THAT'S LIFE: We’re guilty of not letting others grow, learn

Unfortunately today, most of us are quick to do things for our children when we see them struggle to learn a certain skill. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • Unfortunately today, most of us are quick to do things for our children when we see them struggle to learn a certain skill.
  • As a result, we end up with grown men and women who can’t cook a simple meal, make a bed, resolve conflict, earn a living, or go out and get a job.

Learning to tie shoe-laces was such a struggle for me that it is one of my earliest, most unpleasant memories. I must have been three or four. I remember that my parents always used to tie my shoe-laces and then one day, they stopped.

What was worse was that they expected me to tie my own shoe-laces. Even then I liked things neatly tied up in pretty bows but  my shoe-laces always came out clumsy and loose. They hadn’t invented Velcro back then.

Those early shoe-lace lessons frustrated me on end. But guess what. I got better at it, with time and lots of patience, and today I can tie a mean knot.

Remembering just how difficult it was for me, I was tempted to short circuit my children’s shoe lace lesson to spare them the agony of learning. For a while, I bought them shoes that did not require laces, or those that had Velcro. However, I noticed that tying bows and knots was a basic skill they would need at some point in life. They just had to learn it.

And so I did what my own parents had done for me. I showed them the steps and then let them learn the hard way, by doing it on their own. I saw their clumsy efforts and was tempted to jump in and correct them, but like my parents before, I had to restrain myself. I had to let them do it for themselves.

Unfortunately today, most of us are quick to do things for our children when we see them struggle to learn a certain skill. As a result, we end up with grown men and women who can’t cook a simple meal, make a bed, resolve conflict, earn a living, or go out and get a job.

We do this when we employ workers to care for our children’s every need, to make their beds and cook their meals. We do it when we jump into our children’s fights and play mediator instead of allowing them to learn how to fight fair and then make up. We do it when we do homework or school projects for them, when we help them write resumes and then connect them with employers as a called in favour.

And so we raise a generation of adults who refuse to take responsibility for their lives, who expect someone else to pick up after them or even just pick the tab. In doing so, we succeed in creating entitled monsters who blame everyone, including mum and dad, when things do not work out and they mess their own lives.

Sadly, in Africa, we have created a culture of social security, of bailing out people who refuse to do for themselves, what they can do for themselves. We bail out relatives who refuse to work and call it “helping,” we entertain people who abuse our boundaries and call it hospitality, we clean up after grown men and call it submission, we allow our grown children to bring their dirty linen home and call it understanding. We perpetuate doing for others what they must do for themselves.

 But that’s not all, we too, expect others to do for us what we must do for ourselves. We throw trash out of moving matatus and cars, and complain about a dirty city.

We fail to plan and then make the famous pleas of “Serikali saidia”. We absolve political leaders of moral responsibility when we gloss over their corruption because they come from our tribe and call it solidarity.

On this account, we are all guilty. What next? Really growing up begins with taking personal responsibility for your life, and refusing to allow others to do for you, what you can do for yourself.

And then it involves extending that courtesy to those around you, and expecting them to grow up and do what they must do for themselves. We cripple ourselves and others when we refuse to learn this all important life truth. A truth that probably begun with a shoe lace lesson.