I am reporting live today from Ado – Ekiti, Ekiti State. This is the land where I grew up. I call it the land of my CHILDHOOD. As I report this day, running through the whole of my being is a heavy dose of emotional adrenaline. As I tour the land where the stories, I live to tell today was born, I am enveloped in nostragia and invaded by an army of deja vu. Looking back, I can only be full of gratitude to the ONE, who chose me before the world began to tell my stories of trials and triumphs, understanding that CHANGE is an ever- present POSSIBILITY for anyone who is ready to take RESPONSIBILITY…

Today, sober on my knees more than ever before I write about CHILDHOOD as today’s real cost of bringing up children in Africa…

Last week, in my declaration, titled, ‘METAMORPHOSIS:
From CHILD RIGHTS to CHILD PROTECTION to CHILDHOOD PROTECTION MOVEMENT,’ I submitted the following as the fundamental characteristics of CHILDHOOD: CURIOSITY, FREEDOM, JOY, PEACE, INNOCENCE, FEARLESSNESS. It is my disturbing observation that most parents and schools alike claim to imbibe in the child moral and academic excellence, dispensing CHILDHOOD as the cost. To my CHILDHOOD PROTECTION mind, CHILDHOOD is too high and irrecoverable cost of ‘raising’ a child…

From my field experience, observing and working with primary and secondary caregivers, I have discovered that our so-called commitment ‘to raise the child right’ is more important to us than preserving CHILDHOOD and its GLORY. Unknown to us, the WHOLE DUTY of every primary and secondary caregiver to the child and his MAKER is to preserve CHILDHOOD for the present and the future of the child. Therefore the real upbringing is to preserve CHILDHOOD and its fundamental attributes through KNOWLEDGE(what to do), SKILLS(how to do), and ATTITUDE(the fortitude to do)…

So we build domestic and educational systems, which demand compliance from the child at the expense of his CHILDHOOD. For example, most of the parents and teachers, who desires a child to do well in a subject, yell and threaten the child regularly, attack his person, emasculated his right to play, until he loses CURIOSITY, FEARLESSNESS, JOY and other fundamental characteristics of CHILDHOOD. The parents and teachers are first not aware of what the child has lost. However, they are happy and confirm the efficacy of their method because the child pulls the best academic result in that subject as they desire it. Another example is that parents are more interested in raising compliant/subdued children, who will not ‘spoil’ the ‘good name’ of the family than raising disciplined, whose fundamental characteristics of CHILDHOOD are preserved. This is the same reasoning while fathers and mothers boast and concerns themselves more about the academic and professional attainments of their children as they desire it than the children’s true flair and character…

The beginning and breeding ground for the foregoing monumental error is that instead of carefully studying the child, understand his DIVINE DESIGN for the fulfilment of DIVINE DESTINY and committing ourselves, first to preserving  same (what I call Mistery of CHILDHOOD). Thereafter, we assume who the child is and what his needs are. On the basis of the foregoing, we form our expectations, which are in most cases based on our unfounded and unreseached preferences, mostly predicated on how we were raised…

Permit me to conclude my submission today on my suggestion on how to preserve CHILDHOOD. I think one sure way of preserving CHILDHOOD is through discipline. Permit me to submit that an ABUSED child and a CHILD LEFT TO HIMSELF share common destiny of misery. Therefore preservation of CHILDHOOD happens by DELIBERATE and INFORMED actions and not wishful thinking or leaving the child to himself. Right here next week, I will share my researched perspectives on DISCIPLINE as a tool of preserving CHILDHOOD…

Do have an INSPIRED week.
Taiwo Akinlami Sober on his Knees on the LORD’S Day.