Do You Say No To Your Child? Here’s Why You Should
Do you say NO to your child? Ordinarily, most Nigerian mothers do not have a problem with saying NO, as a matter of fact, our mothers had serious problems with saying YES. However, most likely in our bid be less like our parents, many modern Nigerian women do not say NO as often as they should.
We shared excerpts of an article on Saying No to Your Child by Lori Tharps, which was published on MyBrownBaby.com. Usually we curate articles we believe will be useful for our community, however we hardly ever share an entire article…just excerpts with a link to read more. Bloggers are often generous with their content once you acknowledge the writer and link back, however this is not the case with every one. And that’s okay.
Back to Saying No to Your Child, I think the problem most Nigerian moms face is that we are very much exposed to our western counterparts and we struggle to find a balance between the iron-fisted discipline style of our mothers and the sort of discipline styles we watch in movies and read about.
The other day, my son took me to task about my discipline methods. He pointed out that the mom in the cartoon he was watching never yelled at her child but always praised him, even when he did naughty things. This from a 3 year old. I laughed and told him it was a cartoon.
The importance of Lori Tharps article for us is that even in the US, moms are strict on their children. It is not always like we see it in the movies or in cartoons. Writing, she mentioned that she regularly says NO to her children when they ask for stuff like console video games, cable, social media, allowance, TV during the week and lots more.
It is a lot of NOs actually.
But that is not the point. Whether you choose to say No as many times and as often as she does is your prerogative. What is clear is that you should refuse your child’s request. Letting a child have his way or her way all the time is nothing but a recipe for disaster.
So dear Naija Mum, if you are finding it difficult to refuse your child some things and you suffer from guilt each time you do, suffer no more. What you are really doing is building character in your child.
Feel free to visit mybrownbaby.com for delightful articles on parenting and everything in-between.
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