SENSE OR NONSENSE PLEASE LISTEN TO THEM
“I am just seek and tired of this boy. I can’t just understand him. Junior won’t just listen to me.
Junior, why are you like this?, yelled Mr Chuks.
Mr Chuks never understood Junior not because Junior doesn’t listen to him but because he never really have time to listen to Junior. “Junior, don’t go there, Junior don’t do this, Junior don’t do that; Mr Chuks only gave instructions but failed to hear feedback from Junior.
How would you understand somebody you have not really listen to? You can’t have an idea of what is going on in his life when you don’t listen to him.
Maybe you might have thought that since you are older than them, you can see the world including them but you are wrong.
Until you start listening to your children, you will never know what is going on inside them; what they need and what they don’t need.
Listen to the conversation below:
Conversation:
DAY 1:
JULIET: Mum, Mum! Bola beat me in school today.
MUM: Instead of you to greet me first, you are saying somebody beat you. Go inside my friend.
DAY 2:
JULIET: Mum, Mum; my teacher touch …..
MUM: Stop it right there; you talk too much. Is it every time they always offend you? Go inside
DAY 3:
JULIET: Mum, Mum! My teacher touch my br…
MUM: she cut in and said, “shut up your dirty mouth. Aha, se won fi ejo se e ni? (i.e. were you cursed with talking too much). I closed my eyes, go into your room.
My dear friend, may I tell you that that was the last time Juliet ever report anybody or anything to her mother.
Since then, she had been keeping secrets to herself because she thought her mother doesn’t care for her, and so she is confiding in her school’s friends who cannot differentiate between right and wrong.
To cut the story short, Juliet eventually got impregnated by one of her teachers in school at the age of 13.
My dear friend, sense or nonsense: please and please, listen to your children, because if you don’t listen to the small stuff in their lives, they will never tell you the big stuff in their lives.
Listening to your kid can be tiring and boring but still listen to them.
Listening to your kids involves the following:
- Paying attention to them,
- Taking into consideration their point of view and then
- Trying to understand them.
Oh! you may say, they talk to you all the time, but do you ever pay attention to what they say?
Researches have it that children who end up doing bad stuffs in life such as prostitution, stealing e.t.c had at one time in their lives, became convinced that nobody really cares about how they feel or nobody seems to understand them, hence they became frustrated and try to hide their frustration in rebellion and hanging out with people of bad attitudes who would only lure them into a life of crime.
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By listening to your children, you are showing them that you love and care for them. Doing that gives the child a kind of ease to feel understood and loved and this will culminate in him opening up to you anytime.
However, when you chose not to, he concludes that his feelings are not important to you. Listen to this scenario between a father and his daughter.
Scenario:
The young girl told her father, “Dad, you don’t even care about how I feel”, the father replied angrily, ” who gave you that audacity to look at me face to face and tell me that?
What do you know about feelings? In fact, who are you to feel anything?”.
“Just do what I told you to do and stop asking me foolish question”. Meanwhle, in a bid to get at them, the girl started doing the opposite of whatever her parents asked her to do, not minding whether it will hurt her or not.
She eventually got impregnated by one boy in the street, who do jump over the fence to sleep with her once her parent had gone out for evangelism on saturday, with the girl locked inside.
She did that intentionally, because she wanted to teach her parent a bitter lesson. When the girl was interrogated, she confessed that her parent never care for her.
She said that any kind of care shown toward her by them is simply because they don’t want their reputation to stain since they are both elders in the church that many were looking up to.
She said, she did what she did because she wanted to teach them a bitter lesson and so she is not regretting it, even though she never wanted it to happen but her parents caused it.
Imagine that!
Many kids were like that outside there; some have been molested and harassed in school, on the street and even in the house, but they had no one to talk to about their bad experience.
Thus, they battle lives with many unanswered questions, fear and confusions all alone until they were trapped and caged.
Ask yourself this question my friend, daddies and mummies; Can your children, students or those under you trust you with their personal lives?
Can they trust you to be there for them always? Are you accessible and friendly?
Remember the last time she confide in you, you laughed at her and even discussed about what she told you in public with others, turning her to a laughing stock.
Hope you remember that ever since then, she never tells you anything again?
My dear friend, do you even encourage these young ones to come to you with their problems or you would rather fold your arms and watch them struggling with those problems, or even seek solutions from their peers who don’t know much about proper unbringing?
Children who are denied of their parents’ attention seem to have difficulty in expressing themselves very well, and as such, listening to other people, including you can be a big task for them to do.
When you listen to your children, it makes them feel this way:
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Special,
-
Loved,
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Wantedand
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Important, and hence paving ways for building a better and stronger relationship with them.
Many parents wouldn’t want to listen to their children simply because sometimes those children’s opinions contradict theirs.
And most times the children will even challenge the belief that these parents have held on to for a very long time and most parents could not stand such.
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As a parent, you must have an open mind with a large heart. Cutting shut your children when they express a contrary opinion to yours, or challenge your belief is not the best way to handle them.
Listen to their arguements, opinions, ways of reasoning and you would understand better where they are coming from.
Sometimes, you can seek for their opinions on certain issues so as to make them feel special and wanted to talk to you. Doing that would help you to understand and know them better.
When a child is struggling to express himself, please and please, don’t ever finish his sentence for him or put words into his mouth.
Be patient to hear him out. Doing this will help him to become a better speaker.
Children can be somehow funny; you might have been with them for a very long time and they won’t tell you anything but just as you are about to go out and catch up with an appointment, that was when he will remember to tell you something about his school or himself.
At that point, please and please, don’t rush out through the door until you have heard him out. If you fail to listen to him then, he may never be willing to open up to you about anything again.
Opportunities to listen to your child will always arise, please and please, don’t waste them, instead, seize them and make them count, because those opportunities may never arise again.
Therefore, make yourself available for them, you never can tell when they will mistakenly let out a secret they had kept to themselves for a very long time.
It could be anywhere and anytime; in the store, in the car, in the house or even while walking.
Never allow an opportunity to listen to your child pass you by.