[UAH] A father's day message to all those who play a fatherly role in nurturing our children
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A father's day message to all those who play a fatherly role in nurturing our children
Parenting is an ever evolving process and indeed psychological discoveries have pushed the envelope of parenting in a whole new direction from that of our great grandfathers and mothers. You would hope that every culture even in the face of adversity still loves to nurture their young and ideally with both parents where possible or perhaps an entire village. i have seen fathers from Africa increase their participation , in parenting as they learn new techniques of parenting and bonding - fathers changing diapers and using baby carriers to strap their children on their backs - don't tilt the babies head too low while bottle feeding them they will get an ear infection - please try and use positive encouraging words, but be firm instead of corporal punishment derived from the popular saying "spare the rod and spoil the child" if you want to grow a mathematician or a scientist with no jitters and inhibitions!
Does it mean that those of us who grew up in the past era with canning as a punishment hanger - were abused to hopelessness and should obsess in that abused mentality and remain in that irreversible loss forever; hardly, there is not too much evidence that the past era of the 20, 30, 40s and 50 which nurtured composers and fellows like Einstein as well as many of his colleagues who made great discoveries in science and other disciplines were stunted by the discipline of the times! We are also not too sure whether our new psychology of positive discipline, is the best in all situations especially in bringing up an African child in some societies - in America Africans have practiced the new recommended psychological methods of parenting and they have landed far too many of our children in prison more than before - could there be another force in society that is competing with the new parenting paradigm of positive discipline that we have completely overlooked? Perhaps, President Barack Obama says we need to further squeeze parents in crisis for child support - by strengthening the laws that pit parents against each other and put parents in jail for lack of child support money!
This is not fair to minority parents - who have limited resources and chances of gaining full employment - even when the economic times are good. There has to be a more humane way of dealing with parents in crisis - incarcerating the few free African American parents, because they lack money from societal skewed strains is bad policy and cruel . I wonder how the Chinese and Japanese are raising their children; we can look at these ancient cultures for alternative techniques that might work better for the African American family. This bent on punishment for both children and parents has not yielded positive results for the African American family and it is worthy of study, before adding more concrete that would drive the family unit further into oblivion!
I'm also at odds with the way the President portrayed his Kenyan father in his last address to the nation, much as this fatherly thing is deeply personal and everyone has their own way of interpreting and perceiving their dad's love, I think he ought to cut him some slack. I believe there may have been other dynamics at play in the life of this Kenyan man which made it virtually impossible for him to be ever present in his son's life. I know the Luo, love their children just as much as any other culture, if the shoes were reversed and this learned African father from Kenya were President of the free world, he would have found a way of explaining his son's absence to the world, better than what is being doled out to him. As African fathers we see this as yet another marker of lack of fulfillment that divides our worlds!
Happy father's day!
Tendo Kaluma
Ugandan in Boston
--
"To ask a dictator to implement democratic measures after 30 years in power is an oxymoron"
Parenting is an ever evolving process and indeed psychological discoveries have pushed the envelope of parenting in a whole new direction from that of our great grandfathers and mothers. You would hope that every culture even in the face of adversity still loves to nurture their young and ideally with both parents where possible or perhaps an entire village. i have seen fathers from Africa increase their participation , in parenting as they learn new techniques of parenting and bonding - fathers changing diapers and using baby carriers to strap their children on their backs - don't tilt the babies head too low while bottle feeding them they will get an ear infection - please try and use positive encouraging words, but be firm instead of corporal punishment derived from the popular saying "spare the rod and spoil the child" if you want to grow a mathematician or a scientist with no jitters and inhibitions!
Does it mean that those of us who grew up in the past era with canning as a punishment hanger - were abused to hopelessness and should obsess in that abused mentality and remain in that irreversible loss forever; hardly, there is not too much evidence that the past era of the 20, 30, 40s and 50 which nurtured composers and fellows like Einstein as well as many of his colleagues who made great discoveries in science and other disciplines were stunted by the discipline of the times! We are also not too sure whether our new psychology of positive discipline, is the best in all situations especially in bringing up an African child in some societies - in America Africans have practiced the new recommended psychological methods of parenting and they have landed far too many of our children in prison more than before - could there be another force in society that is competing with the new parenting paradigm of positive discipline that we have completely overlooked? Perhaps, President Barack Obama says we need to further squeeze parents in crisis for child support - by strengthening the laws that pit parents against each other and put parents in jail for lack of child support money!
This is not fair to minority parents - who have limited resources and chances of gaining full employment - even when the economic times are good. There has to be a more humane way of dealing with parents in crisis - incarcerating the few free African American parents, because they lack money from societal skewed strains is bad policy and cruel . I wonder how the Chinese and Japanese are raising their children; we can look at these ancient cultures for alternative techniques that might work better for the African American family. This bent on punishment for both children and parents has not yielded positive results for the African American family and it is worthy of study, before adding more concrete that would drive the family unit further into oblivion!
I'm also at odds with the way the President portrayed his Kenyan father in his last address to the nation, much as this fatherly thing is deeply personal and everyone has their own way of interpreting and perceiving their dad's love, I think he ought to cut him some slack. I believe there may have been other dynamics at play in the life of this Kenyan man which made it virtually impossible for him to be ever present in his son's life. I know the Luo, love their children just as much as any other culture, if the shoes were reversed and this learned African father from Kenya were President of the free world, he would have found a way of explaining his son's absence to the world, better than what is being doled out to him. As African fathers we see this as yet another marker of lack of fulfillment that divides our worlds!
Happy father's day!
Tendo Kaluma
Ugandan in Boston
"To ask a dictator to implement democratic measures after 30 years in power is an oxymoron"
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