event I was attending on Saturday.

Our affinities

My presence was by reason of my gracious hosts in the UK and by far my closest family in Europe, they are quite involved in the close-knit community of the church where, for the affinities of extended relations, my nephew and my niece are members of the choir apart from him being an accomplished artiste in his own right.

As we dispensed with the formalities of genuflection and greetings with every Nigerian attention to pomp, ceremony and pageantry, we were told the session would be a seminar on ‘Parenting’ and the main speakers were to be a judge and a social worker.

The judge - Justice Ola Omotosho was, I was informed, the first Judge of Nigerian descent appointed to the bench in the UK.

Views from the bench

Justice Ola Omotosho gave us an interesting perspective of life on the bench and the kinds of cases she has to deal with, along with the sympathies of being an ethnic minority with the duty of interpreting the laws that appear to change too frequently for anyone to keep up with.

However, addressing more pertinent matters, she clarified that having the status of “Indefinite Leave to Remain” in the UK does not confer British citizenship rights that when such persons enter the crime and punishment system, the presumption is to deal with them as foreign nationals and the status will be withdrawn in favour of deportation.

She also explained that whilst there might be extenuating circumstances in terms of the length of stay in the UK mitigating the appeal of a deportation order, however, these situations are rare and are dealt with on an individual basis.

The fallacy of proxy marriages

Being of Nigerian heritage, it is understandable that her fellow judges would seek her opinion on certain issues that they might not fully understand by reason of cultural, traditional or religious differences and they can expect that, as a judge, she will be forthright, honest and frank with her views.

One area she suggested is turning into a scam is the issue of proxy marriages, where the families and relations of the partners in the marriage gather in foreign lands to conduct the supposed marriage ceremony whilst lawyers in the UK print out certificates meant to facilitate the immigration regularisation process.

She said lawyers come up with tall tales to presumably help desperate people who easily part with their money and still end up with no solutions. The system eventually gets wise about all these tricks, the moment the numbers indicate something is amiss.

The plight of stateless children

Then she talked about the issue of stateless children who would have arrived in the UK as young kids and although their parents might have all the legal statuses to remain in the UK, the residence status of their children is left unresolved.

The problems emerge when, sadly, the child encounters the law or ructions in the family lead to the child being kicked out of their home. Without the necessary papers that give them a legal status in the UK, such children get caught in a legal status limbo where they can get no help and risk avoidable deportation.

Basically, she was saying above all else, confirming the status of your children should be of the highest priority at the earliest opportunity.

From discipline to abuse to jail

Then she touched on the matter of abuse and the fact that children have rights that are protected and defended by the state. Abusive parents who run afoul of the law will almost certainly go to jail and that the law was not partial to the idea that the purpose of discipline that became abuse was to preserve the family unit.

One last point she made was about spousal abuse, as far as she was concerned, regardless of being Christian, she had no sympathy for any circumstances of domestic violence and her candid advice was for the abused to get out of that relationship. By implication, there was nothing godly about a marriage where there was no mutual respect and the presence of abuse.

The right to well-being of a child

The Social Worker who is also a pastor addressed the matter of abuse defining it as anything that impacts on the well-being of a child and that included physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, emotional abuse, neglect and abdication of parental responsibility.

She was at pains to suggest that the authorities will get involved and investigate all claims, as the judge said earlier; no one wants a Baby P scenario on their hands again.

Unlike in Nigeria, a child's word has equal weight as that of an adult before the law and lying will not help the situation because the authorities will seek to determine root causes.

Provision is not love

I found the seminar quite refreshing and to hear establishment figures of Nigerian heritage be so forthright was quite a first for me.

The Social Worker stressed the need for parental involvement in all aspects of the child's development and most of all having a reward system as part of the discipline mix and that parents need to show more love to their children.

I would have liked for the issue of love to be dealt with better, especially clarifying that provision is not love. The provision of shelter, food, clothing, education, parental care and protection to the child are responsibilities the society expects of the parent or guardian towards their wards but these are outward expressions that do not necessarily fulfil a child’s need for love which is an emotional investment on the part of the parent.

Integrate or face disintegration

The subtext of the seminar was not lost on me, the tendency for ethnic minorities not to integrate and understand their host societies along with the differences between customs and laws leaves many learning very hard lessons that reach into the wider community.

There is no doubt that the pastors at the church wanted to speak to a particular demographic either directly or indirectly as the judge was even gracious enough to suggest that most of her advice might not pertain to the audience attending but to our friends.

Having heard what was shared at the seminar the more apt title of the seminar would have in my view been ‘Tough Parenting Truths Living in the UK.’

Acknowledgement: This is the first blog that I have engaged a ‘sub-editor’ to review before posting. He annotated the blog, made punctuation and spelling corrections whilst advising me to refine certain paragraphs for clarity and concision.

In view of that, I thank Mike Sutton for taking the time to review this piece and making it better than I could have attempted a few times over.