Two evenings ago, I had similar conversation with my friend's father. We sat in my friends little stall which I was helping her mind in one of the busiest, dangerous streets in my state of residence.
Even until 2am in the morning, the street still buzzes with people and life. I remember having a video call with a friend from Hive here at around 9pm and he asked why the place was very crowded like it was still daytime. It's the life here. The hood!
This place is home to the middle and lower class people. Home to the good, bad and ugly. Home to crime amd more crime. While we sat, my friend's dad would occassionally make reference to a person and tell how he/she had derailed from the path he was raised(he knows most of the people in the area cause he's lived there since years before). Amongst the sea of people he talked about, it was just about two of them that he spoke well of.
See, I know how this things are. It's much similar to my then neighbourhood. There are different instances to behavioral patterns and changes in children.
Some grew in disciplined homes and lost it when they became friends with certain people or gained entrance into university, some inspitdeof all the chaos remained sane, some grew in homes where they had little to no guidance yet they stayed disciplined. Even in the case wherein a child is pampered(spoilt as we would say), no parent would want that the end result is for their child to be a ragamuffin.
Except the child has repeatedly watched a parent/guardian perform evil and have grown to adopt the lifestyle, ordinarily, children do what they want to. They have a mind of their own. And it becomes increasing difficult to not do what they wish as they grow older.
There are many well raised kids who have gone sour. You cannot put the blame on the parents. For the most part even, it's hammered upon about why crime is bad and the consequences of the actions. I cannot rule out that some parents contribute to the mayhem that their children become but mostly, who would want a bad egg for a child? What parents would be happy to be called the mother/father of a criminal? Think about it nau.
What am i even talking about? Every individual is responsible for his/her actions whether or not anyone stood beside/behind them. Cause, whether you are properly trained or not, you always go outside to mingle with other humans and by differnt media, you learn about what is wrong and not.
I still think about how I could have easily became anything I wanted(negstively) inspite of my upbringing. My siblings could have been one damned thing or another considering the location we grew up in amd the guys they grew up and hung around with. Till this day, we sometimes joke and call ourselves cultists by association given that cultism was the deal then. You had the guys as class mates, met them on the street, some were neighbours, literally everywhere that you turned. How well could our parents possibly have protected us from them? It was choice, personnal choice.
You dont want to know how upstanding some parents of wayward kids are. You dont want to know the much counsel, discipleine and training they put into trying to make a responsible human out of their child(ren). You dont want to know want to know the time, resources, sweat, blood and all the efforts put in to raising a model child. And after all of that, one day, this child chooses that they can live their life in their terms and goes ahead to tow a dirt path and being a menace and we think its okay to blame the parent(s) cause they did not do their jobs right....tsk! It just sounds dumb.
If a person goes on to do something shameful and terrible, it's nobody's fault but theirs. They, not their parents, chose to do that evil for whatever reason. And boy, I don't even care if the reason is 'to make mama proud/give mama a good life.' There's only so much that parents can do and we know this, or don't we?
Thanks for gracing this post.
Greetings!