‘Why kids must experience pain, struggle’

Our Reporter

Child rights ambassador, Akinola Akinropo, has explained why parents must consciously put their wards through pains and struggle in life.

The consultant said insulating kids from pain and struggle does not augur well.

The lead researcher of ParenMark School, who started a 30-series episodes on parenting, said many parents isolate their kids from pain with dire consequences.

“So, one of the many mistakes however, that is prominent among all is when we want to remove pain and struggle from the way of the kids.”

This, he said is a classical example of over functioning in parenting, which simply means doing too much for the children.

Research, Akinropo revealed, has shown that one of the key indicators of the prevailing emotionally brittle adults is that parents rescue too soon their kids when they go through stuff.

‘We know that as parents we need to be there for them in protection, in provision, and in pointing them in the right direction.

“Nonetheless, we need to strike the balance otherwise they lose the motivation to stay ahead when they see us do everything for them. But we must let them struggle so they can stay strong,” he pointed out.

He added: “When we remove struggle from them we actually lose the opportunity to help them develop resilience, creativity, and problem solving skills.

“I think its better we learn from butterfly on jaw it is hard for him to break out of the cocoon but we only see the beauty of his colors outside. We can’t continue in this brazen error in parenting because adults intervene like this, we only succeeded in solving short term problems.”

Akinropo affirmed that the solution to this is to learn from the Mother Eagle.

“You see, nature has furnished us with vivid picture of how we can learn quality and healthy leadership and parenting from various species of animals. I encourage parents to either adopt or adapt the model Mother Eagle employs to nurture her eaglets to be strong.”

The mother Eagle, he analysed, runs the eaglets through five critical stages, which is the nurturing stage,the pain stage, the motivational stage, the protection stage and the confidence stage where she releases them finally to the world to fend for themselves .

This,he noted, is one of the many models that suit our peculiarities in Africa.