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NEVER GET TIRED OF GIVING INSTRUCTIONS
When we were young, I remember my parents always screaming in my dialect alaigboran! Meaning that we were quite stubborn and disobedient. Now, as a parent, I can’t count how many times I have screamed the same frustration on my children!
Imagine having to remind your grown-up children to make their beds when they rise, wash the dishes after meals, or do their chores every day. It’s as exasperating as it is frustrating. Sometimes, you feel you have failed as a parent, and you sometimes try to retrace where and when you missed it.
Children come in different shapes and forms. It’s amazing how some children are so compliant that you give them an instruction once, and that’s it. It’s as though there is some magic you deployed. Yet some children can be so defiant that you have to repeat the same instruction over and over, even after you have disciplined them. What do you do?
At a time, we had two of our siblings living with us after they just left the university – my kid brother and my wife’s. They stayed in the guest room of our small apartment. Each time you reluctantly entered that room, you made horrific discoveries of unkempt beddings, dirty laundry, and un-mopped floors; a typical boys’ dormitory. My wife complained on end and had to always task them to do the needful. We wondered why they wouldn’t comply. When my brother got his own apartment, we went visiting, and we were amazed at how squeaky clean he kept his apartment. Now they are both married, and they both keep tidy homes. I learnt with hindsight that the consistent instructions paid off; that they have been registered in their subconscious and banked in a reservoir. When it became critical for them to make withdrawals, there was enough deposit to draw from.
Same with us growing up. I remember my parents’ irritation and disappointment whenever we contravened instructions, but they never gave up. As we became independent adults, their words, reprimands, and admonitions rang in our memories and kept us from misbehaving, even though at the time, it was as though we were irredeemable.
Never give up. It will pay off. After all, persistence is that which works when everything else fails. As the saying goes ”water cuts through a rock not because of its power, but because of its persistence”. Keep telling them even when it seems they aren’t listening, it’s simply your duty.