Opinions

Giving children opportunity to express themselves

TEACH your wards, however young, how to activate their innate Quick Dispute Resolution Mechanisms, when it matters the most. Such mechanisms are naturally inborn in every mentally stable human being. While some radically smart kids would intuitively spring into motion when there is a sense of danger or some level of perceived unusualness, other kids would normally require regular home sensitizations and tutorials to unlock that inner awakening that would spur those rational steps, upon sensing any unusual circumstance. Aligning these kids at those very crucial young ages keeps them on their toes, causing them to always pay attention to their environments, and promptly do the needful by not just waiting for Daddy or Mummy to make every decisions for them, most especially, when something isn’t just right or just isn’t adding up. As for me, nobody taught me on how to respond to impulse. I was naturally intuitive and impulsively driven – maybe some kind of a divine gift or more, I do not know.

However, sometime in my young age of about 8, my Dad took me and my two younger siblings for holidays at my Aunty’s home in Abuja. My Aunty lived in a relatively comfortable residential estate in the Gariki (Area 11) metropolis of Abuja, with her husband and children. My Dad left us behind and drove back to Delta the next day, with a promise to come back to pick us home when we were done with our one-month holidays. Interestingly, I have always been the type who never ate that much, but one thing I never liked being joked with is not eating my rationed food promptly and ‘as at when due.’ It meant a whole lot to me, and so I believe it also did to my siblings.. Unfortunately, my Aunt and her family already had this unbearable tradition in their home, of just eating twice in a day – one rationed meal by 1p.m, and the next and final meal for the day, by 7p.m.

As a very obedient and good-hearted son of the soil, I managed to bear this unpalatable ordeal that I considered a gruesome torture for two weeks, despite the fact that my cousins and the whole family were quite nice, receptive and homely. Luckily for me, most especially, it turned out that one of my Aunty’s upper apartment back windows overlooked the beautiful terrain of the slightly busy city of Gariki, giving a clear view of the then popular 3-star Agura Hotels which stood conspicuously elegant just a few poles away from the house, and which my younger cousins had earlier innocently gossiped to me to have had a Telephone Booth which, unknown to them, was my carefully eyeing escape key that I needed to quickly unbound myself from the unforgettable mess I was dragged into.

On one fateful day when I promised myself that our bondage had inevitably come to an end, I took my two younger siblings by the hand, pretended that we were going downstairs to play, and quietly snuck out – straight to the hotel. I still cannot explain till this very day how we beat the high-profile gate protocols, with its handful of security guards on uniforms who only stood and moped, while we passed through. What I must have told them, I cannot explain. We eventually found our way into the magnificently sophisticated hotel; adorned with unprecedented, State-of-the-art designs and beautiful African artifacts that gave it an adorable glamour with a Western touch, and syntactically buzzed with that cold and chilling embrace which gracefully saturated the entire breathtaking edifice. It was at that moment that we were approached by a nicely dressed security guard on duty who was glaringly amazed, and wondered at what nature of business such tiny looking kids had to do in such a lofty arena. With brazen confidence, I told him that I wanted to speak to my Dad who was far away in Delta. The man looked puzzled, and asked if I had the phoneline number with me, which I responded in the affirmative.

“Do you have some coins with you, with which to make the call?” he requested. Standing motionless, I responded: “No, I don’t.” The man who obviously looked startled but impressed, smiled back at me and brought out some coins from his pocket with which he assisted in dialing the numbers, while I called it out to him without blinking. “Hello,” came that familiar gentle and cordial voice from the other end. My Dad got the biggest shocks of his life finally knowing that the caller from the other side, was coming from my humble but rugged self. “Francis, how did you manage to find a place to call me, in a large and unfamiliar terrain like Abuja?” he enquired. And the rest was history. What ever I must have told my old boy to warrant him rush back to Abuja within the next two days to pick us back to Delta, can only be explained by the gods and my ancestors. Every child sees Mummy and Daddy as a superhero and an unbreakable iron man, but also build into them that needed confidence that they are beautiful Super kids too, and that you trust their smart but rational judgements when the need arises. It will give them that survival instinct that will help them wade through and survive any storm.

In a world of inexplicable uncertainties, every child must be given that golden opportunity to explore and put their potential into expression, in the face of seeming challenges. On a final note, without the security guard failing to express to my Dad on the phone how lucky he was to have such exceptional kids as children, we finally left Agura Hotels amidst cheers and accolades from both staff and visitors who showered us with encomiums, but without failing to splash us with few Naira notes as gifts for our bravery. Which I carefully kept away from my very nice but nosy Aunty, with a very stern warning to my siblings to ‘ferme la bue!’