Devin Robinson debates if the “Village Raising a Child” Mentality Still Stands
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We’ve all heard “It takes a village to raise a child”. This way of life was developed by our preceding generations. Relatives or not, adults all watched over the children of our community. Today, we have complained for not having that same ideology in place but do we really want that? What we seem to really want is “It takes a village to PRAISE a child”. Follow me for a moment.
Our discontent for, especially non-relative, adults’ interaction with our children is only voiced or contested when an adult corrects, chastises our children or put them in a character-building situation. Our voice is often silent in times when these same adults praise, or even over-praise our child(ren). So the issue is not that we don’t want other adults interacting with our children whatsoever, we only want them to show up during the upside.
With 86% of all children attending schools outside of the home, 34% of them participating in extracurricular activities, 50% of marriages ending in divorce (with 62% of those persons remarrying), 73% of black children being born out of wedlock, and with the black community being the most religious group of all, our children are expected to end up in Sunday School without their parents. Our children are prone to interact with non-relative adults who are in authority as they grow up.
The problem is we have evolved into a parental regime who views our children as our property, rather than separate people with separate visions, dreams, missions and ambitions. We protect them as if we are protecting our cars. We believe that a scratch on our children will make them ugly, rather than make them better. We have drifted away from letting our children feel discomfort and challenges. No wonder why we are finding “victims” of bullying resorting to massacring other children and adults in public places. They are taking other people’s lives because of some discomfort they felt and were not conditioned for.
Many parents make irresponsible statements in front of their children, sometimes to make their children feel secure, secure their relationship with them or look up to them but what it does instead is make the child feel invincible. Statements like, “NO ONE, better mess with my child…” “These people don’t know who your parent(s) are…” These statements are made when a teacher takes a pair of Beats Headphones from their disruptive child who refused to put them away in class. These statements are made when a coach sits out their player during a team sport game as the child struggles to perform well.
If we parents truly want to prepare our children for the world, then we have to set our emotions aside and do that. Protecting them from every mosquito is simply giving them an unrealistic view of this world we live in. Now, if you are raising them to not migrate too far away from you forever, you are practicing the right techniques in coddling them.
We simply just can’t have it both ways. We have the power of future business leaders and community leaders in our voice. We are birthing them every day. We can’t think the village shouldn’t have the authority to praise and also punish. Abuse? Now, that is something altogether different. We simply can’t want our precious jewels only be subject to positive life experiences. They too may develop Affulenza. And when they do, we will begin to see that entitlement behavior carried out in our communities in many of the negative ways we are witnessing today. All because we refused to let them feel those negative experiences while they were younger.
Originally appeared on BlackLifeCoaches.Net
Photo: Vox Efx/Flickr
I can’t tell you how many times parents got in my face because they thought I was too hard on their kids. Note that their kids were more then likely court ordered into our drug treatment program. One in particular the dad said that this son stated I was an ass to him and that I never gave him an inch, I was always “riding him” on everything he did. This particular young man was a true player and I saw through it. He schmoozed staff all the time. Although I wanted is discharge to show as unsuccessful, the clinical… Read more »