We, too, suffer mental anguish; stop shouting at and caning us
A man holding a belt. Parents should exercise some restraint when correcting their children.
What you need to know:
- Parents should exercise some restraint when correcting their children.
- Imagine if all you had to do to save your child was listen to them, reduce the shouting and beating?
Parents may never understand it, but after experiencing it, I can tell you their shouting or caning does not help correct us.
They say they are correcting us, but it ends up destroying us sometimes.
Whenever I try to talk about this with the adults in my family, they shut down my concerns saying: “You are a teenager, you do not know what you are saying.”
The shouting and caning affects us emotionally and mentally. When I am caned or shouted at, I may never repeat the mistake, and be labelled “a good girl”, but this will leave me with a scar.
When parents and guardians cane and shout at us, they can make us feel worthless. We feel like a disgrace, and this sometimes causes so much sadness in us.
There is also no one to tell this sadness because your age mates would be going through the same struggles.
The adults will dismiss us or cane us again. With this fear, we fake it. We smile and laugh.
Other teenagers run away from home. Worse, others resort to suicide because we carry pain inside.
It is always shocking that parents only understand these issues when the child is six feet under, dead.
Extreme ends
If you have watched the news, there have been children who have taken the sadness to the extreme ends and end up taking their lives.
Doctors have raised concern about mental anguish in adults. If it is a problem in adults, why does society assume it is not an issue in children and teenagers?
Regret hits parents when their children die, but at this time, there is nothing that can reverse what happened.
Society always treats suicides in children as result of the child being defiant and as an act of indiscipline, but it is much more than that.
I want to ask parents to exercise some restraint when correcting their children.
Even when you do so, please see how they are doing after you have punished them.
Try and have a relationship with them because you may never know the next day you may be mourning your child.
Imagine if all you had to do to save your child was listen to them, reduce the shouting and beating? Would you not give that?
