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

Desert Island Discs: Childhood Trauma and Workplace Pastoral Care

In the passing of stories

Listening to the back catalogue of Desert Island Discs has now brought me into the middle of the pandemic, the year 2020.

However, since I began this exercise way back in March, some of the people featured have passed on. I note with particular significance Yvonne Brewster, who was the first person I wrote about.

She passed away on 12th October at the age of 87 and was featured on last week's edition of BBC Radio 4's Last Word. [AkinBlog.NL: Desert Island Discs: To Be Young, Gifted and Black]

The interview format possesses an almost disarming innocence. What gets revealed shows how the context of sharing one's choice of music can inadvertently expose both vulnerability and discovery.

A spectrum of care

Whether it's the child sexual abuse suffered by Christopher Hazlewood, who founded the Paraorchestra, or the obvious abandonment of Professor Dame Elizabeth Anionwu, born mixed race and illegitimate, housed in a convent with nuns whilst her mother visited monthly, you appreciate the kind of trauma that forms part of the history of these remarkable people.

Then there's the story Dame Sally Davies told. At the point of retiring as Chief Medical Officer, she highlighted something missing from today's teaching of vocation, the grooming of talent, and the nurturing of expertise.

On the matter of junior doctors, she observed that pastoral care was missing. Very few knew the name of a consultant; that is, if consultants could even name others they had taken under their wing.

One example stood out. She arrived for an interview in a sports car and, on arrival, ended up in a driving manoeuvre that spun her around 360 degrees.

A consultant stepped out of the department and asked if she had come for the interview. On responding in the affirmative, he called to postpone the interview until the next day, taking the time to settle her down and getting her a cup of tea.

She returned the next day, interviewed, and got the job. However, she said, without the care and consideration of that consultant, she would likely not have got the job.

Care in the workplace

By extension, that lack of pastoral care and consideration of the humanity of junior staff, when interacting with sometimes overworked middle management who are under pressure to deliver to almost impossible terms and without the time to manage effectively, diminishes the productivity of the employee in many unquantifiable ways.

This is besides the way managers use promises they would never fulfil to lure new talent onto their teams.

In the end, it is usually left to the individual to decide whether they are fulfilled in settings that barely appreciate them.

When it comes to the tussle between self-respect and being patronised to the point of feeling belittled, I would hope the former would guide the person towards seeking greener pastures whilst nipping avoidable workplace stress in the bud.

Desert Island Discs references

Desert Island Discs: Yvonne Brewster 01/04/2005

Desert Island Discs: Christopher Hazlewood 29/05/2020

Desert Island Discs: Professor Dame Elizabeth Anionwu 04/06/2020

Desert Island Discs: Dame Sally Davies 02/08/2019

Pastoral care in modern workplaces (AI-generated)

Then I asked AI the question, How could the lack of pastoral care be addressed in modern workplaces?

That's an excellent question that extends beyond the scope of blog editing, but I'm happy to explore it with you.

Based on the themes in your blog post, here are some thoughts on addressing the lack of pastoral care in modern workplaces:

Structural Changes

Mentorship programmes - Formalising what once happened organically. Assigning senior staff to genuinely know and support junior colleagues, not just tick boxes. The consultant who postponed Dame Sally Davies' interview demonstrated this perfectly.

Protected time - Managers need designated time for pastoral duties, separate from productivity targets. When middle management is stretched thin, human connection becomes the first casualty.

Smaller teams - The anonymity you described, where junior doctors don't even know their consultants' names, suggests units have grown too large for meaningful relationships to form naturally.

Cultural Shifts

Redefining success - Measuring managers not just on outputs, but on staff retention, development, and wellbeing. What gets measured gets valued.

Slowing down - The consultant who made tea instead of rushing to the interview understood that five minutes of humanity can change someone's trajectory. Modern workplaces resist this pause.

Accountability for promises - Your point about managers using unfulfillable promises to lure talent speaks to a deeper dishonesty. Holding leaders accountable for what they commit to would restore some trust.

Individual Actions

Modelling care - Even without systemic change, individuals can choose to be that consultant. Remembering names, checking in genuinely, postponing the interview when someone clearly needs a moment.

Choosing environments wisely - Your conclusion about self-respect guiding people towards greener pastures is crucial. Sometimes the best response to uncaring systems is to leave them.

What aspects of pastoral care do you think are most critical in your own experience?

Thought Picnic: Shuttling and bungling

Sacrificing the child

I can imagine the exasperation of a parent when a child, given every opportunity, does not seem to take advantage of the situations presented.

Unfortunately, they usually view this failing from the perspective of the child not trying hard enough and not appreciating the privilege they have, compared to those never afforded such luxuries of comfort, shelter, provision, and family.

Weighed against societal expectations that seem to inform and drive parents to desire children who are naturally intelligent, succeeding, and exercise initiative to the extent that parents need to boast of their wards, they are blinded to other issues.

They never consider the possibility of psychological, mental, and emotional problems exacerbated by their environment that could have resulted in the child's change in behaviour, attitude, and productivity.

Burdening the child

To address these issues, they use attribution and comparison, finding examples of the succeeding and the failing to pitch the child into a quagmire of adjustments seeking to please others without addressing the actual problem.

Now, we have some understanding that bedwetting might not just be a lack of willpower and control of one's bladder; just as sudden changes in a child's performance and ability to produce expected results is not a basic lack of application.

Issues like bullying, childhood emotional and sexual abuse could easily be the factors indicative of these changes, but parents, in their naivety, think the home, or other bubbles they have created, are free of the unspeakable interferences that rob a child of innocence and a clear conscience.

Misunderstanding the child

Worse still, parents wrongly assume that the child, if afflicted by a violation of their body, will immediately run to them with a complaint when they have never created the atmosphere for that kind of troublesome conversation.

They are dealing with the symptoms without being intelligent about seeking the cause.

Whether the parent eventually appreciates this or not, the child carries these unfortunate failings of care and consideration into adulthood, at times damaged or simply resentful. Others find the kind of therapy that helps them move forward.

For instance, I was 52 when my father first learnt that I was sexually abused from the age of 8. This was prompted because, once again, he was trying to address the symptom of my homosexuality, causing him embarrassment, rather than knowing who his son is.

Losing the child

What I did not reveal in that exchange, which would have caused ructions beyond repair, was that my first sexual encounter was at 7, and I had no clue what was going on, but the playful intentions of the other destroyed the bubble of childhood bliss that one inhabited.

If anyone had been curious enough to look at what was happening, maybe, just maybe, there would have been a better relationship between parent and child.

However, the total breakdown of the relationship between my mother and I did not start in August 2023.

What we tried to build upon left lots of unresolved issues that, in African culture, I am not supposed to hold my elders accountable for. Then, whilst I might have an African heritage, I am hardly African, by any stretch of the imagination.

What parents easily overlook (AI-generated)

Since we are in the age of AI, having reviewed my blog above, I asked for it to share some common signs of childhood trauma that parents often overlook. The text following was generated by AI, and I believe it contributes to the conversation, prompted by my blog above.

Behavioural Changes

Academic decline - Sudden drops in grades or loss of interest in schoolwork that was previously enjoyed. Parents often attribute this to laziness rather than considering underlying distress.

Social withdrawal - A child who was once outgoing becomes isolated, avoids friends, or stops participating in activities they previously loved.

Aggression or defiance - Increased anger, talking back, or acting out. Parents may see this as typical teenage rebellion or poor discipline rather than a cry for help.

Regression - Returning to behaviours from earlier developmental stages, such as thumb-sucking, baby talk, or clinginess in older children.

Physical Manifestations

Sleep disturbances - Nightmares, difficulty falling asleep, fear of sleeping alone, or sleeping too much as an escape mechanism.

Bedwetting or toileting accidents - As you mentioned in your post, this is often dismissed as a control issue rather than a stress response.

Unexplained physical complaints - Frequent headaches, stomach aches, or general unwellness without medical cause.

Changes in eating habits - Either loss of appetite or comfort eating, which parents might dismiss as "just a phase".

Emotional Indicators

Heightened anxiety - Excessive worry, panic attacks, or fear of separation from parents or specific places.

Emotional numbness - A child who seems disconnected, shows little emotion, or appears "too mature" for their age. Parents sometimes praise this as being "well-behaved" or "independent".

Excessive guilt or shame - Taking blame for things beyond their control or expressing feelings of worthlessness.

Mood swings - Rapid changes between anger, sadness, and apparent normalcy that seem disproportionate to situations.

Cognitive and Developmental Signs

Difficulty concentrating - Inability to focus on tasks, appearing distracted or "in their own world".

Memory problems - Forgetting things they previously knew or seeming confused about recent events.

Developmental delays - Falling behind in speech, motor skills, or social development without obvious cause.

Red Flags Often Dismissed

Sexualised behaviour - Age-inappropriate knowledge of or interest in sexual matters. Parents often dismiss this as "curiosity" or something picked up from media.

Fear of specific people or places - Intense reactions to certain individuals or locations that parents attribute to "shyness" or "being difficult".

Perfectionism or people-pleasing - Desperate attempts to be "good" or avoid disappointing others, which parents often celebrate rather than question.

Self-harm or risk-taking - In older children, this might manifest as cutting, substance use, or dangerous behaviours that parents view as attention-seeking.

Why Parents Miss These Signs

Cultural expectations - As you noted, some cultures discourage questioning elders or discussing uncomfortable topics, creating barriers to disclosure.

Assumption of safety - Parents believe their home or supervised environments are inherently safe, blinding them to potential threats.

Normalising symptoms - Attributing changes to "phases", puberty, or typical childhood behaviour rather than investigating deeper causes.

Lack of open communication - Never establishing an atmosphere where children feel safe discussing troubling experiences, particularly around sexuality or abuse.

Focus on outcomes - Being more concerned with grades, behaviour, and social standing than the child's internal emotional state.

Denial - The possibility that something terrible has happened to their child is too painful to contemplate, so warning signs are rationalised away.

The Critical Point

As you powerfully illustrated in your blog, these signs are often symptoms of deeper trauma. Parents who focus solely on correcting the behaviour without seeking the underlying cause risk compounding the damage. The child learns that their pain is invisible, their distress is dismissed, and they must carry their burden alone into adulthood.

Creating an environment where difficult conversations are possible, where children know they'll be believed and supported, and where parents look beyond surface behaviours to understand their child's inner world, can make the difference between a lifetime of unresolved trauma and the possibility of healing.

Childhood: When parents think they know best

Classic inadvertent abandonment

I happened upon a Facebook status at the end of last year, where there was a discussion about some parents sending their foreign-born kids back to Nigeria to apparently teach the kids discipline and resilience along with avoiding any possibility of their kids being dragged into inner city issues like drugs, gangs, and crime.

After reading some of the comments one especially of a parent who had successfully reared kids in America and could not countenance the idea of sending their children into the care of strangers, be they relations, paid guardians, or strict/conservative boarding schools, I offered a perspective of my own experience.

The lifelong consequence

Imagine being sent from a private primary school environment with a majority international pupillage in Kaduna to a boarding school in Sagamu, Ogun State, at the age of ten. It could have been worse as I had admissions to even more remote places.

The lasting effects of that experience apart from feeling abandoned even if it helped make me both independent and resilient, not that it was unachievable at home, but my parents knew best.

As a child, I was quite outgoing, precocious, and inquisitive, with independent views. I have decidedly refused to associate with old student activities at my secondary school, nor do I retain any enduring friendships from that time. The scars are lifelong.

A rash of parental control

I suffered serious child psychological issues just months before I was shipped off and then in the first term at boarding school, that my parents' closest friends pled with them to bring me back home, those appeals fell on deaf ears, as if they had not learnt from the experiences of being placed with foster parents in England, one of such even starved me, much of that, I have blanked out of my mind.

These seemingly benign parental decisions still affect my relationship with them, and they are both octogenarians. There might be an immediate benefit to fostering your children out to strict environments, but the long-term break in the familial bonds would scarcely ever be repaired.

While there are parents who still think the boarding school experience is a rite of passage that is wholesome and germane to child development, if I was blessed with offspring, I would have totally negated some of the decisions taken as part of my upbringing. I know many parents of my generation did not repeat that vicious cycle.

I speak as someone who will be fifty-nine in less than a week. I charted my own course and chose what was good for me in the scheme of things. Some memories are best left unrecalled. [This was drafted before my birthday in December 2024.]

Childhood: Concerns, memories, and traumas

Classic inadvertent abandonment

I happened upon a Facebook status at the end of last year, where there was a discussion about some parents sending their foreign-born kids back to Nigeria to apparently teach the kids discipline and resilience along with avoiding any possibility of their kids being dragged into inner city issues like drugs, gangs, and crime.

After reading some of the comments and one especially of a parent who had successfully reared kids in America and could not countenance the idea of sending their children into the care of strangers, be they relations, paid guardians, or strict/conservative boarding schools, I offered a perspective of my own experience.

The lifelong consequence

Imagine being sent from a private primary school environment with a majority international pupillage in Kaduna to a boarding school in Sagamu, Ogun State, at the age of ten. It could have been worse as I had admissions to even more remote places.

The lasting effects of that experience apart from feeling abandoned even if it helped make me both independent and resilient, not that it was unachievable at home, but my parents knew best.

As a child, I was quite outgoing, precocious, and inquisitive, with independent views. I have decidedly refused to associate with old student activities at my secondary school, nor do I retain any enduring friendships from that time. The scars are lifelong.

A rash of parental control

I suffered serious child psychological issues just months before I was shipped off and then in the first term at boarding school, that my parents' closest friends pled with them to bring me back home, those appeals fell on deaf ears, as if they had not learnt from the experiences of being placed with foster parents in England, one of such even starved me, much of that, I have blanked out of my mind.

These seemingly benign parental decisions still affect my relationship with them, and they are both octogenarians. There might be an immediate benefit to fostering your children out to strict environments, but the long-term break in the familial bonds would scarcely ever be repaired.

While there are parents who still think the boarding school experience is a rite of passage that is wholesome and germane to child development, if I was blessed with offspring, I would have totally negated some of decisions taken as part of my upbringing. I know many parents of my generation did not repeat that vicious cycle.

I speak as someone who will be fifty-nine in less than a week. I charted my own course and chose what was good for me in the scheme of things. Some memories are best left unrecalled. [This was drafted before my birthday in December 2024.]

Purposefully walking away

Walking through and away

If I have ever had a grace that has blessed the many times, I have faced any kind of trauma in my life and there are many that have signalled themselves better in a narrative than in how I choose to be defined, it is the force that drives the determination to walk away.

As I reflect on what the fourth verse of Psalm 23 says to me, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” [Bible Hub: Psalm 23:4 (KJV)]

Even on reading that verse again, I am getting new insight just from observing the punctuation, and indeed, in life, yes, we do walk, and not stop but walk-through issues, situations, trauma, circumstances, adversity, infirmity, and much else that identifies with human existence in its sorriest state, but we press on, refusing to be defined by the experience.

This has been a default response in my subconscious many times before I consciously realised I am on a journey rather than at a destination.

Walking towards and into

I am confident that every adverse event presents new opportunities to earn laurels than acquire scars. The scars are for stories and the laurels are for a life of testimony. Yes, the force of hope and possibility propels me in ways that defy logic or understanding, I do not wait around to try to explain how or why, as what is ahead presents attraction beyond immediate distractions.

Digging through archives of blogs I have written before; I am reminded that there is much to walk away from and the beauty of love and wonder to walk into. Even when I am processing things, it is a process of compartmentalisation, a way of ensuring that the darkest moments do not become the milestones of my storied existence.

“One cannot deny that these things happened, but one can decide with all the help one can get, spiritual, psychological or with friends and family to ensure that these events do not become milestones, goalposts or walls.” [I walked away (January 2007)]

It is that thinking that gives me the strength to walk away, not because I do not want to deal with an issue, but because I can better utilise my time and resources on other wholesome things, I choose not to be a victim when I can be a victor.

References

Blog - Walking away (February 2017)

Blog - I walked away (January 2007)

Blog - Walk away! (December 2013) – A poem.

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.

Childhood: Atọ̀ọlé

A part of my childhood

Atọ̀ọlé I heard it many times, fingers in a direction that looked like I was being pointed out. It was not a jeering though a song could be made of it.

The shame that encompassed you because you had done something wrong, maybe not normal, maybe lazy, maybe stupid, dare say heinous.

You could not make your bed in the morning without someone coming to check what you might have covered up. The rising tide of compounds of ammonium assailing your olfactory organs, all day long, but not the guarantee of a cooling on a hot night.

Earlier meals and no fluids, the sleight of hand, the deprivations inflicted by those who thought punishments and scolding would help, in my little mind; it simply aggravated the anxiety, the fear, the tortuous expectations of rebuke – did they also feel an inadequacy amidst my shame?

Did my parents help?

My thumb-sucking sister suffered no less at the abnormality of our foibles, good parenting should probably come with manuals and best practices – the keyword being understanding what your kids might be going through expressed in seeming anti-social behaviour.

For years, it was my problem and no one else’s, maybe now there is knowledge of the psychological travails of an Atọ̀ọlé, why one would become an Atọ̀ọlé in some places and not at others.

Months of staying away from home at 10 were a break from my role, I was the principal in my play, I said all the lines and was the spectacle of a few if not the envy of others. A pause from the gardening at home was punctuated by a visit from dad.

He invited me to stay at his swanky hotel and asked if I still did it – going from the evidence of almost 4 months, I didn’t but that night I did again.

It continued exceptionally

What could it be? Why was it happening? Apparently, there was no medication for it and therapy was the hope that I would grow out it. It was probably another 3 years before it seemed that I had ditched the role of Atòólé.

Before then, as I started secondary school, there were 3 of us who seemed to have our bedding subjected to the scorching livelihood of sun-dried tomatoes – the tropical heat serving as the drain for waters that should have been given elsewhere.

Mattresses like beached whales starved of the comfort of their beds; thankfully, beyond the punishment of shame and the put-down, no one exerted corporal punishment for it.

No definite answers

Now we know, Nocturnal Enuresis [1] (NE) to put a glossy medical term on a subject so personal put me in the 5 percentile, a delayed developmental issue that could have been due to stress, sexual abuse and other unexplained matters at home and amongst my family. Going through stages of Primary Nocturnal Enuresis and Secondary Nocturnal Enuresis, it might even be genetic, perish the thought that my parents ever heard Atọ̀ọlé shouted in their direction.

If I did have a child whilst I would hate to see them inflicted with the Atọ̀ọlé moniker, I would hope that I would be considerate, understanding and helpful in helping them through what could be as traumatic and very shameful without having anyone to turn to in time of great childhood need.

Yes, I have a history, I was a bedwetter and the endearing term for that in Yoruba was Atọ̀ọlé.

Sources

[1] Nocturnal enuresis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia