#parenting

punish me now

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“I am sorry, I did not mean to” He stood by the door of my room pleading again

“Go away please. Leave my room” I responded calmly

“I was trying to pick it up and….”

“Young man, just go. Have you finished the mopping?

“Yes. It was an accident”

“Go. it is not a big deal. Just go”

Watching him leave apprehensively, an image popped up in my head. Watching Iyawo-Urhobo hurl a can of Saturday Night powder at her daughter Edirin as she chased her round the compound angrily. Then just as quickly, another vision superimposed itself over that one. Mama Oche walking away from her son who had mistakenly dropped her flask on the floor.

Then this popular Nigerian saying came to my head. About not flogging a child on the day he spills palm oil.

A saying which simply means deferred punishment.

“Why do you even need to flog him at all?” I countered

Right at that instant as my son walked away almost dejectedly I called him back. For the first time in my life I was only realising how faulty the premise of that saying was. It was a passive-aggressive thing to do to a child. To any body. Ignore the elephant in the room yet expect the person to run around freely.

As he sat down on my bed, we got talking.

“I said it is okay so do you keep apologising?”

“Because I broke your glass and you are not saying anything”

“is this not your house too?”

“Yes. But you bought it with your money” he answered, shoulders still hunched while looking away

“I am the parent. Who else is going to buy it? you?”

He was silent.

“Hey, sit up and look at me” I chided him

“Have you ever broken something?”

He searched his memory bank. Then came up with one incident of a cracked plate at my friend’s house when we visited.

“Listen, I used to break stuff most times growing up in my auntie’s house. Quality crockery she returned home with from England. It was so bad that I felt sad for her. It was like my hands were accident-prone. Yet she never gave me grief.

“I am your mother. I do not recall you ever breaking anything. Even as a toddler, you did not break any of my devices nor throw any into water. So why should I make a fuss because you broke a cup for the first time in your life?”

We hugged and he left. Leaving me relieved. I have always worried that I was living with an old soul because which child does not break something?

The Mental Toll of Relocation: A Child’s Struggle and Emotional Impact

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“My young son shat on himself because someone was in the toilet and he could no longer hold it in” I quipped in a low voice laced with pain as I recalled that incident.

I saw curious surprise on some of the faces in the room. It was a session where the topic was how to help new arrivals integrate into the community. The large divide in the room was so wide. Some of the attendants has never had any interaction with a black person outside of the office. And seemed clueless on anything to do with the BAME community.

“He was filled with so much shame as he stood by the doorway and did not know how to tell me.  It turned out he was trying very hard to contain the remaining poop in his system pending when the bathroom opened up. The stool was loose anyway so I simply made him do it on the floor in the garden, then thereafter washed out the cemented floor with water myself”

This was weeks after we moved out of the hotel into a shared house. I guessed his system was likely in shock of the transition because he had not done Number 2 for a while now. That is usually his system’s response to any unfamiliar environment – shut down from doing Number 2.”

“I know what it took to manage our emotions afterwards. Yes, our emotions. He was sober throughout the day and I realised it was a combination of various emotions – top of which was shame and probably not knowing how I would react”

“Here was a child who had lived a comfortable life so far. Always had his own bathroom and toilet ensuite. Although, we constantly had people live with us, at least he knew it was his own home”.

“Now, he was the one moving into a stranger’s house in a foreign land. Sharing space and facilities alongside sharing a room with his ma. A room smaller than the one he left behind back home. Kid was constantly being reminded to ‘keep it down’ as a simple thing like descending the staircase was termed noisy. .

“In addition to that, it was the onset of winter. Consider that for a child who had transited from the hot weather of Nigeria. See it as plucking you out from the oven and plopping you straight into the freezer with no time to adapt to the room temperature”.

“Anyone here being to Nigeria or the tropics?” I asked the room.

A woman had been to Ghana.

“So you get the idea a bit” I said to the room

“I simply had to sit him down and talk through it. Apologised to him for putting him in such a situation while assuaging him that it was not his fault and it would get better”

“Nevertheless, the only emotion I felt was anger. I was angry with the man in the bathroom. A laid-back man whose attitude carried through even in the way he talked. That man would get into the bathroom and lounge there like it was his living room. A bathroom shared by four people!”

“Several times, we have had to knock on that door while he was in there. I mean we were all in this relocation thing together and putting ourselves through this temporary inconvenience. Emotional intelligence required him to not go into a bathroom which also contained the only toilet in the house and start having a party there”.

“It took quite some effort on my part to calm down and not have a word with him. I knew my circle of control was myself and my son. I had to manage our reactions and that was what I did”

Afterwards, both whites and the #BAME people would come up to thank me for having the gumption to broach that enlightening subject in such a setting. If only I knew the tap I had turned on. More stories coming………