Opinions of Saturday, 27 May 2023

Columnist: Rockson Adofo

What a useful advice worth noting and emulating by any parents and married couples!

A file photo A file photo

As a native Ghanaian who seeks the collective welfare of his people whenever the occasion permits, I have cultivated the habit of always sharing any useful information that is conveyed to my knowledge, aside helping out the poor and the needy according to my ability. I have today, decided to share a very useful parental and marital information with you.

Much as I found myself wanting as regards the useful advice therein, so could other parents be, hence had better bring it to their attention in case they would find it useful.

Many a Ghanaian parent has run down their children when they don’t see them to be performing successfully like their peers.

I am personally aware of a case where a mother continually mocked her own son for coming home with nothing after his many hustling-years lived in Nigeria, unlike his other colleagues.

This nearly daily mockery made about him amid insults, pushed her son to poison himself. He drank Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), an insecticide used in agriculture, to kill himself one Saturday night in 1983.

If the mother of the twenty-one year old deceased young man had known about this useful advice, the man may be alive today to have become a successful person, as hardworking as he was.

Let us all as parents learn from, and as possibly as we can, emulate, the mother of Thomas Alva Edison.

Thomas grew up to become one of the greatest inventors of all times. His key inventions include the phonograph (gramophone or record player), carbon telephone transmitter, motion picture camera and the incandescent light bulb.

Let us build positive hope in our otherwise failing children through encouragement and they can turn the page to become better and successful persons in society, rather than discouraging them by insults, casting of insinuations and public humiliations.

Thomas Alva Edison once wrote for the upliftment of human beings, saying, "The words of the reckless pierce like sword but the tongue of the wise brings healing".

There are many useful parental advice on YouTube to help us change what may be our deplorable and discouraging habits towards our children to turn the lives of our failing children around.

Additionally, to be happy in our marriages and to live longer, we should be seen to be trusted by one another, engaged in effective mutual communications, sharing the joys and pains of one another and being one another’s keeper. There should not be the holding of secrets from one another but to be open to one another at all times.

I wish I could myself do as recommended in the videos. However, our African culture conflicting with the Europeans’ as we have come to adopt as in “myself, wife or husband and children” constituting the family, thus, the nuclear family, that has to be catered for as fervently rigorously insisted on by our Ghanaian and African women and men of today, there is always bound to be a problem.

The Ghanaian culture calls for embracing both your nuclear and extended families, seeing to their welfare as much as you are able but the westernisation of the Ghanaian calls for the exclusion of the extended family from any help that the husband or wife can extend to them, hence always the misunderstanding between some married couples or partners.

“A nuclear family system is a family structure that consists of two parents living with their children, also known as an immediate family, elementary family, atomic family, cereal-packet family or conjugal family”

“Extended family is a family unit that includes grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, and uncles, etc. in addition to parents and children”

Anyway, that should not serve as a stumbling block to prevent us from availing ourselves of the cogent advice given in the videos above.

It shall be well with us if we adhere to the advice as given and practise them.