Parents and guardians across the world and the sub-region especially are used to the phrase he’s just a kid or she’s just a kid.

At 5years, 10 years the belief is that children are too young to be disciplined when they err or are too young to engage in house chores. They prefer to ‘protect’ these kids until they are ‘ready’ to engage in house labour and tend to engage the services of house helps or maid servants.

These children are however expected to know the difference shovel and a spade once they turn 18 or an age believed in the community to be an adult stage.

These guardians or parents then develop develop all sorts of nice names like lazy, impudent, insurbordinate and the like for such kids.

That is just the beginning of the problems these fellows to pose to themselves and the community as a result of poor parenting.

The parents then see the children as unadjustable and nagging while forgetting the training they dished out to the wards.

Simple house chores and societal roles become a headache just because their patents thought they were too young or ‘just a kid’.

A friend once told me a story and the protagonist asked a prophet when it was due to start training her child in the Lord. The prophet replied simply, “how old is he?” “5 years she” replied. The phophet replied *”YOU ARE 5 YEARS LATE!!!”*

Of course it would be ubsurd to ask a day old baby to do chores or to say thank you when he or she recieves a favor or anything in the regard.

However it’s equally inadvisable to treat children as weaklings or some entities incapable of reasoning and dangerously relying on they phrase he’s just a kid and will grow to learn.

The time to train a child is not when he’s grown and capable of making decisions but a stage where there’s docility. This isn’t to say to make a robot out of children, for robots could always be manipulated. A robot child would follw every instruction you give him or her and would be the perfect child. However like a computer software, they will flip into a vagabond and a misfit with the slightest virus attack or in this case a little pressure or influence from peers.

The idea is to lay a foundation of faith, a foundation of hardwork and training in the Lord. A child that is old enough to go play football with colleagues or some other game is definitely not too young to help in the kitchen or perhaps the garden. You don’t expect a child to be out of the house all day playing and magically know that he ought to help at home when he turns 15 or 18. “You can’t give an old dog a new name”.

You may try all the scolding tactics but when a child learns he’s to play and leave chores to the maid to do, that’s how he has been processed and so like a computer he would output that. That is how he has been trained so it is morally right for him not to depart from those ways, whether good or bad.

The world is going astray today because we train children to be simpletons and expect them to be wits, practically a psychological impossibility

Therefore instead of learning all sorts of derogatory words to call your child when he is ‘finally ready’ to engage in house chores and is found wanting, you should perhaps invest that time to train up the child the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it – Proverbs 22:6

BY: OSWALD K AZUMAH