Be your child’s primary motivator....

Your child, perhaps after reading about Michelle Obama tells you: “Dad, when I grow up, I want to go to Princeton or Harvard University” and all you can say is: “C'mon, child, let me think about putting food on the table first?”

Do you know what you just did? Your stressful mood just screwed a determined kid out of her dreams. Now if she grows up to be a no-hoper, you cannot blame anyone but yourself.

In this practical joke of a world, it is a blessing to have a child like this; one who knows what she wants to be and wouldn’t settle for the least fulfilling option, even if considered adequate. And that alone should motivate you to help this child to stand out to demonstrate merit, promise, and the need to be accepted at Princeton or Harvard.

As stressful as your life gets, you still got to do your best and let God handle the rest, but never limit the prospect of a child. And that’s not uncommon here. The other day I overheard two parents playing cool because their kids have only just graduated, took hold of a ‘mansa-kunda-dokuwo’ and have since then relieved them from ‘depanz’, but is being a ‘depanz’ successor all there’s to this increasingly tough world?

Personally, I have not gone beyond high school and even though I play cool and make it feel like shit’s perfectly all right like that, I still pray to God that my kids will not stride that path. I don’t want them to go through the same daily struggles I face to pull myself up on these cold-blooded streets, but if they are street smart like I think I am, then that’s a bonus, but they got to be learned. So help me God!

Cc: parents, should be parents, could be parents and could’ve been parents, and even would-be parents.