One evening, I walked from ORINFOR offices to the bus stop named after Kimicanga. As I was approaching, I saw a fourteen-year old Didier wiping silently behind other people who wore selfish faces.
On my arrival, I asked the sad boy and he answered me shedding more tears that he had waited for the bus for almost two hours.
The school boy went on saying that some buses had approached with empty seats but whenever he tried to board, he was pushed back. Having told me about the bad story, I thought the best solution is to speak for him and that’s what I did until he left.
It’s normally known that the one who expects to be paid back is the one who lent. In this context, some parents do the reverse where they need discipline from their children when they didn’t set examples for the young ones.
Failure to be exemplary to children makes them indiscipline which in turn makes parents complain time after time and even those who take pie as pie would tell you negative stories about the youths if you asked them.
In this article, Didier’s serves as a general case. I would, therefore, like to remind parents and adults in general of the bad practices that should be abstained from, so as to have children and youths who are well-behaved.
I would also like to start with home life. A child is like a visitor, the world in which he finds you is like a home and the parent is like a host from whom the visitor expects hospitality.
Now you can imagine if a visitor is neglected; you fail to welcome him, you don’t show him where to sit, and you show no or little love to him. It’s clear that after some time he can change from good to bad behaviors on the basis of your weaknesses.
Nowadays, most of the parents (not all) do not do enough to bring up children in the right way. In fact, some of those parents were also never given care in their early days and so they can’t give what they don’t have. Some others lack time in line with hard life they live, and a number of others are just negligent by nature.
Some questions arise. How can you expect your children to greet you if you don’t greet them when you arrive at home? If at times you use dirty words in presence of your children, don’t you think they are recording your words on their minds?
If you always go home drunk, is that a good example your children should follow? If frequently you violate the rights of your spouse, don’t you think your children will do the same when they grow up?
In Rwanda’s culture, a child is expected to respect all elder people as much as he does to his parents. But this is possible by the condition that you treat the other child in the way you treat your own children. This is the reality of life.
One of exemplary parents gave us an important advice in this statement “Treat every child as your own” but this is always ignored by many parents in different ways.
The best example to serve this point is the times of evenings where you find many people at bus stops waiting for the buses to take them home. You will see adult people pushing school children carelessly when actually it’s getting dark. Here you can ask yourself the concept the child picks at that moment.
If you mistreat children in the same way, how do you wait for respect from them? Remember that by the time the child grows to be energetic like you are today, you will have grown weaker. You are pushing him for no reason; he will step on you for that reason.
I urge the bus drivers and conductors to be considerate to young children before elders as the adult people have many ways of solving their problems.
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