What happens when you listen more

I am paying glowing tribute to my coaches who taught me the art of listening and impressed it on me to practice it daily. Their effort on me is paying off in this present moment

So, I had 3 different sessions with clients on Saturday, February 19, 2022. One of the sessions; precisely the last, altered the term of engagement and the schedule of the module

How?

Starting the session in a lighter mood on the day I asked my client about how her week went and the gist kicked in………this went on for about 8 minutes

In between I was able to filter and focus on the message; a tool that later helped me notice a significant emotional moment that would have gone unnoticed before now.

Though my client was not aware of the import of that moment as to how it will affect her receptiveness and responsiveness to her session on that day.

After she was done, what I did was abandon the module for the day and dwelt on the activity that produced a significant emotional moment for her in the week. New content was created for the day

She thanked me after the session and felt relieved of the needless emotional baggage she’d have carried to the new week.

Listening is the most important communication skill. It takes practice to master it. Yet it is an active process that requires attention.

I thank all my coaches who even have had to chastise me for not paying attention to details.
Thank you 🙏😀

Akinropo Akinola
#Legacyhut

At what age can my children go into a relationship?

Apart from the worries of most parents in the processes involved in parenting, the next daunting challenge we may likely face is our expectations on how to teach them techniques in handling opposite sex. This is a huge task I must say. Because being a parent is commiting to guide your children through the ever growing complicated amd difficult stages of life.

So I get to hear this question often everytime and everywhere I go “When can my child start dating”? “What must I do when I discover my child is having a relationship”? Now the answer to these questions and more are not so difficult provide if the real need for asking them is clear to the parents.

What we must first know as a matter of urgency is the reason behind our question. Are we asking out of fear? Or out of desire to guide. Some of us parents ask out of fear and regardless of the submission of the expert, the preset mindset will form the bases with which expert opinion will sit and at the end of it all, such intervention become irrelevant. So i really want to admonish us to replace our fear with wisdom.

Though it may not be a one fit all approach in determining a particular age for any child to begin a relationship simply because the developmental growth in children vary, but for clarity sake, I’d pick an average age of 13 has most appropriate bearing in mind of the needed mind empowerment by the parents concerned to children. It is not uncommon to see boys and girls in this age group having crush on themselves. This is expected of them because they are at a stage where their sexual hormones are fully developed amd as such hitching for attention. This is not the period to beging to fret but to offer them proper support.

Pretty much, preteen and teen years are not always easy on the child. Their hormones fly, and one as parent is expected to deal with ones fair share of conflict.

So when it comes to relationship, how can one prepare ones children on how to deal with this developmental growth.

The first advice I’d give parents is to start early by grooming their children both boys and girls with life skills to handle same sex and opposite sex friendship. Life skills are the core skill for kids to grow with. Life skills are skills everybody and every child learns in measures. So much parents would say they comply with this but the question is not whether they do or not but how well. This will help them in no small measure in how they manage friendship. This they caught from what we have demonstrated to them how friendship works through the way we behave with our own friends.

Encouraging children to have friends with both opposite and same sex is a strong catalyst to building a healthy relationship with their environments through social and emotional interactions they will all share together.

Fathers can also have a day out with thier daughters. One of the benefits of this is to boost the confidence and the self worth of the daughters. Girls are generally delighted in this type of outing . To them it is an experience first introduced by the Dad and not a male friend. Play with them. Speak to them.And pay attention as they learn how to effectively deal with the advances from opposite sex through your meaningful engagement

Sex education is most paramount. Parents must be well equipped to handle this. Question as to who among the parents for this task is somehow unnecessary, it all depends on who the girl is cool with. But the key points we must never forget when engaging kids is to lace it with age appropriate sex talk in a way they will understand without being unintentionally setting them up for early sex exploration. You’d even be shocked youmger kids are more interested in pregnancy and babies, ratjer than act of sex. Get to know what they really want and this must be done gradually, not everything at once.

HELPING YOUR CHILD WIN IN PAIN

HELPING YOUR CHILD WIN SERIES; HELPING YOUR CHILD WIN IN PAIN.

Ours is a season when we naturally and intuitively believe that removing pain is what good parents do because of the way we have sometimes displayed love for them with a wrong message.

No thanks to the sloppy sociopolitical system of ours through the uncharitable and ruthless ineptitude of its custodians that has made a paranoia of almost every parent in Nigeria; we provide for our personal security, we daily go on warpath to keep our children safe, struggle for medication on their ailments, we prevent all known pains from them, we lock them in, puts padlock on them, and often tell them never to play with any sharp tool, So, they won’t leave indelible scars on their body. We sometimes prevent them from interfacing with other children around them, thinking they are bad apple to mix with.

Are these all we need to do to help them WIN in life on the long run? I do not think so. Dwelling on this is merely a band aid solution in our quest to protect them. What I believe we need to do is to integrate with them with a view to helping them navigate their way through the pain as against of always removing the pain. One of the best strategies to arm them within helping them WIN is to avail them the opportunity to understand the nature of the battle, what they are fighting for, and made equally available at their disposal resources.

Some getaways we offer our children are good but unfortunately too much of it has created in them an impression that the purpose of life is to attain an ecstatic state of serenity devoid of pain and discomfort. But judging rightly by one of the greats Benjamin Franklin’s favorite quotes; there’s no gain without pain. We may have to review our stand on this.

We are so quick to offer something that reduces discomfort while still make provision for the alternative that diminishes harsh reality they face.; for instance, failure to engage them in age appropriate home chores and our inability to give them opportunities to self correct their anomalies.

Let us look at the few of many tactics(of which I had been a victim in time past) we employ in removing the pain from them that are counterproductive;

• We always do things for them at will

• We initiate and intervene on their behalf there by killing their zests for innovations to developing solving skills for own problems

• We are so quick to offer them alternatives that reduce discomfort

• We sometimes call their teachers to excuse their behavior

What this may have invariably imported into the system of kids is their ever heavy reliance on outside sources or motivation before they could complete a task. There is empirical evidence to support this; Let us take a look at the lifestyle of the present generation x and the Millenial in Nigeria today, and you’d see an unapologetic generation that is largely dependent on binge watch to remove boredom and, alcohol to relax, energy drink to perform, stuck on today’s loudest platform-social media to avoid loneliness. Ourselves motivating model had been tweaked to respond to external sources and additives. The reality is all these will help children for a moment but harm them in the long haul. There must be a balance between independence and co-dependence.

The price of our early intervention in removing pain in today’s kids is tomorrow’s damnation; they will fear taking risk at adulthood because such venture is new to them and when they are drifted to one they sink and cave in because they never calculated the consequences of such actions.

One of my favorite TV channels is NatGeo. I love nature! Nature has ever been so merciful as it furnishes us with evocative pictures of healthy parenting from various species of animals. So, let us take a look at how Mother eagle uses the wisdom in PAIN to prepare her eaglets for WIN as I break down the process:

[ ] The tendering stage. The mother eagle provides shelter; builds nest, plucks her own feather to form lining. This represents a message of love, security, and care.

[ ] The disturbance stage. This is the PAIN zone. As maturity sets in for eaglets, the Mother removes gradually the nest’s inner lining. This is a clear message to the eaglets that it is time to grow up, and learn the rope of empowerment. She has to do this to make the home uncomfortable, else they stay forever.

[ ] The inspiration stage. The mother eagle flaps her wings to push the eaglets out. She stirs them to make them fly. It is time for them to practice what they’d been raised with overtime. Mother eagle does not raise her eaglets to eat stale flesh, more so fesh flesh never grows or found on trees.

[ ] The protection stage. The mother eagle offers safety by jumping under the eaglets to rescue as they fall. This she’ll do until they learn how to fly. She’s passing a message of confidence that it is in them they can fly

[ ] The victory stage. Mother eagle stays calm and allow them fly, and fly again for the purpose of instilling confidence in them, haven nurtured them and allowed them to experience PAIN, So, they can do what they have been groomed, grown, and guided to do.

It is in our nature as parents to want to shield our children from hurts. We have this natural propensity to want to remove pain from them. This nonetheless must be guided with sincere honesty because we do not want to raise up adults that will find it difficult to become the best version of themselves. We must raise in today’s kids the capacity to WIN for the benefit of the society. They must be productive; being productive is innately good for human beings.

Thank you once again, for your time.

I wait for your comments, contributions, and questions.

Akinropo Akinola
Founder/CEO, Parenmark School of Parenting

HELPING YOUR CHILD WIN IN FAILURE

HELPING YOUR CHILD WIN IN FAILURE!

I sat for my West Africa School Certificate Examination Council (WASCEC) sometimes in the late ’80s with a barren, desolate, and impoverished mind, haven being a victim of a troubled childhood. A nasty experience that deprived me of the needed inner strength, mental capacity, and formidable force to proceed to write such a pivotal School Certificate Examination. But I had to in anyway.

Expected of a very poor student my WASCEC result with just TWO PASSES (P8) was ranked among the worst results to have come out of my Secondary School, in Ibadan, Oyo state, Nigeria. The projected outcome only heralded the moment of humiliating rebuff, shaming, insulting, and beating , from all stakeholders around. Yet, none was ready to accept the share of the responsibilities for the woeful performance. While all these abuses lasted, dangerous but difficult options raced through my mind all in seconds. This is a story for another day.

Then came a change of environment; where an inexorable state of emergency was declared on my education and all the stakeholders around also prevailed on my Mother that I should go back to FOURTH FORM (what is known as SS2 now) to make room for adequate preparation even as against my wish to retake the next MAY/JUNE WASCEC.

Momentarily, the thought of shame pervaded through me but I had to bite the bullet after the consensus was that my result was not good enough to merit my decision which means I’d have additional TWO years to prepare for the WASCEC. The decision eventually yielded desired outcome by dint of hard work as my final result then was ranked among the very bests in the history of the school.

One of the great lessons, I learnt from that unavoidable encounter is that going through the harrowing experience of failure is part of the needed route one may need to pass in gaining wining strategies over any prevailing circumstances in life; the degree of its occurrence or recurrence in individual’s life may be different. This was my story. My foundation.

You’d agree with me if you have been following this series in the past weeks that our wrong intention and insincerity as parents are not the only limiting factors impeding us on the job, but the perceptible deficiency in our central message of love, care, and protection, even when we are sincere with good intention.

Some of us caregivers; parents and teachers have misguidedly projected to kids a one sided coin of life with only one choice or possible outcome and today’s kids(youth) will (have) leverage(d) on such due to our insensitivity in being unable to present the true nature of life to them.

As parents, we have generously given them lots of ownership but not many perspectives;

As teachers/educators, we have loaded them with plenty of schools but meagre life skills;

As coaches, we have taught students how to win games, but not how to win in life;

As faith and youth workers, we provide lots of explanations but scanty experiences to win spiritual battles.

Every parent wants to see their kids succeed in school activities; academic, cultural, sports, and in life. It is our joy to see them winning because we believe such will produce highly confident kids. This must not be done by willfully removing failures as they grow up. Such is in fact , a prodigious way to impede complete growth. What this means is we may have succeeded unknowingly in creating for them an institutional malaise which may eventually manifest in them in adulthood.

We frown this day at making our children to experience setbacks which often makes them unprepared to navigate as they reach 20s. I am not sure many parents would agree their wards experience TWO years setbacks as I was even in the same circumstances as mine! Initially I failed, but the surrounding stakeholders helped me get back, by impressing it on me to prepare hard, damn the shame, and succeed, which eventually paid off. But when situation of that nature occurs now, some parents habitually side with their children, and sometimes get the schools and teachers involved into trouble. We make excuses for kids not to fail. Some educators do same; we pass kids into the next class even if they aren’t really ready for it, and did not legitimately deserve it. But for the purpose of ratings or so we throw caution to the wind.

Here are the few of the reasons why we (some schools and parents) do this;
• Parents somehow turn their children to their trophies

• We want kids to live our unlived life

• We see them as reflections of our successes and achievements

• So, we can look and feel better among our friends and associates in the society

• We project in them fake identity by wanting them to become someone they are not.

• We sometimes take our frustrations out on them.

Please permit me to share a true life story; I witnessed an unpleasant scene in a prize giving day speech I attended in my daughter’s school where a mother yelled at the top of her lungs at her son, abusing him for not wining as many prizes as her class mates who ‘made their parents proud’ by wining Five different prizes or more. This happened in a full glare of publicity at the car park after the event. The boy’s shoulder slumped and almost in tears while he watched his mother’s rage in total disbelief. The boy tucked his tail between his legs and crawled his way into their car. He was utterly embarrassed before the crowd. I found this hard to believe and was equally dumbfounded.

This was just an incidence out myriads of unnecessary pressure we subject our children to. This poor boy certainly may grow up with some unhealthy emotions. Ever wondered why we have the scourge of teen suicide in our country?

When parents put much pressure in a bid to prevent their kids from failing, three negatives outcomes will surface; it will dilute their motivation or willpower to succeed, they’d see failure as a plague, it will foster the fear of failure later in life as adults.

On the contrary, allowing them to experience failure where necessary will deliver unto them; RESILIENCE, BETTER PERFORMANC, CREATIVITY and INNOVATION, proper self evaluation, and eventually prepares them for a healthy maturity. The choice is ours.

What must we do as parents to help our children WIN in their failure; from my experiences drawn from personal life from childhood, and those on the job, I have few suggestions for parents, teachers, and educators.

[ ] Study to know your kids’ innate strengths with a view to helping him/her align them to his/her identity.

[ ] Inspire them to embrace RIGOROUS training, studying, reading, as an every day habit for success. It is high time we shifted our focus from the usual success outcome to learning or value outcome

[ ] A safe place to fail. This is about us caregivers creating enabling environment for kids to try something and fail, their performance will usually improve, and it will bring best out of them

[ ] Help them see the benefits of failure by telling them your stories or strories of others who once failed and won later in life. Failure is part of growing up and succeeding. It births in kids creativity and discovery.

[ ] Every parent and educator must stop cheating on kids. Encourage them to explore all kinds of ideas to discover what they want to do with their life. Give explanations and experiences and allow them do the projects or class works

Helping kids WIN in Failure is preparing them effectively to take up mountains at adulthood; life is full of ups and downs. Failure almost always precedes success, the BIG WIN. One of the indispensable facts I have known on this field work is that the biggest indicator of success at age 32 is hinged mostly on what we reinforce kids with when they were with us.

Thank you for your time.

Akinropo Akinola
CEO, Parenmark School of Parenting

#parentingwithakinropo
#akinropoakinola
#DaddyWhereAreYou
#MummyNoExcuses
#parenmarkschoolofparenting

HELPING YOUR CHILD WIN IN STRUGGLE

HELPING YOUR CHILD WIN IN STRUGGLE.

One of the immediate precipitants that has led to the scourge of the prevalence of entitlement mentality in today’s kids, teens, and youth , even in many adults, is the shared responsibility of some of us parents who see struggles as evil.

We have in the present generation of children who are born into the world of conveniences, filled with smartphones, internet games, online and internet banking, microwaves. The influence of the present iron age which is full of machines and mechanical dudes is unavoidable though, because every generation is peculiar with its unique social development and improvement over the previous. This invention may have given our kids false belief that physical hand on works are gone for good. PARENTS nonetheless must therefore not lose focus. We must not through our actions give a subtle message that struggles are to be avoided.

We are not going to raise in today’s kids sleeping giants who would only be comfortable on a tottering platform and later cave in at the sight of adversity; rather, we are meant to prepare them strongly to solve the ultimate problems of life which arise due to the law of nature. The battle on ground to take up the mountains for humanity is not for feeble, dependent, weakly, and emotionally brittled adults.

I have seen in most of our young teens, teens , and youth , who desperately want to learn how to be on their own by making own choices , but unfortunately through over functioning, and over parenting, parents wouldn’t let them do that …sometimes we don’t just know when to let them do stuff for themselves which later deprived them of the needed creativity to move on after us. Over functioning in parenting simply is doing much for our children, interfering and removing common struggles they may experience in their days. But we fail to realize that when we remove the struggles from children’s lives, we begin to render them helpless in creative and analytic thinking and by so doing we have taken away from them capacity to own themselves; they lost every moment to be in control or under control themselves, rather they have grown up to learn how to be controlled by us.

As today’s parents who is concerned about the rot in our environment, must strive to stem the flow of entitlement mentality plaguing our society by focusing on making today’s children earn everything they need. Here lies resilience, creativity, and problem solving skills.

Here is a classical example of honey badger in the animal kingdom on how she prepares her kids for the challenges ahead of them;

The honey badger is not the largest, biggest, or wisest animal in the animal kingdom, but it is adjudged as the most fearless animal in the jungle ably supported by its strength, thick skin, and ferocious defensive abilities. It is mostly a canivorous specie that feed incredibly on varied diets that include some downright dangerous animals items on the menu; including wild cats, scorpions, poisonous snakes (cobra) , and , of course, bee larvae, and other several species available for them to devour. The mother Badger knows what lies ahead her kids and wouldn’t spare any moment teaching them on how to safely subdue and kill hazardous food like cobra and wild cats, and also to carefully navigate through the beehive so as not to be stung to death by angry bees is crucial.

Like honey badgers, humans have a very diverse and dangerous diet in the game of life; daily the competition to dominate the sphere and space become intense. The mother badger wouldn’t spare the kids the rigours of training.

Let us look at what happens when we remove struggles from them; we cheat on their capacity and ability for innate creativity when we remove struggles from our kids, we create more struggles for them at adulthood when we remove the struggles, we devitalize and weaken them , and unintentionally deem them incompetent. We ignorantly value the product (success) more than the process. We provide for them at adult and determine the course of their lives for them and make decisions for them, and finally we won’t let them fail, fall, and fight.

Surely we can help our children detach themselves from this miserable existence of depriving them necessary strategies to navigate through struggles to WIN in life.

Permite me to share few nuggets on how we can help them WIN in struggles.

• Stop giving inappropriate praises. Praises are part of affirmation kids need to grow with but misguided praises stunt their WINing strategies and make them more vulnerable when it matters most. We don’t need to tell them ‘they are brilliant, bright, and most amazing kid on earth. No. Just be truthful to their effort and don’t boost their confidence on false praises.

• Regardless of the technology driven environment of ours, kids must be taught the dignity in the value of manual labour. Little ‘hands on’ physical work should be introduced. It is not all the time we allow them use washing machine for laundry. Let them wash manually sometimes. Weed the garden together. Manual work teaches strong work ethic and make kids strong.

• Effective communication of the belief of hard work will make kids appreciate the struggles as more of joy than job. This will give them the understanding that we are pushing them because we believe they have potential to succeed and WIN even in struggle.

• We must teach them critical lessons on how we struggled and still struggling to WIN in life. Kids need parents with more of experiences than explanations. Experiences and circumstances of our struggles will certainly be different, but principles involved are the same.

• Stop being helicopter parents. Stop hovering. Stop stalking. Stop over parenting. Stop over functioning. Stop being paranoia. Give kids breathing space to express and function; allow them to fall and fail. It is a part of learning process. I call this exposure therapy. It doesn’t kill, rather it toughens them to be independent.

Let us keep this conversation going with comments, contributions, and questions.

Thank you for your time.

Akinropo Akinola
CEO, Parenmark School of Parenting