Our early emotional life is formed after the pattern of the nature and nurture we experienced and grew with. So it is not out of place our mind may have been wrongly or rightly wired to live by the scripts of those who raised us and the institutions we were exposed to as children by our parents, uncles, aunties, teachers, imams, Pastors, religious belief, cultures, traditions, and value system…….even when the reality of Today, presents otherwise in line with new experiences, new environments, and new perspectives, yet we aren’t bothered
You see script is the arbiter of life; it is the molder and shaper of life. In every occasion, we are the recipients of its results.
Many of the problems people face in marriages, parenting, and career stem out from script conflicts. Couples take into marriage the culture, values and beliefs they seem right and okay as thought, seen, and Learnt of their parents/caregivers, hence the conflicting role expectations.
We see today’s kids in the way we were 40 or more years ago. We find it edgy to trust colleagues and business partners just because we were told as children not to trust anyone regardless of what the other persons brings to the table.
The environment we lived and experienced as kids somehow contributed in no small measure to our being closed minded thereby making it easier for us to be somewhat receptive in nature to new developments. As adults, we find it so rigid and steely to trust the next person, our bosom friend(s) inclusive. Some adults who were born in the period of civil war 1968-1971 were mostly influenced by parents not to trust any other tribe, religion, and ethnic, aside theirs. Many of us hates some political actors and business leaders in Nigeria today, dead or alive on account of what we were told of them by our parents and friends, and not what we knew or experienced of them.
We were taught not to argue, locked up in our closets by our parents and teachers, we were so bound up, so squatted down. We were conditioned and programmed as chosen as well-behaved students and acknowledged as obedient children both in the school, and home. What a classical example of a deprivative theory against our social life.
At infant, if we opened our very small mouth to cry, a feeding bottle was hastily used to muffle our cries. We have been thoroughly tamed and conditioned to be quiet all time, and this has invariably affected every sphere of our lives, from family and parenting, career, job, relationship, marriage, beliefs and religion.
Until we intentionally subject ourselves by carrying out evaluative procedure to further scrutinize various developmental stages of our progress from childhood the desired change we crave for may be a mirage after all.
It is high time we knew how powerful and extremely influential our scripts are; they can make or mar the humanity in us, but the good news is that we can learn to rewrite them if need be, decking out a new garment of a new tailor made script we can be proud of by identifying with new models and embrace open mindedness. It is possible.
Thank you!
Akinropo Akinola
Parenmark School of Parenting.
