…“STROKE OF MY PEN” : THE PARABOLIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHILDREN AND PARENTS

Parabolic comes from the word parabola which means a curve like the path of an object thrown into the air and falling back to. This is what the Oxford Advanced Learners' Dictionary (7 th ed) says.

It has mathematical relations. It is related to what it is known in Mathematics (Core and Elective) at the senior high level as quadratic graph.

No one chooses his or her parents, neither does anybody chooses his or her children. As children, we may have wished that our parents were some other people. In the same vein, some parents may have wished that some children were theirs.

Be as it may, when children make their way into the lives of parents, the parents welcome them with naming ceremony and then a relationship between them begins to take place. Then the calling of children and their response as, “yes daddy or mummy” or “papaa or mamii”. It differs from one tribal context to the other.

I am not a very good mathematician but at least I understand how the parabola shape looks like in relation to how parents and children relate to each other from the crawling days of the child to the bending days of the parents.

The parabola is such that it begins from the lowest point then it gets to the highest and descends to the lowest point again. I am certain that anybody who had had the experience of quadratic graphs will remember those questions that the West African Examination Council puts before every WASSCE candidate.

This is how it has something to do with raising up children by parents and children taking care of their aged parents. Hold it there, 'if your parents have looked after you from the moments you grew a set of thirty two teeth, it will be your turn to look after them until they lose their set'.

The child or children are at the first lower part of the curve while the parents are at the high point. It is at this stage that the child takes instructions from parents- in other words the child at that point is the responsibility of the parents.

The parents do not remain at the top forever. As the curve bends towards the low point, so do their bodies and strengths bend and they become their children's responsibility.

When parents fail to instill into their children values that will ensure that they will grow up to be good citizens, the parents suffer for this failure in their old age. In the same way, when children refuse to imbibe the values instilled in them, they become social misfits.

It is very possible for parents to be indulgent in this time when we really do not weigh the new trends of the relationship between parents and children. I agree that we are in a globalised world and as such the orthodox way of doing things are unacceptable.

However, as a student of development there is a view of development that says that, development should not be modeled on Western style but it should be developed to suit the new adopters of it.

So that for example, we talk about child rights, child labour and child abuse as how it is done in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian countries.

we seem to love the way of the West than our own ways which gave our elders a sense of self-confidence where ever they went. From our food to our clothing we prefer to model it on the Western style. We forget that they have a culture and we equally had one too.

In Ghana, we hold in high esteem respect for authority, especially when daddy says go to bed, it is go to bed! We have a system where children help their parents in the jobs they do to ensure that the home is fed and clothed. In Ghana, we believe strongly that when an elderly person is talking you do not talk or sit amongst elderly people in their conversation.

One thing I learnt about culture a few months ago was that how societies lived their lives as a result of their environment. So this means one cannot just accept the culture of another because of globalization.

We are losing our self identity by the second in every aspect of the word lose. Language, culture, values, education, food, clothing and you name it.

There are a whole lot of values in our system we are throwing away in the name of dancing to the world tune. Let us rethink of how we can develop in our own style rather than been copy cats or fishes who will swallow hook, line and sinker.

ALEX BLEGE, [email protected]/www.gudzetsekomla.com