Parent-teen tips (Tips to parenting)

I know that I m yet to be a parent, I m also not a teenager but I can assure you that I believe in this article that I have put together and I hope that someone somewhere will read this and realise this is true.. this is how it goes...

A teenager is a young person whose age falls within the range 13-19. They are called teenagers because their age number ends with TEEN. This stage is also referred to as adolescence stage. The period of transition from childhood to adulthood. In the past teenagers used to be those sets of people who believe that nobody understands them.

Teenagers used to be those people who always have problems with their parents and the society at large, those set of people who live in a world of their own having ideas which seem crazy and unattainable to their parents. These set of people who know more than you think they know. Well that is what it still is today, if any change can be said to have occurred it is the fact that more evolutions have occurred and all of these characteristics teenagers possess has skyrocketed.

No more house rules or curfews because they never work, you are not even allowed to meet all of their friends or know about what is happening in school or their relationships with the opposite sexes. The complexity of our world today has also not helped matters at all. The influx of single parents, unwanted pregnancy situations, weekend parents, extremely strict parents in the society has been a contributing factor to all of the fact that teenagers today have become wilder and more vulnerable to vices. Lets discuss each category of teenagers based on this.
THE SINGLE PARENT RAISED TEEN
These are teenagers raised by a single parent. Either by just the father or just the mother. Single parenting is tough but single parents of teenagers have a lot more to deal with. Independence, trust and honesty are even greater challenges in a single parent - teen relationship.
Biola is fourteen, her mother died when she was ten. She has a younger sister who is nine, they have since been living with her father who seemed to prefer remaining single to another marriage. Biola has reasons to believe her father is sleeping with women but she chooses to ignore that fact, her father leaves home a awful lot of time he claims to have different business meetings. Most times Biola and her younger sister have to sleep in their neighbor’s home. Biola started her menstrual period and she had no one to run to but the neighbors, several other needs and that of her sister’s that should have been met by her parents was kept hidden from her father. Because the neighbors started complaining Biola started relying more on her friends in school, she started getting solace from friends. This left her father in the dark and kept him annoyed. To worsen the case, he would beat her up whenever he was angry at her or whenever she lied which she did often. Biola’s father is on the verge of losing his teenage daughter but he doesn’t know it yet…
Boye is fifteen; he lives alone with his mother. His father had never been around all his life, he only sent him clothes, shoes, random gifts and money once in a while. This was the only constant awareness of his father he had. He and his mother are never on good terms, to Boye she simply doesn’t understand him. To his mother, she would never leave him alone to turn out irresponsible , she didn’t want anyone to have any reason to say her son didn’t do well because he was raised only by his mother. But she unconsciously put pressure on her son, sending him to find solace in
the society and from peers rather than in her as his mother. She was also sowing the seed of pain, hostility and hard heartedness in him but she didn’t know it.
Single parents seem to have a lot on their hands more than any other. To deal rightly with your teenager as a single parent you have to be ready to ask for help.
Engage any support network, friends or family you may have, ask sisters, brothers and grandparents to call and check in on your child if he or she is home alone.
Talk to your child about the fact that you can’t be there all the time and let him/her know what you expect.
Give your child the opportunity to be free, to find his/her own way, to make money or earn favours, to go out with friends. More importantly know your child’s friends, listen and pay attention to your teenager, give independence but still talk to your teenager. Above all make time to talk to your child and do things together when you are home. Single parents have tendency to over parent or on the contrary under parent. This should be avoided, never grow away from the child at the same time never get in the child’s way.
To be continued...

No longer daddy's girl

Dad has always been my favorite,not because mum died leaving him to take up the responsibilities of both parents but I've always admired him and seen him as a wonderful person. Even when mum was alive I seemed to get along well with him more as mum and I were always arguing and disagreeing. A common phenomenon between teenage daughters and their mothers.
Dads seem to pamper and understand their daughters more.

But no one prepares the daughter for the time she will have to leave her father, for a time when she will have to go far away from home either to work or to study. No one prepares the daughter for a time she will need to find her source of livelihood on her own, no one tells her that a time will come when she will only be able to speak to her father on phone. No one reminds her that her father has his own life to live and is on a journey on this planet like every other person. That her father is just a caretaker who will eventually need care himself when he grows old. No one reminds her that he can't be with her wherever she goes forever. No one reminds her that her father will leave the world someday. No one tells her that she won't be daddy's girl forever.. the harsh realities of growing up.

Today we celebrate all the wonderful fathers in the world. Those men who regard women, those fathers who have given all it takes to care for their children, those fathers who have always been present at every stage of their children's life, those fathers who have laboured on their children, fed them, clothed them, educated them and above all set them up to stand on their own.

Even though the realities of adulthood has set in and i'm closer to becoming a parent myself..remembering all that my siblings and I have been through together with dad I will still send my dad hugs and kisses wishing him a happy father's day..

My KPMG test experience

The fear of being jobless is somewhat a common phenomenon especially in Nigeria, this is what prompted my constant job hunt discussions with one of my friends who was a guru when it came to job hunting. This is someone that can travel to the end of the world for job interviews or aptitude tests.

So when he mentioned KPMG, a part of me wanted to apply, a part of me wanted to decline but after much persuasions and encouragement, I decided to take a cue from him and try, I started the application process. It was tedious, the tedious nature of the application got me wondering “on top wetin?’’. But then I just continued giving the benefit of doubt.

After some days I was able to submit my application in a manner which was to me haphazardly but who cared? after all I wasn’t banking on it. Lo and behold I got invited for the test surprisingly but my joy turned to worry and despair when I saw the venue. A place I totally didn’t know in Lagos. To go or not to go?

Eventually the D-day came and I went. I woke up very early in the morning and I set out, a part of me was eager , another had feelings of uncertainty at the same time my stomach was rumbling, I had used the toilet twice that morning and felt I was ok. I had eaten vegetable soup the night before but I never imagined it could affect me. Having used the toilet twice I felt nothing would make me feel the urge again at least for the few hours I was going to be out. So I got in the bus to Lagos.
Hours after, stepping into Oshodi Lagos, I don’t know whether it was the anxiety of the exam I was going to write or the fact that I had walked around in circles before locating where the venue was situated, I started feeling a desperate urge to use the toilet. The urge was so intense that if not for the fact that I had an examination to write for a stated time I would have found a toilet nearby to use. But I kept holding it, managing my condition as time wasn’t on my side.
I got to the venue and saw thousands of young job seekers, all with either a first class or a second class upper. I even saw friends I knew from my former university, we greeted each other well. I began to lose the remaining hope I had concerning the job seeing the population. We got on queue and I almost cried, I had to endure this queue and the serious rumbling in my stomach and in my bumbum. By the time I was checked in and sat set at the computer about to start the e-exam, the excreta was set to come out of my buttocks.
I half listened to the instructions, I couldn’t hear a thing. All that kept going through my mind was how to get to a toilet and use. I half read the questions before choosing answers, as I clicked on the answers I knew I had no hope in that examination except a miracle happened. I couldn’t take it any longer on getting to question number 27, I raised up my hand and called the attention of one of the examiners. I told her I had to use the toilet, I understood the implications of doing that, I had to submit and walk out of the examination room when I had barely started. I thought to myself better to fail this examination than become public ridicule so I insisted on leaving. The examiner looked at me with pity on her face, she saw the sense of urgency in which I was in then she took my slip from me and led me to the female toilet. So as I let out the waste that had threatened to disgrace me earlier, I began to blame myself for all that had happened. As relieved as I was having used the toilet I felt disappointed, thinking I had messed up my opportunity.
As I made my way out of the building and straight to the car park to start my journey back home, several ‘’what ifs’’ kept coming . What if I had done this, what if I had done that. In the end I concluded that was the way God wanted it. Some minutes after in the bus on my way back home, I got pings from some of my friends whom I had run into at the examination venue. They gave me reports of how they had failed the examination honorably, who knew what the cut off mark was. It all boils down to the fact that job seeking in Nigeria is hard and these companies will try all sorts of discrepancies and cunningness to cut off job seekers and chose who they want. So in the end I hadn’t really messed up per say, what if I had finished the exam truly and still failed, besides I had taken bold steps, registering, going for the examination and submitting when I did. Truly I had learnt my lesson and I also hail myself for being smart about choices.