The Discipleship Academy, a platform dedicated to raising disciples through the children, teens, and parenting academy, has expressed worry over the low income earning levels of citizens, calling on the government to provide enabling environment for families to thrive economically in order to sustain societal values.
The Director of the academy, Oluwatoyin Osagie-Oboh, made the call in Abuja during a workshop organized by the academy tagged “Digital Parenting: cyber security and online safety for families” as part of its activities to commemorate the 2023 International Families Day with theme: “Families and New Technology”.
Osagie-Oboh, who is also a certified John Maxwell Parenting and Family Coach, said that there was the need for the government to establish parenting education centers particularly in rural areas for reorientation of families, noting that due to economic hardship most kids are raising themselves in the most improper manner.
She also urged the government to create awareness and sensitization through its relevant agencies on the need to promote the positive use of technology, noting that this will create opportunities for the teeming youths to showcase their talents and grow.
She said, “The income earning level of people have really dropped, everything is going up and status is not improving, we need to pay attention to creating skills as this is affecting the family. When income drops the access to quality education drops so alot of children in the suburbs are raising themselves, the parents don’t know what to do they are not informed and we have immorality ravaging our children, don’t forget that these are the children that will be involved in policy making in the future.
“The thing about family is that we do our best with the resources that are available to us as there is no perfect parent what we have is parents who continue to improve upon the family unit and so we cannot put a figure or score-cap but what we can do is to encourage them to continue to seek out more, to improve upon your parenting knowledge.
“We encourage the government to put up family education centers in the rural areas just like we have maternity centers that can be in the language so that it can accessible, gather parents in the villages in the suburbs and give them one or two tips and reach out the children on value orientation.”
Osagie-Oboh also urged parents to make concerted effort to spend quality time with their children, place family values that will direct their children’s lives, and not only concentrate on providing material needs.
On the use of technology, she urged parents not to shut their kids out but rather empower them to making positive use because they are cyber natives, stressing that making the children understand the right from the wrong will help build them to be self-disciplined.
She said, “Your child should be able to shut down a content and say this is not for me, this is not my family value and be able to make their choices, because what we want is a technological knowledgeable child and not a novice, because then the repercussions will be that they will not be able to compete in their world.”
A parent of the Leading Light Academy, Yakachat Pada, noted that family as the smallest unit of the society is faced with numerous challenges leading to the increase in gender based violence.
She urged spouses to tolerate each other to the best of their abilities but not hesitate to leave if violence becomes too much as staying in abusive homes affects children more than being a single parent.
Another parent Mr. Charles Oboh stated the need for the inclusion of men in the parenting of children as men have a lot of role to play, saying, “Mmany people think parenting has to do with the mothers alone, men have a very big role to play in the family as the children tend to sometimes feel loose with their mothers.”
