I grew up under strict measures with the seemingly invading eyes of my parents. My parents are tough, both of them. Strict disciplinarian with multiple rules that seemed to scare the life out of us because the punishment we would get was nothing small.
We didn’t have a private room to ourselves as we lived under a single room, all of the children, cousins, and my parents, but you see, the strict measures in place made sure that none of us ever had the chance to misbehave.
Simple things like closing the bathroom door when you are in there, to making sure we didn’t visit other people’s homes to play, so properly disciplining us when we faulted, it felt suffocating at the time, but all those strict measures shaped my personnel.
Just because it felt suffocating, I made up my mind that I was going to run away from home any chance I got, and I did it. I ran away from home when I graduated primary school. I made sure I wasn’t going to have to go secondary school from home, so, I chose to go a boarding school where the real suffocation was experienced.
To our housemistress at the time, we were too young to have anything called privacy, so, she would barge in at any point in time to “supervise” us and be sure we were fine, but that didn’t last long as the mistress was soon transferred to another school. So, the shout of “Freedom at last!” filled the air.
At first, I thought it was all children that experienced the “suffocating” parenting style, but I soon realized that it was in my imagination that happened. I mean, when the housemistress left, I saw a lot of kids like me do absurd things that my parents could never hear of.
The effect of this though was that I grew up faster than my body. My maturity level developed so strongly that I was amazed. Thinking about it now, I realized that it was the open-door parenting style that helped me when I had the excess freedom in school.
Sneaking out of the hostel, dressing in a way that attracted strangers, staying out late, going to town to meet series of people, doing a lot of things that were wrong at the same time and feeling like life was beautiful, but to me, it was strange.
Strange because I could hear the voices of my parents in my head. “Are you about to try that? What are you doing there? Who are you going to meet? What are you people doing inside? Have you done this? Who is that guy? Is that girl your new friend?” and many other questions that would’ve come to live if I had tried to live the kind of life those girls were living. We were too young for that.
There, I realized that, though our parents may seem overly protective of us at a certain age, but freedom at an early age has its detrimental effects that are even worse than being trained under the strict surveillance of your parents.
I’m grown up now, with many young cousins, nephews, nieces, and siblings, and I realized that I ran so they could fly. With them, our parents stopped their strict rules and regulations, and we stepped up, me especially, getting close to all of them, helping them navigate life by sharing my experiences with them, and leaving them to make decisions that are best for them, and honestly, that has been helpful so far.
My younger ones are turning out well one after the other, because even though my parents have softened when they came, I could step up and be the not-too-strict big sister, but the always available one with proper listening ears and the best guiding words possible.
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