I learnt a lot from my parents, some very valuable thing like good manners, the fear of God and the value of prayer, respect for the elderly, the wise use of money and much more. I also learnt some not so important things like how to knot a tie, how to tie my shoes, how to assess head gear, what colours to combine in dressing, how to cook and so on. These all add up to who I am today.
Those things I learnt in a way have helped me and made me a better person. At some point, they made me better than some of my contemporaries who did not have the same privileged I had. While I am so grateful to my parent, I still feel I could be better if I had learnt may be a little more. They may have attempted to teach me more but somehow I didn’t seem to get the message, either because they were not around enough, or they did not have the language to pass the message better enough, or I was just not smart enough to learn. Bye and large they have been my teacher and that worries me. It worries me that my children or the so many children in Nigeria or even around the world may not get to learn enough from their parents, and they (children) do have a lot to learn.
Fathers and mothers or potential fathers and mothers have so much they can teach their children but the virtue of their:
1- Experience in life
2- Exposure
3- Education
4- Encounters in life, with people, with God etc
Every man or woman as they attain to fatherhood or motherhood have learnt something(s) they can teach a child. For them to do this then they must:
A. Live long enough to be able to teach their children well
B. Live close enough
C. Have the financial means back up their words
D. Be relevant enough to be able to drive home the message
E. Be current enough to be able to speak the language their children understand
WOW, this is a lot but if we have been taught them we must also teach others. A good way of showing gratitude to our parents is to teach our children like our parents taught
