Little Mike lived in a house with both his parents and three of his siblings. There was something special about him as he was the most loved amongst his siblings. He was the second born but the most favoured. His mom called him golden boy and his dad called my copy. Although they tried not to make it obvious, the other children knew that Mike was their parents favourite. Was it because of his outstanding haze eyes? Or his doll-like skin?
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Whenever the rest of the kids were doing tedious work, their parents always told Mike to take a break while the rest of the siblings continued with the job. At some point, the last child began growing hatred towards Mike. This hatred was a result of different conversations with her friends–who were fellow last borns–at school. Her friends made it a constant point of duty to remind her that last borns are supposed to be pampered and well taken care of but her case was entirely different.
Just like in many homes, the disciplinarian role was handled by the father while the mother was the calm and affectionate one. The father corrected the other kids with all his might whenever they derailed but when it came to Mike, he would scold a few times and not flog him. This preferential treatment was getting over the bar but the rest of the children found a way to maintain peace and decorum at home.
Few years later, Mike's father passed on and Mike was just about 17 years old by then. Their mom was still trying to bind the family together the best way she could but it was at this point that things started going sideways when it involved Mike. The other three children would hastily do whatever she asked them to do but Mike was always so recalcitrant.
Mike became what we call streetmeat. He joined a cult group and with joining a cult group comes a whole lot of other negative behaviours. Mike started smoking cigarettes, then weed and soon enough he was taking cocaine. He got addicted to cocaine and this always drove him to do scandalous things without even thinking. There was a time he walked into his father's house, took the television from their parlour and wanted to sell it. After so much pleading and begging by his siblings, he decided to return the television. Most of his actions were a means to get more money to acquire more cocaine.
With this addiction, the mother was running from one rehab centre to another and from one church to another. Some people suggested that it's spiritual, the others said that it's part of life. In all this, the other three siblings were very progressive. The first child had graduated from university and was working, the last two children were in university and highschool respectively and they were doing well. Mike on the other hand had dropped out a long time ago
It was at this point that questions started rising in the mothers head. Why is it only Mike? What did I do wrong when it came to Mike? How do I go about this? After proper self analysis, she came to the conclusion that it was because she failed to raise the rod whenever Mike did anything wrong but she raised the same rod on the other kids effortlessly.
Is it true that she really loved Mike more?
I doubt it. If you love something/someone, you'd try your best to keep it/ him/her on the right path by all means necessary. Mike's mother failed in her duty of correcting Mike and this led to him having a wild and authoritative mindset while growing up. When things like this happen, especially in African homes, people would start blaming their village people and kabbashing(excessive praying) day in, day out. More often than not, parents know that the reason behind their children's behaviour is the "home training" they receive but still, they go ahead to train the children with wobbly hands. Kids trained with wobbly hands would always come out wobbly in all ramifications.
Irrespective of how much you love a child, do not hesitate to correct the child when they do something wrong because it's for their own good. In the future, the children would be the ones to thank you for correcting them but if you do not correct them and they turn out to be hooligans and hoodlums, they would blame you all their lives and you in turn would also blame yourself.
So why not avoid the blames and regrets and do what's right. Give those kids a good ass whooping when they deserve it and don't forget to tell them why you're flogging them so that they remember and never try it again.
I'd like to round up with this quote byDr. Louise Hart;
"If we don’t shape our kids, they will be shaped by outside forces that don’t care what shape our kids are in.”
This is a post in response to  @momogrow's neoxian prompt. You can find more details here |
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Thank you so much for your time
With love,wongi✨
