Welcome dear friends. I doubt if there is anything we can do in the lives of our children without knowledge, skill and attitude. This week I will share nuggets along that line. Please enjoy and comment:

1. To bring up child under difficult circumstance is to bring them up outside the family setting:

A child being brought up under any other arrangement apart from a healthy family environment is a compromise, which defines a child being brought up under DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES.

It has been found that institutional homes are not the best place to bring up children. The foregoing does not cast aspersions on the laudable works institutional homes are doing in this part of the world. My thinking however is that institutional homes must always be a function of necessity and last resort.

2. Custodians relate to children according to their kind

Primary and secondary caregivers do not relate to the children according to rules, they relate with them according to who they are.  I am not a fan of what to do. I am always more interested in who is going to do it. No matter how powerful what we want to do is, if we do not get the right persons to do it, it will die with all its powers.

People produce after their kind, same way trees produce after their kind. Therefore before you hand a man or woman the rules of engagement concerning children, you must be interested in who they are, I mean their character traits, where they have been and where they are at the moment.

 No matter the rules, once they are in the hands of people without the right capacity, they will be run aground. Someone, who does not have love in him cannot give love to the children, likewise is someone, who does not have discipline in him cannot teach children discipline. It is therefore not everyone, who holds out himself as caregivers, who is genuine either deliberately or ignorantly.

3. Custodians raise children according to how they were raised

As a follow up to the foregoing, it is a truth that custodians raise children according to the pattern of their own upbringing.

Therefore the custodians must as a matter of duty, pay adequate attention to themselves, to seek healing, particularly where their childhood was not pleasant so that they will not reap the errors of their own child in the children under their care. As Rob Thompson puts it, ‘you are either a prisoner of your past or a pioneer of your future.’

(RELATED: You, Your Children and Their Needs by Taiwo Akinlami)

4. Make it a life ambition to recognize and win the battle over ignorance

In my dealings with primary and secondary caregivers, I have come to recognize four levels of ignorance. To succeed in our quest to help our children, we must recognize these levels of ignorance and make up our minds to do strategic battles against them.

The first is that we do not know everything. That is not, on the face of it a problem since it is only God, who is all-knowing. But it becomes a problem when you are not conscious of the fact that you do not know everything. The real problem is that, it reduces your receptiveness and responsiveness to new knowledge and retards or stagnate the development of your mind and by extension, your personal development.

The second level of ignorance is that many so-called caregivers do not know what they should know.

The third level of ignorance is that many caregivers do not know what they should know and they do not know that they do not know what they should know.

The fourth level of ignorance is that many caregivers do not know what they should know, they do not know that they do not know what they should know and they now think they know what they should know. 

The latter is the most lethal of all. It is the throne of pride. Except by divine intervention, it is not possible to help such people. Or how do you help someone, who does not believe he has a problem or who even believe that you are the one, who has a problem?

Permit me to sign out here. I charge you to Think the Child…Think Today….Think the Future… Do have an INSPIRED week.

About the Author

Taiwo Akinlami, Advocate & Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria is the Principal, Taiwo Akinlami INSPIRES, foremost Child Protection Specialist, Consultant to UNICEF on Child Protection, Independent Legal and Social Regulatory Expert on Child’s Rights and Responsibilities Issues, Legal Enlightenment & Development Enthusiast and an accredited facilitator of the British Council School Leadership Program. Website: www.taiwoakinlami.com│Blog: www.taiwoakinlami.wordpress.com│Twitter: @taiwoakinlami