Why do Nigerian mothers punish children with food?
I love my country i must say. I also love Nigerian mothers for their uniqueness. There is something about our mothers that suggests they are the same. The way they joke, laugh, abuse us (with words), beat us (with cane) and many more!
Hardly will you find any child who doesn't like his/her mother. In most cases, we are closer to our mothers than our fathers.
But one thing baffles me and i am still trying to get the rationale behind this action. It is common among Nigerian parents to punish children with food. A woman will just decide her teenage child wont eat her food just because he/she offended her. So they use food to punish children.
Today, i had a discussion with a junior colleague while i was in school. She told me her mom stopped giving her food because her nurse told her mom she had an abortion. Now the act of aborting a baby can be disheartening but the question of whether abortion is good or bad has been address on this blog before.
As an African mother that she is, i can understand how disappointed she was that her young girl did an abortion. But is starvation the answer to the apparent problem?
I was wondering if she actually knew she opened her more to misfortunes and she might do more abortion because she will need to feed her mouth. A girl like that needs serious reorientation and possibly a counsellor to guide her through.
Starving her means she will start prostitution in full because she needs to feed her mouth and wear good cloths.
I still don't know why food of all the punishments in the whole world should be the only thing Nigerian mothers can use to punish their children.
I am sure Nigerians reading this must have experienced this or heard their friends complaint about their mothers not giving them food as a way to punish them for what they did wrong.
I think these mothers need serious reorientation. They need to understand that food is the greatest thing they can ever punish a child with. People steal, rob, kill because of food. People can do many irrational things because they are hungry. How would our mothers choose this irrational and barbaric way as a means to punish children?
It is just sad and they need to embrace the reality before them that without food the most noblest person can be a notorious hired killer!
Food wasn't even our type of punishment during my early years, fear was, just because youre afraid of what my father would do to you when he's back,would make you not think of doing anything bad, and funny enough, he really wasnt going to do anything.
Good to know! You are right about the fear. These parents can use anything to beat a child. May God help the kids out there!
I agree with you totally, @smyle.
I experienced starvation quite a no of times, i ran away from home a couple of times too due to starvation, fear etc. Thank God for grace, i'm alive today.
I feel this is a great lesson to me and you, as parents in the making, we really need to take note of some things our parents did to us while growing up and try not to do same to our kids, as we wouldn't want them going through similar occurences....
That is bad. I hope this generation wont go in that direction. It is very bad. Thank God for you dear! Steem on!
You are not far from the truth.thanks so much for this thought out write up
Thanks!
My grandmother too use food as a punishment, here we say if a child offend an adult " Vai a letto senza cena" it means you go to sleep without eating your meal
Wow! That is serious! And i thought only Nigerian mothers do that. The world need to address the problem then. We cannot use food as a punishment. It makes kids think beyond normal and they might end up being a problem to the society in the future.